public meeting, held at Armagh, Dec. 27, 1808, that there was no absolute want of flax seed, at that moment, though apprehensions were entertained. Nevertheless, the majority of the meeting was clearly against any public remonstrance on the subject: and after discussion, agreed to wait the event. HEMP is likely to be supplied in abundance in a short time from Ireland, as well as from Canada, where thousands of acres are now allotted to its cultivation. We have elsewhere [compare Panorama, Vol. III. p. 905.] given an account of the nature and properties of the sunn, or EastIndian hemp and it is thought that our dependance on Russia for this article has nearly, if not completely, reached its termination. The very high price, which hemp bears at this moment, operates as a powerful inducement to our national agriculturists. There is no question on the capability of our country to supply any quantities of the very best kind of hemp. The following is part of a public report. "The ulture of hemp is rapidly extending in Canada, and there is much reason to hope, that in a few years we shall, through this medium, be rendered independent of the foreign markets. Several hundred tons were grown during the last year in the neighbourhood of Montreal, Camden, Howard on the Thames, and other parts of Upper Canada; and we hear with great pleasure, that upwards of twenty looms and rope walks were established during that period. The ordinary produce of clean and dressed hemp of the first quality is from 6 to 7 cwt. per acre," The operation of converting British IRON into steel, has been so greatly improved, under the encouragement derived from patents, some of which are of late date, that we have little, very little call for foreign iron. A few of the best articles indeed, in the making of which habit has confirmed the workmen in the use of foreign bar iron, still continue to demand that kind by which they obtained their reputation. We cannot blame this attention; but, we learn from the testimony of practical men, that the ordinary ironmongery never exhibited such good iron as of late; and that for general purposes a decided preference is given to British. Another step in the career of improvement may produce British bar iron superior to the Russian. One word more on this subject: We remember the | : Armed Neutrality, and the heart-burnings it caused. That was the first occasion on which our enlightened iron-masters endea voured to improve their commodity effec tually the trade in Russian iron has been diminishing ever since it is likely that during the present non-intercourse with that country,our improvements may be perfected, and then-when Russia may be disposed again to supply us, the commodity may be in demand, anywhere but in Britain. TIMBER is unquestionably an Article of great importance: and one which our own island does not produce in sufficient quantity to meet the demand. In fact, the demand arises from so many different quarters, each increasing, that we scarcely can discern any termination of it. A vast mass of foreign timber is employed in building; and while the outskirts of the metropolis are spreading in all directions, the houses being built mostly with foreign timber, the demand is not likely to diminish. We understand, that in the New Town Edinburgh, and its adjacencies, including miles of streets, not a timber employed is of home growth. For this article, then, we must turn our attention abroad. Canada has supplied nearly 50,000 loads of timber in the last year: we may presume it is equal in quality to what we were accustomed to receive from America. Immense quantities may be obtained from Brazil. Perhaps to seek it still further distant, might not be warrantable, the expence of freight considered. Happily, immense plantations have been made in Britain within a few years, lately passed; so that we may look forward to a more plentiful supply of this article, of our own production. The following statement shews that we have not been inattentive in our distant possessions to the introduction of woods of the finer kinds. "The cultivation of MAHOGANY in India has been attended with great success. Two plants (the first known in India) were sent out by the Court of Directors to the Botanic Garden at Calcutta ; from these two, upwards of a thousand plants have been reared, and they succeed so well, as to promise in a few years to be a valuable acquisition to the country.-The two original trees were last year nearly four feet in circumference, and several of the others two or three feet." TAR is made from the roots of trees, as the timber beats too high a price, and is We conclude, by observing that, on the whole, we have been so progressively excluded from the Continent, and so gradually deprived of the benefits derived from foreign productions, that, we have had. time to turn our attention to substitutes from other parts of the world; or to accustom ourselves to dispense entirely with the use of them. Had ALL our imports been withheld from us in an instant, and our commerce suspended at a stroke, as that of America has been, by an embargo, we do not presume to think that the consequences might not have been serious. But we hope, that after having weathered the storm so far, and being staunch and tight, as yet, we shall continue to perform our voyage, and shall in due time bring the good ship, the Commerce of Britain, safely, if not triumphantly into the de sired haven. capable of application to superior purposes. f will greatiy exceed the Gold Coast in the Hitherto, it has not been regarded among value of its productions. us, because it could be obtained cheaper from foreign countries. But there is no reason in nature why tar should not be procured from the roots of trees in Britain. There are in North Britain many thousands of acres, that have yielded firs, the stumps and roots of which might furnish tar. Tar has long been rising in price; and it will continue to rise, because it had already become scarce, even in Norway, so great has been the consumption of the woods. Moreover the trees around the inhabited parts being cut down, the boors have further to travel to their labours; of course, the carriage of the tar, when made, augments the price, It is remarkable, that tar has even been imported into Bergen itself, from Archangel; as may be seen by the list of imports into the former city: a speculation that would have astonished former ages!