This bird was not sacred among the ancient Egyptians, but there is reason to believe that it was so with the Assyrians. It has not only been found as an ornament on the robes of figures in the most ancient edifices at Nimroud, but it was frequently introduced on Babylonian and Assyrian cylinders, always accompanied by the emblematic flower. The Romans appear to have regarded it as a delicacy, for Apicius left a receipt for a particular sauce for dressing it; and it is recorded of Heliogabalus, that he had the brains of six hundred of these birds served up as a dish at one of his feasts. But in trencher feasts the pseudo-Emperor Formius far outdid either, as it is related by Vopiscus that he devoured an ostrich to his own share at a single sitting.

It was broadly asserted by Aristotle, that the ostrich was partly bird and partly quadruped; and by Pliny, that it might almost be said to belong to the class of beasts. Ridiculous as such assertions might be supposed, they were not altogether without foundation according to the knowledge of the times. The common name by which the ostrich was designated by the Greeks and Romans, and also by the nations of the East, was the camel bird. Indeed, the total want of feathers on its long and very powerful legs, and the division of the feet into two toes only, connected at their base by a membrane, are very similar to the legs, and long divided hoof of the camel; nor does the resemblance cease here, for there is another singularity in their external conformation, which affords a still more remarkable coincidence. Both camel and ostrich are furnished with hard, callous protuberances on the chest, and on the posterior part of the abdomen, on which they support themselves when at rest; and they both lie down in the same manner, by first bending their knees, then applying the anterior callosity, and lastly the posterior, to the ground. When to this we add the patience of thirst of both, and their inhabiting the same arid deserts, the two may well be compared with each other.

The ostrich is altogether destitute of the power of flight, and accordingly the wings are reduced to a very low state of development, merely sufficient, in fact, to aid it when running at speed. The sharp keel of the breastbone, which, in birds of rapid flight, affords an extensive surface for the attachment of the muscles moving the wings, is not required, and the surface of the bone is therefore flat, like that of a quadruped, but the muscles of the legs are of extraordinary magnitude.

SAGACITY OF THE ELEPHANT. In the island of Ceylon, the value of elephants to perform heavy labour can scarcely be estimated. A late traveller saw a troop of them at work near Colombo, in the commissariat timber-yard, or civil engineer's department, in removing or stowing logs and planks, or rolling about heavy masses of stone for building purposes. "I could not," says he, "but admire the precision with which they performed their allotted task. They were one morning hard at work, though slowly, piling up a quantity of heavy pieces of ebony. The lower row of the pile had been already laid down, with mathematical precision, six logs side by side. These they had first rolled in from the adjoining wharf; and when I rode up, they were engaged in bringing forward the next six for the second row in the pile. It was curious to observe these uncouth animals seize one of the heavy logs at each end, and by means of their trunks lift it up on logs already placed, and then arrange it crosswise upon them with the most perfect skill. I waited whilst they thus placed the third row, feeling a curiosity to know how they would proceed when the timber had to be lifted to a greater height. Some of the logs weighed nearly twenty hundred weight. There was a short pause before the fourth was touched; but the difficulty was overcome. The sagacious animals selected two straight pieces of timber, placed one end of each on the ground, with the other resting upon the pile, so as to form a sliding way for the next logs; and having seen that they were perfectly steady and in a straight line, the four-legged labourers rolled up the slope they had just formed, the six pieces of ebony for the fourth layer on the pile. Not the least amusing part of the performance was the careful survey of the pile made by one of the elephants, after placing each log, to ascertain if it were placed perfectly square with the rest. The sagacity of these creatures in detecting weaknesses in the jungle bridges thrown across some of the streams of Ceylon, is not less remarkable. I have been assured that, when carrying a load, they invariably press one of their fore-feet upon the earth covering of the bridge to try its strength; if that feels too weak to carry them across, they will refuse to proceed until lightened of their load. On one such occasion, a driver persisted in compelling his elephant to cross a bridge against the evident wish of the animal; and, as was expected by his comrades, the rotten structure gave way, elephant and rider were precipitated into the river, and the latter was drowned."

WICKLIFFE.

WICKLIFFE was one of the most remarkable of men. England has scarcely produced a bolder man, or a greater reformer. He seems to have been born for a time of confused elements. He was full of fire and zeal, of faith and good works, of learning and sanctified eloquence. This divine child did not appear to know what fear was, when kings and the great ones of the world trembled before the power of Rome. Because of his great talents, and the full weight of his unrivalled reputation against the corruptions of the Church of Rome, he has been rightly styled the morning star of the Reformation.

