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 ἀλαλάζοντας πολλὰ, ΟΙ 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.

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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

sarv 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

was immediately digested, examined, and enlarged, to be transmitted in other lectures to his own humble pupils.

Physic and natural history, for which, according to Linnæus, he had an innate inclination, were his favourite studies. He had likewise, it is said, a taste and some talents for poetry. An enthusiastic devotion to the sciences, which, as the world goes, is often allowed to be, like virtue, its own reward, is sometimes advantageous, however, when it happens to be exhibited in the proper quarter. This was experienced by our traveller. His ardent passion for knowledge, which neither poverty nor a feeble constitution could subdue, at length, after a five years' struggle, attracted the attention of the university authorities, who in 1746 obtained him a pension from the king. And in the course of next year he proved, by his "Dissertation on the Virtues of Plants," that the progress he had made in the sciences amply justified the favour which had been shown him.

It was in the same year that he first conceived the idea of travelling in the East. Linnæus, in one of his botanical lectures, having enumerated the countries, the natural history of which was known, as well as those which were placed in the contrary predicament, happened to make mention of Palestine among the latter; for at that period it was as much a "terra incognita" to science as the most remote districts of India. He expressed his astonishment that theologians and commentators, whose business it is to understand the Scriptures, should have so long neglected the natural history of the Holy Land, by which so much light might be thrown upon them, the more particularly as many divines had made the botany of other countries their study. These remarks were not lost upon Hasselquist. He 'mmediately formed the design of repairing the neglect of former ages, and had no sooner taken

this resolution than he communicated his intentions to Linnæus. The latter, who seems to have regarded him with something approaching to paternal affection, experienced considerable astonishment at his design, and made use of many arguments to turn him from the prosecution of it; dwelt upon the length of the way, the difficulties, the dangers, the expenses, and, worst of all, his delicate state of health and consumptive habit. But who was ever deterred by arguments from the prosecution of a favourite scheme? Hasselquist's mind had already tried the strength of all these reasons, and found that, like the bands of flax round the limbs of Samson, they had no force when opposed to the efforts of the will. His health, he maintained, could be im proved only by travelling and change of climate,dangers he appears, like a true traveller, to have classed among imaginary obstacles; and as to the expense, why, rather than relinquish the idea he would travel on foot. In short, says Linnæus, it was clear that he was absolutely determined on travelling.

Hasselquist was not ignorant, however, that whether on foot or on horseback, moving from place to place is no easy matter without money. Not being one of that erratic race "who had no stomach but to fight," he reflected that beefsteaks and plum-pudding, or some solid equivalents, would be no less necessary in Palestine than in Sweden; and therefore made an essay of his genius for overcoming difficulties by encountering those which beset his first step. It would seem that in Sweden there are many persons of distinction in whom the indolence sometimes superinduced by the possession of wealth extinguishes a natural passion for travelling, who, pre vious to entering upon that path which leads from this world to the next, lay aside a small sum which they find too heavy to take with them, for the benefit of those adventurous souls who have but slight ac