-We ought to add, that the same countries to which we look for timber, Canada and Brazil, may be supposed also to furnish other productions of the woods, pitch, tar, and turpentine, when the market for them in Britain shall have become steady. These considerations are independent of any resource to be found in the coal tar, which possesses some valuable properties. Our consumption of TALLOW has long exceeded our supply; the most immediate substitute at the present moment is oil; and vast quantities of oil have been burnt during the present winter, in parts of our island, where formerly they knew not how to light a lamp. This may not be any great injury in the end. At present the high price of tallow is felt in domestic arrangements, and more severely in manufactories, and other establishments, where great quantities are consumed. It is understood that our own tallow requires foreign to be mixed with it, to lower its hardness, to a proper consistence. Brazil, and South America will certainly supply tallow, in process of time. Hides, which are furnished from the same places as tallow, have long been brought in great quantities to the London markets; and there can be no doubt, but after the traders abroad get into the habit of it, they may easily send us supplies of this article adequate to our consumption. COTTON and RICE have lately been imported from Sierra Leone; and this part of Africa, if properly encouraged, ABSTRACT OF COTTON, From 1 East-Indies....Bags 14,362 14,977 ..5,627 Brazils and Portugal 15,703 1807. 11,262 20,330 3.317 2,978 1,522 Africa........270 Total.. Bags 53,631 Total.. Bags 39,769 Anthropologia: or Dissertations on the Form and Colour of Man; with incidental Remarks. By T. Jarrold, M.D. Member of the Literary and Philosophical Society, Manchester. 4to. pp. 261. Price £110 London: Cadell and Davies, 1808. το γαρ και γενος εσμέν, For we HIS offspring are;" was the sublime language of Aratus, the Cicilian poet; and of Cleanthes, in his " hymn to Jupiter, "deriving man from the divinity, himself. The expression has been consecrated by St. Paul, who adopted it when pleading before the tribunal of the Areopagites, and boldly avowed, that the deity "had made of one blood all nations of men, wherever dispersed on all the face of the earth." It is true, that the same Sovereign Power has distributed the various branches of the immense family of man, according to his pleasure:-the times and tides fore-allotted to each, in its order; the boundaries of the different habitations, which each was destined to Occupy. Does it follow, because these branches have widely diverged from each other, that any of them is forgotten by that Parent from whom all derived their being? or that he has left himself without a witness, a witness capable of appealing with the most direct influence to their hearts and understandings, through their very senses, and appetites? Most certainly not: for Εν αυτως γαρ ζωμεν, και κινέμεθα, και εσμεν. In n HIM we live, are moved, and exist. Wherever exists a man, capable of exercising rational powers (without which he is no man) there is an evidence-not of a capricious forsaking of his creatures, by the Deity; but, of the steady and uninterrupted support, which Divine goodness bestows on the sons of Adam. Nevertheless, it seems, that some of the ingenious members of this great family, in the most favoured parts of it, cannot rest satisfied till they have degraded their own nature to the level of the brute; or have raised the nature of the brute to an equality with their own. So natural are the principles of discontent, cavil, disorder, destruction of the scale of existence, to the heart of man! We would not be understood as discouraging the speculations of the well-informed, nor as cramping the exertions of reflection and thought. On the contrary, we admire them, when tended to be answered by them is honour well directed; and, when the purpose inable, we never, knowingly, deprive them of that commendation; though we acknowledge a something not absolutely unallied to the feelings of indignation or of contempt, when we are reduced to the necessity of asking the cui bono?what is the advantage of such tracts on such subjects?