60 TRACKS IN TEME. 



done, should be done to-day ; tor we know not that we shall be 

 able to accomplish it at any future time. We are not, 

 nowever, about to persevere in this sad strain ; we are not 

 lachrymose, and least of all men are we lack-a-daysical ; yet be 

 it known that we scorn the coward who fears to pen sober 

 truisms, especially when such truisms have been recently and 

 deeply pressed on his attention. Reader ! these observations 

 have forced themselves on the writer from circumstances which 

 in all probability thou wilt never know ; to thee, rejoicing in 

 health, they may be as chaff; to the writer they are the 

 treasured result of daily and nightly thought. " Somewhat too 

 much of this :" we would not make thee melancholy ; and if our 

 article contains a tinge, however slight, of melancholy, trust us 

 not again. 



In our hand is a book containing 132 pages, scarcely one of 

 which can be read without a smile. Whether it was the 

 intention of the author thus to make us smile, it is not in our 

 power to say. When he gravely " submits" that " the twelve 

 signs of the Zodiac are hieroglyphics of the antediluvian patri- 

 archs ;" when he ekes out the number twelve by making Eve a 

 patriarch, and " submits " that Pisces is the sign representing 

 Noah, from that patriarch's celebrated voyage on the waters of 

 the deluge, and, we opine, his consequent proximity to the 

 fishes ; we hesitate whether we are to believe Jabez Allies, Esq. 

 to be in earnest or in jest ; whether his book, like Dr. Ure's, 

 is an attempt to prove an exact accordance between the facts 

 disclosed by geology and the pages of holy writ; or whether 

 it is intended as a burlesque on those who are engaged in this 

 arduous work. It is too ludicrous for the former, it is too 

 serious for the latter. Jabez Allies, Esq. reminds us of an 

 excellent raconteur, who keeps the whole table in a roar while 

 his own countenance remains unmoved. 



The book, though, as before stated, containing but 132 

 pages, treats of at least as many totally different subjects ; we 

 give a few consecutive " cases" — " fish-bones — remains of 

 rhinoceros and mammoth— St.Catherine— St. Augustine's oak — 

 effects of certain noxious plants on cattle, and the speedy 

 remedy — a stratum of coal at the Berrow-hill — an ancient 

 camp there — a body of evidence relative to the ignis fatuus — 

 old English black rats — dry rot — Turkish oaks, Valonia," &c. 

 &c. ; indeed the et ceteras might be prolonged for whole lines. 



