lasting honors— the fiold of Skulls — the crania i^GYPTiCA, trom which 

 is deduced the ethnograpiiic characters of the primitive races of that 

 country, the Caucasian and negro, with their varieties. The invading 

 army under General Taylor, might now accomplish for Mexico,* what 

 the French Expedition did for Egypt, and what the United States Explor- 

 ing Expedition has done, at the expense of millions of treasure, for the 

 icy continent of eternal sterility in the antarctic ocean, and what the 

 authorities of New York have done, on a scale of surpassing magni- 

 ficence, in the illustration of the geology, and Fauna of that opulent 

 State. Honor to the citizens who authorised, and to the naturalists who 

 executed, this last mentioned work ! The other twenty-eight sisters may 

 look upon it with envy, or rather with generous emulation. 



The Fauna of Louisiana is still among the desiderata. Our birds 

 have found an able historian in Mr. Audubon, whose work has shed an 

 imperishable lustre on the nineteenth century. A foreign writer, in 

 alluding to the imperceptible insects, exclaims — " there is not a single 

 species that does not of itself deserve a historian !" Ehrenberg devoted 

 ten years to the Infusoria alone. Is such a study dry ? Is it not rather 

 the Pierian spring — the true Helicon ? If we admit with one author, that 

 man is to be distinguished from brutes by his power of laughing or smiling,f 

 has not the author of the Wandering Jew^ said, "there are so many kinds 

 of smiles, who can discover the false from the real ?" — if with another, 

 that language is the most distinguishing trait — has not Talleyrand said 

 that " language was given to man to conceal his thoughts ]" Such are 

 not the moral lessons derived from the inferior, or, as they are scornfully 

 called, h'rational animals. Their natural language is as sincere as it is 

 true. 



Without entering on questions of orders, genera, and species, I will 

 give, in a desultory manner, descriptions of the Alligator, as taken from 

 five of these animals placed at my disposal, in the months of March and 



* It is now nearly half a century, since the learned Humboldt cast a scien- 

 tific glance over Mexico ; and, although much of his account, statistical, social, 

 political, and scientific, is now obsolete, it is, nevertheless, for general reference, 

 the best that can be found. Messrs. Stephens and Korman, have explored 

 some portions of tbe Mexican territories. As it regards anfiquilies and ruins, 

 their discoveries have thrown their cotemporaries in the back ground. Palmyra 

 and the Pyramids, are probably destined to become secondary objects, if we may 

 judge from the presageful glimpses of these researches. Mr. Kendall's inte- 

 resting sketches of another portion of that Republic, present views of the 

 domestic and social condition of a population, in which little more than the 

 prestige of civilization actually exists. The country has been immortalized 

 historically, by the pen of Mr. Prescott. But v/here is its Flora, its Fauna, its 

 mineralogy, its geology ? Mexico, in those respects, needs an exploring ex- 

 pedition more than even Louisiana, for which, neither Royal nor Republican 

 masters, have, as yet, done any thing Vv^orth mentioning. 



t Milton seems to have adopted this theory : 



'• Smiles from reason floio. 



To brides denied:'' 