Born in 1324, he was upwards of fifty when the rival Popes, Urban and Clement, were waging a war of anathemas, abuse, and excommunications against each other. For about twenty years he had been known for his withering attacks on the mendicant orders; but now he is prepared to improve a larger field. He attacks, with a fearless hand, the conduct of these contending rivals, who, assuming to stand in the place of Jesus Christ, are yet willing to convulse the church and the kingdoms of the world by wars to attain their own self-aggrandizement. He accuses them of copying the spirit of the great deceiver, rather than that of the good Shepherd, who gave his life for the sheep, instead of sacrificing theirs for his ambitious ends.

In 1365 it was the decision of the English Parliament to resist the demand of Pope Urban, that the old annual payment of 3,000l., which had ceased to be paid for thirty-three years, should be paid, and all arrearages for that time. It was not the money alone which the English denied, but the principle, the Papal supremacy, which they resisted. This stand by the King and Parliament of England was followed by a declaration, on the part of Rome, that the sovereignty of England was forfeited by this act of withholding the demanded tribute. A monk came into the field, and wrote in justification of these Papal usurpations, and called upon Wickliffe to prove the fallacy of such opinions. He took up the glove, and, entering the arena, did his battling in a masterly manner. Nor did he come off without a large revenue of hatred for his victory.

About this time the great reformer was assailed by sickness. At Oxford he was

confined to his bed a short season, during which reports were circulated that his dissolution was approaching. This was a matter of great joy to his Popish adversaries. They, supposing that the bow of the mighty might be broken before the approach of the pale king, delegated a doctor from each of the mendicant orders to attend and wait upon him, in company with some of the civil authorities of the city. As usual, they assumed the robe of deception; they expressed sympathy, and hoped that he would recover. They suggested the wrongs which the begging order had suffered from his sermons, other writings, and his open attack. They desired that he would not conceal his penitency, but recall his sayings against them. He was raised up in his bed by his command, and thundered in their ears, "I shall not die, but live, and shall again declare the evil deeds of the friars." The conference was here hastily broken off, and the discomfited friars hastened from the room to find his prediction accomplished.

The English reformer had excited the deepest hatred among the votaries of Papacy, by his work on the schism of the Popes; but this was a small blow, compared with his greatest work, the translation of the Scriptures from the Latin into the English tongue, a work which cost him the labour of years. In this one work we recognize one of the greatest benefactions which has ever been conferred upon man -he may read the Bible in his vernacular tongue. At last, by this man's toils, the book of God, brought out of its seclusion, in the closets of the learned, and a dead language, has found its proper home, the hearth of every family circle-that of the poorest cottager as well as that of the richest prince.

On the 13th of December, 1384, Wickliffe laid himself down in the embrace of death. Through the kindness of a protecting Providence, though he heard the waves of hatred and persecution surge and beat at a distance, he finally died in peace. Well might it have been thus, for he had not gone out to battle with the giant in his own strength, and had returned, having "fought a good fight." No small work had he done for the Christianity of the Brit h Isles by opening the exhaustless wealth of such a mine as the Scriptures.

After the bones of Wickliffe had slept near a half of a century, they were violated.

A great council of the Romish Churchwith many of the magnates of the earth assembled-arraigned the genius, and the bones, and the writings of the reformer, and formally condemned them. Martin V, caused the sentence then pronounced against his sleeping members to be executed. They sent to the sacred burialplace of Lutterworth, dug up the reformer's bones, burnt them with fire, took the ashes up, and, carrying them to a swift brook, cast them into the water. This one act causes yet the cheek of the honest Briton to crimson, and the brow of the Catholic to wear confusion. Though many waves of years have rolled over it, the lines of this inhuman deed are not yet obliterated, nor can they be while Time lives.

THE HUMAN HAIR.

The hair, anatomically considered, is composed of three parts: the follicle, or tubular depression in the skin into which the hair is inserted; the bulb, or root of the hair; and the stalk, or corticle, partly filled with pigment. A single hair, with its follicle, might be roughly likened to a hyacinth growing from a glass-with this difference, that the hair is supplied with nutriment exclusively from below. The bulb, which rests upon the reticulated bed of capillary vessels of the cutis and subcu taneous tissue, draws its pigment cells or colouring matter directly from the blood; in like manner, the horny sheath is secreted directly from the capillaries; so that, unlike the hyacinth plant, it grows at its root instead of at its free extremity. A hair is not, as it appears, a smooth, cylindrical tube like a quill; on the contrary, it is made of a vast number of little horny laminæ. Or our reader might realise its structure to herself by placing a number of thimbles one within the other; and as she adds to this column by supplying fresh thimbles below, she will get a good notion of the manner in which each hair grows, and will see that its oldest portion must be its free extremity.

The pigment cells have been scrutinised by Liebig, who finds a considerable difference in their constitution according to their colour. His results may be thus tabularised:

hair owes its jetty aspect to an excess of carbon, and a deficiency of sulphur and oxygen. Vauquelin traces an oxide of iron in the latter, and also in red hair. The colouring matter, however, forms but one portion of the difference existing between the soft, luxuriant tangles of the Saxon girl and the coarse, blue-black locks of the North American squaw. The size and quality of each hair, and the manner in which it is planted, tell powerfully in determining the line between the two races.

