On the Commerce of Mexico. . 419. 
from a Hebrew or Samaritan codex. After having care- 
fully studied the Samaritan and collated it with the Maso- 
retic text, they have discovered the great majority of the 
erroneous readings in the Samaritan to have originated in 
the ignorance of the writer who knew not how to distin- 
guish correctly between the Hebrew letters in the original 
that nearly resemble each other in shape, but which, when 
strung together in words, mean anything but what the 
clumsy transcribers supposed. Most of the blunders occur 
through the confounding of with 1; n with 7; ° with 4; 
and 2 with 5. That errors of this kind could have oc- 
curred, and have been multiplied unless the Samaritan had 
been copied from the Masoretic text is manifestly impos- 
sible, because no such resemblance, or anything that ap- 
proaches to it, obtains in the Samaritan alphabet between 
one letter and the other. 
The result, then, arrived at by the labours of Gesenits 
Luzzatto and Kirchheim are decisive. Biblical criticism 
will go on, as it is to be wished it may go on, and keep pace 
with the progress of archzological research, and with the 
scientific daring which happily distinguish the present era ; 
and writers may start up with as much honesty of purpose 
as Bishop Colenso, though it is to be hoped, with more 
knowledge of the original text of the bible than he has dis- 
played, to propound system, which, like the Gourd of Jonah, 
“spring up in a night only to perish : in a night;” but no 
one who is familiar with the learned labours to which we 
have so imperfectly alluded in this sketch or skeleton of an 
article, is likely to expose himself to such ridicule as to 
challenge the genuineness of the Mosaic Pentateuch, on the 
mere ground that so many variants offer themselves to it 
in the Samaritan text. 
THE COMMERCE OF MEXICO. 
(Continued from page 388.) 
HE mode of propagation of the maguey is extremely 
simple. Before it dies, the plant leaves a family 
around it of six, eight, or more suckers, which are left to 
grow for two or three years, are then dug up with great 
care so as not to injure the “mezontete,” or stem, and after 
