in particular Districts. 267 



which, I should add, is intersected with numberless ravines or 

 valleys; and I have nu doubt, that when the atmosphere is in 

 that precise state best adapted for receiving and transmitting 

 undulations of air, a breeze, not perceptible in the flat country, 

 gently sweeps from the summits of the hills, and acts the part 

 of a blower on the sinuosities and hollows or doughs as they 

 are called, which thus respond to the draught of air like 

 enormous organ-pipes, and become for the time wind-instru- 

 ments on a gigantic scale, producing those striking and melan- 

 choly modulations so well expressed by the provincial word 

 " soughing," derived, no doubt, from the old Welsh substan- 

 tive " suad," a lullaby, or the verb " suaw," to hush, to lull, to 

 rest; or, as Sir Walter Scott in his glossary interprets it, a hol- 

 low blast or whisper, in which sense he uses it. " Hist,' ex- 

 claimed Mucklewrath *, ' I hear a distant noise.' ' It is the 

 rushing of the brook over the pebbles' said one. ' It is the 

 soiigh of the wind among the bracken' said another." And, 

 again, when old Dousterswivelf is keeping his midnight vigils 

 near goot Maister Mishdigoat's grave, the " melancholy sougJi'' 

 of the dying wind is fitly associated with " strains of vocal 

 music, so sad and solemn, as if the departed spirits of the 

 churchmen who had once inhabited those deserted ruins, were 

 mourning the solitude and desolation to which their hallowed 

 precincts had been abandoned." 



E. S. 



On the Geographical Characters and Geognostical Constitution 

 of Spain. By Professor Hausmann, of Gottingen. Com- 

 municated by the Author \. 



Geographic Features of the Country. 

 Ihe chief direction of the Pyrcnean chain, properly so called, 

 is from ESE to WSW. It is disposed, not in one but in 



• Old Mortality, vol. iv. p. 85. f Antiquary, vol. ii. p. 865. 



X As we know but comparatively little of the geof:fraphical and goolon-ical 

 features of Spain, we have much pleasure in laying before our readers these 

 observations of Professor Hausmann, ai)8tracted from a memoir hUelv read 

 before the Royal Society of Gottingen, by tliat distinguished naturalist, but 

 not yet printed or published — Edit. 4 



