678 General Notices. 



with the assistance of the equality established between the producer and the 

 consumer ; when the different countries, adopting each other's manners, for- 

 saking national prejudices, the old ideas of supremacy or conquest, shall tend 

 ■to a unity of nations ; by what means will you make society turn back to 

 worn-out principles ? Any power overthrown, not by accident, but by time, 

 by a change gradually effected in convictions or ideas, is never reestablished : 

 in vain you would strive to raise it under another name, to regenerate it 

 under a new form ; it cannot adjust its dislocated limbs in the dust in which 

 it lies, an object of insult or of derision. (^Sketches of English Literature, 

 &c., as quoted in the Literary Gazette, July 23.) 



The Present has no Enemy like the Past, — The picturesque is the sole relic 

 of the feudal age worth presenting. There never was a period whose influ- 

 ence has been more injurious to human interests generally. The feudal was 

 based on the principle of force ; and oppression and weakness formed a mis- 

 taken compact under the high-sounding names of loyalty and fidelity. These 

 two words have done more to retard the course of improvement, than 200 

 years have done to forward it. {^Berkeley Castle, as quoted in the Literary 

 'Gazette, July 23.) 



Cruelty to Animals. — Wherever the intellectual and moral faculties of the 

 species have fair play, the abstract pleasure in giving pain is subdued and 

 counteracted ; and we destroy no further than is necessary to our own exist- 

 ence and safety. It is, therefore, in the culture of these higher faculties only 

 that the true remedy can be found. The fashion of the day is to make men 

 gentle and humane, as some well-disposed but weak-minded people would 

 make them religious, by enforced observances and the penalties of an act of 

 parliament. But there is no legislating man out of his disposition ; and if 

 those who have the power of making laws will not fulfil their primary duty 

 as legislators, and take care that the people have a moral education and a 

 moral existence, all legislation on the subject of humanity is worse than use- 

 less ; it is mischievous, There is no possible means of humanising the lower 

 -classes, but by first improving their condition. To make them compassionate, 

 we must first permit them to enjoy, and not condemn them to a life of un- 

 mitigated labour and privation : they must have time and motives for exer- 

 cising their nobler qualities ; and these they would have, even the humblest 

 among them, if early taught, by precept and example, how to economise their 

 time, and husband their poor resources. But, till this is done, legislative 

 humanity is a jest, and a bitter one ; and the readings and the teachings of 

 the humanitarians, mere voices crying in the wilderness. ("Notice of Egerton 

 Smith's Elysium of Animals, in the Athenceum for July 23.) 



SCIENCE OF GARDENING. 



British Association for the Lnprovement of Science, — We recommend such 

 of our readers as have an opportunity of perusing the Mechanid s Magazine, 

 the Literary Gazette, or the Athenceum, to read with attention the accounts 

 there given of the wonderful discoveries that have been made or anticipated 

 in the different departments of science. Some of them are foreign, certainly, 

 to gardening ; but still we would recommend the young gardener to become 

 acquainted with them, for the sake of expanding his mind. We shall just 

 shortly hint at a few of these: — The idea of certain astronomers, and, among 

 others, of Herschel, that the nebulae in the milky way are supposed to be a 

 sort of spawn (as a gardener would say) of future planets ; that the metals 

 in metallic veins are created by electricity and magnetism ; that any temper- 

 ature may be produced on the surface of the earth by drawing heat from the 

 interior, which is supposed to be a mass of liquid fire ; that precious stones 

 of every description may be created by chemical and magnetical influence, &c. ; 

 that the cow-fish {Manila fluviatilis), which lives partly in water and partly on 

 land, "might become the universal food of mankind," and be found a good 

 substitute for turtle, &c. 



On the Action of Light iqoon Plants, ami of Plants upon the Atmosphere. 



