EXTERTAIXIXG VARIETIES. 693 



the names of the booksellers in whose shops he used to lounge. Martial refers 

 a shabby fellow called Lupercus (who wanted to borrow his epigrams) to his 

 bookseller Atrectus. He tells him the shop is "opposite the forum of Caesar, 

 and placards are posted outside giving the names of poets,"' evidently as is the 

 custom of booksellers to this day. The price of the volume the first book of his 

 epigrams he says is five denarii, equivalent to three shillings and sixpence ster- 

 ling. Now, this first book contains one hundred and nineteen epigrams, or over 

 seven hundred verses. It appears elsewhere that cheaper copies were provided. 

 Martial refers to copies well rubbed with pumice and adorned with purple. The 

 cheaper copies could be had at half that price, but this was in the best style. 

 So that if we compare the price with the published price in England of "Maud," 

 or any of the original small volumes of Tennyson's poems, which were issued at 

 five or six shillings, the Roman publisher does not seem to be much dearer than 

 the English one. 



The first evidence on record of an author s right of copy is in the case 



of " Paradise Lost." This transaction is usually misrepresented. The bargain 

 was that Simmons was to pay 5 cash, 5 more when thirteen hundred copies 

 were sold, and 5 each for the second and third editions. It took seven years 

 to sell the first thirteen hundred copies, and in 1680 Milton's widow sold her 

 interest for 8 more. 



In reference to his conversion, Sir Charles Lyell says: "The question 



of the origin of species gave me much to think of, and ycu may well believe that 

 it cost me a struggle to renounce my old creed. One of Darwin's reviewers put 

 the alternative strongly by asking ' whether we are to believe that man is modi- 

 fied mud or modified monkey.' The mud is a great come-down from the ' arch- 

 angel ruined.' Even in ten years I expect, if I live, to hear of great progress 

 in regard to l fossil man.' " 



Broderip says that, in spite of all the dogs and cats which float down 



the Thames, none of their remains have been found in recent excavations in the 

 Thames deposits. 



An Earthly Paradise. Unless the Garden of Eden was planted in the 



very happiest latitude, the work of the gods seems for once to have been ex- 

 celled by the achievement of a mortal. Toward the end of the tenth century. 

 Abderrahman III. the Caliph of Cordova, conceived the idea of turning a whole 

 mountain-range into a pleasure-park. On the heights of the Sierra de Penas he 

 built the famous Hischam Ptussava, the summer-castle, with a pedestal of mas- 

 sive terraces girt with lakes and artificial cascades. The western slope of the 

 Sierra, according to Ibn Caldir, an area of forty square leagues, was planted with 

 all the trees known to the Arabian botanists palms, laurels, chestnuts, oaks. 

 and mountain-firs all ranged in groves at different altitudes, according to the 

 higher or lower latitude of their natural habitats. Ship-loads of foreign plants 

 were landed at the harbor of Alicante, and the transport of these botanic cargoes 

 is said to have employed sixty caravans for more than four years. " Not Shiraz, 

 nor Araby the Blest, had such a wealth of odoriferous shrubs," says the his- 

 torian ; roses trained into trees, copses of lilac and jasmine-bushes loaded the 

 air with perfume, and the Cordova gardeners seem to have known a method for 

 ripening winter crops without hot-houses, for the orchards of the lower slopes 

 furnished a perennial supply of fresh fruit. On the upper levels the Caliph had 

 his game-preserves* in vast plantations of pinaoetes, a sort of Alpine fir that 

 formed almost impenetrable thickets, while the highest crest of the Sierra was 