-and the answer is a mere blank. If the brutes were our superiors in virtue, the result of understanding and knowledge called into activity, we might be tempted to desire promotion to a more correct resemblance of them; if they were more happy than humanity might be, that envy of which they were the subjects, could scarcely be denied the character of tolerable if not of laudable. But, the usual cause of discontent is,. a narrow and confined acquaintance with things. Man has not the speed of some animals, as of the horse, though Achilles was swifter of foot than a wild roe;he has not the strength of the bull, whatever credulity attributes to the exploits of Milo of Crotona; he has no claws for defence, retractile, as those of the lion; he has no venom like the serpent, which insures the instant death of his antagonist. But he has speed enough for every desirable and honest purpose: he has strength enough, if it be well engaged and if he be destitute of the means of spreading slaughter and mortality around him, that very destitution is in perfect coincidence with his original character as the benevolent superior of the creation. Man, moreover, possesses as great a proportion of each separate quality, as is consistent with the welfare of the whole in combination. To augment the proportion of either, would be detrimental to the general mass. Nevertheless, his essential distinction is a something superadded to whatever excellence, the animals around him can display. If any wish to draw a line that shall effectually distinguish man from brute, let them examine his mental faculties without prejudice; and select their instances without partiality; a conduct, which, we are sorry to say, is rare, We deny not that brutes have memory, for instance, and that a certain degree of sentiment is combined with the attachmen of some of them towards their immediate that the interval between the two subjects benefactors: but this very memory fails is too distant to be measured by any dethem in the relations of consanguinity, grees comprised in that scale. He takes where we should expect to find it most. an extensive view of the system connected powerful. It never goes beyond the im- with his subject, and considers the gradamediate individual. No animal regards tion from a mineral to a vegetable, and its father: nor its mother, for any consi- from a supposed vegetable to an animal. derable length of time: and its grand- He proves that the human race is of one father or grandmother, never. No animal species and appeals to the parts of the looks backward, to its origin, at one human figure to substantiate his sentiment. remove; nor forward to the issue of its He examines the bones of the members, posterity. All its cares center in its im- trunk, and head separately; the countemediate progeny: but it erects no dwell- nance and its features, the hair, the colour ing, for distant descendants, nor plants oaks of the skin, and whatever else can be for the benefit of children's children. deemed allied to the purpose of his inWhat is presented to it, it enjoys: but the quiry." intentional cultivator is man. An animal can take advantage of a fire, already kindled; but can neither kindle a fire, nor continue it, by the addition of fuel. It can form no estimate of what it does not behold, nor communicate information that shall benefit distant generations. It acknowledges no superior but brutal strength wisdom, or benevolence, it never contemplates, and never resembles. It therefore knows no divinity, and performs no worship: yet this power is the mark of rationality; as the exertion of it is the glory of an intelligent being. Since, then, we consider the rational and intellectual powers of man, as the true distinction of his nature, we are little affected by the question, whether his figure be matchless among animals? We believe it is: we feel its superior beauty: we acknowledge in it a grace, a finishing, which has no equal, and which need fear no rival. But, had the human frame been allied in form to that of the ox or the sheep, still possessing a mental and spiritual resident, we should have thought it entitled to a clear superiority of rank; which would have reduced the question of its configuration to little importance. Dr. Jarrold is desirous of proving that the bodily frame of man differs from that of all animals, though some may closely resemble it; and that nature has established a decided distinction between that race of men, which the vanity of superior civilization affects to class as the lowest, and that race of anthropomorphous animals, which the lucubrations of science insist on considering as the highest. He denies that the principle of gradation applies to man and brute; and insists, We cannot praise the style of his volume for its fascination, or, indeed, for. its correctness and his arrangement is far from being the best that ingenuity might have devised. The general reader will recollect some facts to which the Dr. has not adverted; and some to which he alludes, though too slightly, at the close of his work, might, with greater propriety, have been introduced much earlier, and treated with greater attention. We shall explain ourselves, by instancing the fact, that the descendants of the Portuguese settlers in Africa, are now as thoroughly black as the negroes themselves. It would have been perfectly agreeable to the Doctor's subject, and course of reasoning, if he had acquired some information on the length of time in which this change in their appearance was effected. We believe that the remark may be traced for more than a century, andconsequently, that century is not to be included in the time necessary to produce this new coloration. The conduct pursued by those settlers, whether they married wholly among themselves, or, occasionally mixed with the natives, and, could they be obtained, observations on the progress and gradually encreasing intensity of their complexions, the alterations thereby produced in the health of the subjects, and the change of diseases which accompanied the change of colour, would have been very interesting and instructive. should have been glad, too, if, as Dr. J. procured the mensuration of the heights, limbs, &c. of a number of negroes, some of these African-Portuguese could have been submitted to the same accuracy. We might then have determined, whether the.. conformation and proportion of the bones, We |