moisture that remained upon them after casting their sloughs, they reassumed their former voracity, with an addition both of strength and agility. Yet they continued not long in this state before they were entirely dispersed, as their parents were before, after they had laid their eggs; and as the direction of the marches and flights of them, both was always to the northward, and not having strength, as they sometimes had, to reach the opposite shores of Italy, France, or Spain, it is probable they perished in the sea: a grave which, according to these people, they have in common with other winged creatures. The locust, I conjecture, was the noisome beast, or the pernicious destructive animal, as the original words may be interpreted, which, with the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, made the four sore judgments that were threatened against Jerusalem. The Jews were allowed to eat them; and, indeed, when sprinkled with salt and dried, they are not unlike in taste to our fresh-water crayfish."

Among the fish on the coast of Barbary the most curious is the penna marina, or sea-feather, which the fishermen sometimes find entangled in the meshes of their nets; and which, during the night, is so remarkably glowing and luminous as to enable the fishermen to discover by their light the size and quantity of the other fish which may happen to be enclosed within the same net.

In his remarks upon the moral condition of the inhabitants of Tunis and Algiers, he informs us that the sciences which were formerly so assiduously cultivated by the Moors are now neglected or despised but they have still, as of old, a passion for poetry and music, and many a wandering dervish, like the Aoidot, or chapsists of antiquity, excites the admiration and generosity of the Moorish Arabs, by his enthusiastic improvisatores, accompanied by the rude notes of the Arabelbah, or bladder and string. Wild nations, whose feelings and passions are al

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lowed a freer play than ours, are far more susceptible than we are of the delights which nervous poetry and simple melody are calculated to produce; and the Moors, whose tunes our traveller describes as merely lively and pleasant," are so deeply affected by music, that, in the warmth of their imagination, they lend their own sensations to inanimate objects, affirming seriously that the flowers of mullein and mothwort will droop upon hearing the mizmoune played.

Provisions, in the time of Dr. Shaw, were exceedingly cheap, a large piece of bread, a bundle of turnips, or a small basket of fruit, being to be purchased for less than a quarter of a farthing. A fowl might be bought for a penny or three halfpence; a sheep for three shillings and sixpence; and a cow and a calf for a guinea. The usual price of a bushel of the best wheat was fifteen pence. Bruce, whose fate it has been to have his testimony upon several important points called in question by ignorant conceited persons, has been ridiculed for asserting that the flesh of lions is commonly eaten by a tribe of African Arabs. Our traveller himself, who had been laughed at for making the assertion in conversation, introduced it timidly into the appendix of his first edition; but in the second it was restored to its place in the narrative, where it is said that "the flesh of the lion is in great esteem, having no small affinity with veal, both in colour, taste, and flavour."

The majority of persons appear to believe, with Shakspeare, that the Moors are a black, ill-favoured people; but, on the contrary, the Moorish women would be considered beautiful even in England, and the children have the finest complexions in the world. The men, from constant exposure to the sun, are generally swarthy, but never black; and the fine olive tinge they thus acquire only renders their complexions the more agreeable to the eye, as Heber observes of the Hindoos. In these countries, as in VOL. II.-E

Southern Asia, women are nubile at a very early age, being very frequently mothers at eleven, and grandmothers at twenty-two. The circumstance which renders the seclusion of women necessary in such countries is, that the age of puberty precedes the age of discretion; for the passions reaching their maturity long before the reason, they stand in need of being directed by the reason of others until their own is ripened, and when it is they have lost the habit of consulting it. The ancient custom of hiring old women, who, as the prophet Amos expresses it," are skilful in lamentation," to perform at funerals, still prevails in Barbary; and so powerful is the effect of this scenical representation of sorrow, that when they are aladásovras Tola, or "wailing greatly," expressing their mimic grief by sound, gestures, and contortions of countenance, they seldom fail to work up the bystanders to an ecstasy of sorrow, so that even the English, who know it to be artificial, are deeply touched by it.

The superstitious practices of the Mohammedans in general, and particularly of those inhabiting Northern Africa, are strange and numerous, many of them being apparently offshoots from pagan practices, bequeathed to their ancestors by the Grecian or Roman colonists who subdued and inhabited these coasts. They suspend upon the necks of their children, as the Romans did their bulla, the figure of an open hand, generally the right, which they likewise paint upon their ships and houses, to avert the effects of the evil-eye. At the same time the number five is unlucky, and "five in your eyes," meaning the five fingers, is their proverb for cursing and defiance. Adults wear small scrolls, as the Jews did their phylacteries, containing verses from the Koran, as a charm against fascination, witchcraft, sickness, and misfortune. In one particular they appear to differ from the superstitious in Europe, who generally imagine that faith in the force of the spell is neces

sary to its efficacy; for their horses and cattle, which can be supposed to have but little faith in such matters, have similar scrolls suspended round their necks, no doubt with equal benefit. Their belief in jenoune, or genii, a class of beings between angels and devils, and which, like the fairies of our ancestors, are supposed to frequent shades and fountains, is deep-rooted and universal. These equivocal beings assume, they imagine, the form of toads, worms, lizards, and other small animals, which, being offensive to man, and lying frequently in his way, are extremely liable to be injured or destroyed. Therefore, when any person falls sick, fancying he may have harmed one of the jenoune lurking in some obscene shape, he immediately consults with one of those cunning-women who, like the venefica of antiquity, are versed in all expiatory ceremonies of this nature, and at the direction of the sorceress proceeds on a Wednesday with frankincense and other perfumes to some neighbouring spring, where a cock or a hen, a ram or a ewe, according to the sex or rank of the patient, is sacrificed to these spirits.

Dr. Shaw returned to England in the year 1733. In the course of the next year he took his degree. of doctor of divinity, and was shortly afterward elected fellow of the Royal Society. Having employed five years in the composition and correction of his travels, he at length, in 1731, brought out the first edition, which was attacked by Dr. Pococke in his Description of the East. The numerous coins, busts, and other antiquities which he had collected in his travels he bestowed upon the university. Upon the death of Dr. Felton in 1740, he was nominated by his college principal of St. Edmund Hall, which he raised from a ruinous state by his munificence. He was at the same time presented to the vicarage of Bramley, in Hampshire, and likewise enjoyed during the remainder of his life the honour of being regius professor of Greek at Oxford. He died in 1751, in

the sixtieth year of his age, and was buried at Bramley, where a monument was erected to his memory by his widow. The Shawia in botany received its name in honour of Dr. Shaw.

FREDERIC HASSELQUIST.

Born 1722.-Died 1752,

HASSELQUIST was born on the 3d of January, 1722, at Isernvall, in Eastern Gothland, in Sweden. His father, Andrew Hasselquist, who was the clergyman of the place, died in great poverty while our traveller was yet a youth; and to add still further to his misfortune, his mother likewise was shortly afterward so extremely debilitated both in mind and body as to be compelled to take refuge in the infirmary of Vastona. Hasselquist would therefore in all probability have been condemned to a life of obscurity and poverty had not M. Pontin, his maternal uncle, undertaken the care of his education, and sent him with his own children to the college of Linköping. But all the friends of Hasselquist seemed destined to be short-lived. Not long after his entrance at college the loss of this kind benefactor reduced him to the necessity of teaching for a livelihood until he should be of the proper age to enter into the university.

In 1741 he entered a student at the university of Upsal; but poverty, which when not overwhelming acts as a spur to genius, was still his faithful companion, and compelled him for a subsistence to exercise his talents in the way of all others best calculated to give them amplitude and vigour. He became a tutor. At the same time, however, he enjoyed the advantage of attending the lectures of the various professors; and the knowledge thus acquired