628 Notes for the Month. [DEC. 



Now, in four lines of English, here are five blunders.* The critic has 

 obviously written by ear, from the pronunciation of the actress. There are 

 no doubt, abundance of Englishmen who would make almost as had work 

 as this in writing French. But we should think it too much, if an English- 

 man who did so, talked of reversing upon any point of French criticism 

 or taste the judgment of the public of Paris ! 



An Absent Witness. A man of the name of Abrahams, afew days since, 

 brought an action in the Court of King's Bench, against a horse dealer, 

 named Kenrick, for some assault and misconduct about the hire of a chaise. 

 The case was opened : and the jury, after hearing the evidence, found a 

 verdict, with some small damages, for the plaintiff. Mr. Gurney, however, 

 who was for the losing man, told the court that Mr. Abrahams succeeded 

 merely by accident : for he should have produced the defendant's hostler, 

 who would have contradicted the plaintiff's whole case if, unluckily, his 

 witness had not, two days before, been convicted, at the Old Bailey , of 

 Felony ! 



The 61 Cloud King." Our Friend, Dr. M'Culloch he of the " Malaria" 

 who goes about terrifying all the world with fables of fog, and pestilence, 

 and vapour is involved this month in a very odd contradiction with his 

 allies, the editors of the " Quarterly Journal of Science and Literature." 

 The learned M. D., whose book upon " Miasma " we noticed some months 

 ago, and described as eminently calculated to drive every body who read 

 it out of Great Britain, and into the hydrophobia, seems to have got a little 

 conscientious about the horrors that he was spreading in every direction : 

 and in a paper published in the last " Quarterly Journal of Science," refer- 

 ing to his terrific work, says : "Lest I should be accused of wishing to excite 

 unnecessary alarm, E desire to state that, if we take the whole of Eng- 

 land, there is not perhaps one acre in a hundred thousand where there is 

 danger from malaria." 



Now this is rather a staggering declaration about the effect of a book, 

 which, if it proves any thing at all, proves much more nearly that there is 

 in England scarcely one acre in a hundred thousand where a man would 

 be free from the danger of malaria. And moreover it comes oddly from 

 a gentleman, who, in the very next paragraph to that in which it appears, 

 challenges the pestilential qualities of five of the counties on our Eastern 

 coast of England only Kent, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Lincolnshire. 

 But luckily, to spare us the trouble of taking out the Doctor's book, or turn- 

 ing back to our own magazine, for a revival of the murderous propensities 

 of "Situations near water, and situations away from water;" " Positions 

 near trees, and positions in want of trees;"" " Meadows that are un- 

 drained, and the drains made by draining meadows," &c. &c. &c. the 

 Doctor's book itself is reviewed (something late) in the very number of the 

 Journal in which he is writing : and let us see what his friend the reviewer 

 makes of those "proofs," which "leave only one acre in a hundred thou- 

 sand in England, subject to the danger of malaria?" 



" It is shewn," this Reviewer says (by Dr. M'Culloch) (< That a// places 

 where water is present in such a manner as to act upon vegetable matter, 

 must produce malaria; and the chief positions of danger are the following : 

 " The rushy, swamps of high moorlands, however small the extent." 



* Now tlieii kill me 



While thus I cling about thy cruel neck, 

 Kiss thy revengeful lips, and the in joys 

 (ireuter than I can guess hereufter. 