Another eminent German has undergone the enormous labour of counting the number of hairs in heads of four different colours. In a blonde one he found 140,400 hairs; in a brown, 109,440; in a black, 102,962; and in a red one, 88,740. What the red and black heads wanted in number of hairs, was made up, however, in the greater bulk of the hairs individually; and, in all probability, the scalps were pretty equal in weight. It is to the fineness and multiplicity of hairs that blonde tresses owe the rich and silk-like character of their flow, a circumstance which artists have so loved to dwell upon.

Hair, the universal vanity, has of course been seized upon universally by quacks— it has proved to them indeed the true Golden Fleece. Science, as though such a subject were beneath its attention, has left the care of the most beautiful ornament of the body in the hands of the grossest charlatans. M. Cazenave is the only scientific person who has ever treated at any length of the hair, or has shown, by the light of physiology, what art is capable of doing, and what it is powerless to do, in cases of disease and baldness. Those who understand how the hair is nourished, cannot but smile at the monstrous gullibility of the public in putting such faith in the puffs and extracts of the hair reviewers. Really, the old joke of the power of a certain preparation to restore the bald places in hair-trunks and worn-out boas has become a popular working belief. There is one fact which every one should know, and which would be sufficient to rout at once all the trash with which people load their heads. The blood is the only Macassar of the hair, the only oil which can with truth be said to "insinuate its balsamic properties into the pores of the head," &c. Oils and pomades may for a time moisten and clog the hair, but over its growth or nourishment they are absolutely powerless. The fine net-work of vessels on which the bulbs of the hair rest is alone capable of maintaining its healthy existence. To a sluggishness in the capillary circulation, baldness is mainly due; when this sluggishness is the result of a general failure of the

system, consequent upon age, as we have said before, no art will avail-the inevitable Dalilah proceeds unchallenged with her noiseless shears. When, on the contrary, baldness proceeds from any temporary cause when the bulb still remains intact -slight friction with a rough towel or a brush, aided by some gently irritating pomade, is the only course to be pursued. Dupuytren, who made baldness the subject of a chapter in his great work on "Skin Diseases," gives the following recipe, which seems to us calculated to produce the desired result--to promote capillary circu lation, and a consequent secretion of the materials of hair growth:

B. Purified beef marrow
Acetate of lead

Peruvian balsam

Alcohol

3 viij. 3j.

3 iij.

3j.

Tincture of cantharides,
cloves, and canella...... aa MXV.
Mix.
Quarterly Review.

THE SURE TITLE.

FATHER FLYNN had been lecturing us on the greatness and power of the Church, and commanding us to leave the care of our souls entirely to the clergy, and to be satisfied that what they told us, and nothing else, was right. There was a bold fellow present, one Phil Ryan, a decent farmer, with some small holdings in a place near us. When they were dismissed, all but myself and two or three more that were in the priest's confidence, Phil came back, and making his best bow, said:

"Plase your reverence, I just forgot how I want to lodge a complaint against Mike Conner; he is contrary, and scrupulous, and suspicious.”

"Well, be short, man; it's little I'm likely to do in settling your differences; but I always held Mike to be a decenter fellow nor yourself," says Father Flynn.

"Well, then," says Phil, "to make short of it, yer honour, I want Mike to rint of me a snug cabin, and a matter of two acres of good land, on a lease."

"Well?"

"Mike is unreasonable, yer reverence, all out; he wants to see my title, to be sure it's good, and to examine all about the little property, which I take very unkind at his hand, seeing he has my word for it all."

"Why, man alive!" says the priest, who had a liking to Mike, "what's got into your head now? Do you suppose any but a natural would take your bare word in a matter where himself, his interest, and his comfort are all concerned? Go, give him the satisfaction he wants, and don't be set

ting yourself up in the place of law, justice, lease, and all." "Plase your

But Phil did not move. reverence," says he, "I have the head landlord's authority to say that he executed the lease, putting me in possession of these premises, to let as I like; and why should any man stand doubting me for want of proofs?"

"Get along, sir," says Father Flynn to him again. "Produce your lease, show him the title, satisfy the honest man's mind that his own will be good, or else he's a fool if he has anything to say to you or your holding: it's what every tenant has a right to," says he again to us; "and ye know that, boys, very well."

But what a change came over Phil! He stood as bold as a lion, and as brisk-looking as a kid; and never moving his eyes from the priest's face, that grew all scarlet and blue as he spoke, he said, "Why, then, your reverence, will you please to show me your title to grant me an entrance into the kingdom of heaven; and satisfy me that if I take it at your hands, I am safe in possession, let who may object to it?"

