viii pk^;face» 



ledge of ancient and modern learning, was a novelty as wel- 

 come as it was unexpe6ted. Whether that society still exists 

 in Lima, is uncertain ; but it appears that the Peruvian Mer- 

 cury, after having been progressively subjedted to a variety of 

 restraints, was discontinued somewhere about the year 1796. 

 On the following year, its learned editor, Don Jacinto Calero 

 y Moreira, passed from Lima to Buenos- Ayres. 



From the above periodical work, as it was carried on during 

 the first sixteen months, commencing with January 1791, and 

 from various authentic sources*, of which the Editor has 

 gladly availed himself, the Present State of Peru" has been 

 compiled. Whatever can tend to interest or amuse the British 

 reader, has been seledted, and given in a more or less abridged 

 form, according to the relative importance and curiosity of 

 the objects of inquiry. A certain degree of arrangement has 

 been followed in the introdu6tion of the different subje6ls, 

 which, the Editor flatters himself, colledlively form, a literary 

 olla podrida, a true Spanish dish, the ingredients of which are 



* In obtaining this information, the Editor has been laid under particular obli- 

 gations, which he here most gratefully acknowledges, by Don Pedro d'Oribe y 

 Vargas, a learned naturalist, now residing in this capital, to whom the public are in- 

 debted for an interesting account of a Peruvian plant, the juice of which is a sure 

 antidote against the bite of serpents, given in the Philosophical Magazine, vol. xii. 

 p. 36. The queries relative to the phenomena of the climate of certain distrids of 

 Peru, were answered by this gentleman. 



so 