The priest was like one mad. He made as if he would close in upon him to chastise him; but Phil was a powerful fellow, and not to be trifled with. He stood on his guard firmly, but not disrespectfully, and

so went on:

"It's but a cabin, sir, and a patch of ground, and the longest possession a man can have of it is but a few years. But in case he don't get it, there's scores of places just as good to the fore; or if he's turned out, he needn't want a shelter to go to. But the place that we're depending on your reverence to engage for us when we leave this world-"

Here the priest interrupted him with a worse word than I wish to write down; and turning to us, he said:

"Boys, will you see your priest insulted by a swaddling apostate, that's sold himself to the devil and the Bible-men for a few coin? My curse on ye if ye don't stop his blasphemous mouth, and drive him out!"

are coming upon its stage to take part in its dramatic scenes.

He

It required the sagacity of a Napoleon Bonaparte to discover in the Jewish character and mind the traces of the immortal worthies that were their ancestors, and turn them to account in his vast plans for the regeneration of European society. threw wide open to them the door to greatness. They as fearlessly entered; and there appear now on the pages of European history a Soult, an Imperial Marshal of France; Massena, and a score of others, generals and leaders, that contributed, by their geniuses, to infuse into modern civilization its present elements of progress and reform. The example being set, and the Rubicon once passed, the Israelite took up his line of march towards the thrones of kings and emperors. A Lithuanian Jew becomes the chief confidential counsellor of the Autocrat of Russia; a Jew of Aragon becomes Prime Minister of Spain; another, the Minister of Finance of Prussia; another, the Minister of Finance in France; another, a Premier of Austria, in whose presence ambassadors have quailed, and foreign cabinets felt that he was their master; another becomes the distinguished leader of the English House of Commons, and looks steadfastly toward the premiership; and others are knocking at the doors of the British Parliament for admission, and admission they will sooner or later have. What does all this mean? That European society is, in a great measure, in the plastic hands of the children of Israel, who are moulding it to their own taste. Look again. Read over the names of the leaders in the late revolutionary movements in Europe, and you will be astonished at the number of Jewish names. Then visit the individuals to whom these names belong, and you will find them wearing the physiognomy of Judah and his brethren. Ah! yes, they are Israelites! A large majority of the Democratic Societies had Jews for their leaders and chief speakers. They have for some time wielded the greatest lever of power of the nationsmoney. They rule the exchange in the greater part of Europe. The very existence of governments has sometimes seemed suspended on the nod of acquiescence of the son of Israel. Having no home, and no permanent interests where they sojourn, and not being able to incorporate themselves with the nations, they have no interest in them, but bend their efforts to achieve for themselves supremacy. When that supremacy can be achieved by sustaining a reigning sovereign, then they battle for his crown; this accounts for the fact that the son of a Jewess was "the

Y

butcher" of Hungary. When it is for their interest to dethrone a sovereign, they as readily head revolutionary armies and governments. It is said, upon reliable evidence, that Kossuth himself, when a young child, was taken to a Jewish rabbi for his blessing; which act could not be explained, except upon the ground that his mother, although a Christian by profession, was yet at heart a Jewess. But the children of Israel have crossed the ocean, and even in our midst, by the force of their own minds, are pushing their way to power and positions of influence. Among the lists of senators and representatives, judges and counsellors, there is an ominous sprinkling of Jewish names. Here then is the twilight that precedes the dawn of morning.

The European Continental press is mainly in Jewish hands; every department of periodical literature swarms with Jewish labourers. The newspaper press is under their control, and the correspondence is mainly conducted by them. Taking a step higher, there we find them again. We ask for knowledge of the mysteries of the starry heavens, and the children of Israel become our instructors. The Herschels and the Aragos are leaders of that lofty band of celestial travellers that journey among the stars. We cry for light upon the mysteries of revelation, and the children of Israel open the pearly gates of day, and light flows around us. Jahn, Hengstenberg, Tholuck, Krummacher, and a host of others, furnish us with biblical criticisms, didactic theology, and general sacred literature. We ask for a key to unlock the dialect of Moses and the prophets, and a Hebrew takes one from his drawer. nius gives us our Lexicon, and Nordheimer our Grammar. We would have the dark chasm in early Church History filled up, and a bridge thrown across it, in order that we may pass safely from inspired to uninspired history; the children of Israel furnish the materials and cover the chasm. Neander furnishes us with our incomparable Christian Church History, and Da Costa with a History of the Jews. What need I add more? These facts show that the Hebrew intellect is exerting a powerful influence upon the secular and sacred literature of the age.

Gese

The children of Israel are on the eve of a mighty movement. There is on their part a singular preparedness for some great change. They are in a transition state,now being schooled in every nation on the face of the earth, and in every branch of practical and profound learning. Whether it be in financial ability and tact, or in the higher walks of learning, or in military prowess, or in political or diplomatic skill,