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rods are laid across them, and firmly hooked down. In a word, wherever seeds are sown, the surface of the downs, as far as the sowing extends, may be said to be carefully thatched; branches of evergreen trees being used instead of straw. In six weeks, or two months, the broom seeds have produced plants 6 in. in height, and which attain three or four times that height in the course of the first season. The pines do not rise above 3 in. or 4 in. the first year; and it is seven or eight years before they completely overtop the broom, which often attains, in these downs, from 12 ft. to 15 ft. in height. At the age of ten or twelve years, the pines have, in a great measure, suffocated the broom, and they are then thinned, the branches cut off being used for the purpose of thatching downs not yet recovered, and the trunks and roots cut into pieces and burned, to make tar and charcoal. In about twenty years, the trees are from 20 ft. to 30 ft. in height; and they are now prepared for producing resin, which process is carried on, in the manner hereafter described, for ten or twelve years; when the trees are cut down, and their branches applied as before, for thatching, and their trunks and roots for making tar and charcoal; the self-sown seeds having furnished the surface with a progeny to succeed them. In 1811, a commission appointed by the French government made a report on the downs, and announced that about 12,500 acres of downs had been covered with thriving plantations, and that it was found a thatching or covering of any kind of vegetable herbage, such as straw, rushes, seeds, sea-weed, &c. might be used instead of branches, and was even preferable. Another improvement which had been tried, and found very successful, was the substitution of a fence of boards for that of wattled hurdles, as more completely excluding the wind (See Dict. des Eaux et Forêts,' tom. i. p. 816.) These plantations, and others in the Landes of Bordeaux, and between that city and Bayonne, which are there called pignadas, constitute the principal riches of the inhabitants, who are almost entirely supported by the preparation of resin and tar from the pinaster forests.

"PROPERTIES AND USES.-Though the wood of the pinaster is soft, and not of long duration, it is employed, in the marine arsenal at Toulon, for the outer cases of all the packages which are put on board vessels, and principally for the piles and props which are used for sustaining the frames of vessels while they are being constructed. In Bordeaux and in Provence, it is employed for the common kinds of carpentry, for packing-boxes, and for fuel; but the most valuable purposes to which the tree is applied in these countries is the production of resin, tar, and lampblack."

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The pictorial illustrations contained in the work are of two kinds-first, portraits of trees of ten or twelve years growth, taken from specimens growing in 1834, 1835, and 1836, within ten miles of London, all drawn to the same scale of one inch to four feet; and secondly, of full-grown trees, also all drawn to one scale, viz. one inch to twelve feet, and for the most part growing within the same distance of London. This is attended with the advantage that by a simple reference to an example of any one of the trees, it may be seen at a glance (bearing the scale in mind) what amount of growth may be expected from any given tree within a given period. In the literary department the author has had the assistance of several distinguished names, and both from the combination of talent displayed, literary, scientific, and pictorial, and the great, pains-taking industry it must necessarily have demanded, the work is one which deserves and is eminently calculated to command an extensive, and, we hope, to Mr Loudon, a profitable sale.

E.

COLLEGE LIFE AT CAMBRIDGE.

ART. VII.-1. A Discourse on the Studies of Cambridge University. (Fourth edition.) By A. Sedgwick, M.A. &c. Parker.

2. Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge. By G. Peacock, D.D. &c. (Dean of Ely). Parker. 3. The University Calendar. Parker.

EVERY year there issues from the warehouse of Messrs Deighton, the publishers to the University of Cambridge, an octavo volume, bound in white canvass, and of a very periodical and business-like appearance. Among the undergraduates it is commonly known by the name of the Freshman's Bible' the public usually ask for the University Calendar.' Much of its contents would, to the last-mentioned public, appear to a great degree esoteric and mysterious. They will not easily comprehend, for example, why the first degree which the student takes should be obtained by learning, and every other by grimace, and will be much at a loss to discover why a master of arts, a man generally bordering on thirty, and who has in all probability taken his standing in society, should be necessitated to march behind the beadle into the Senate House, perform a series

of evolutions there before the vice-chancellor's chair, with his right hand in that of some rusty doctor, the father (as they call him) of his college-should then take an oath that he, the said M.A., will not steal the books out of the library nor the pictures out of the Fitzwilliam Museum,* after which "one of the beadles precedes the candidates round the chair, and in passing they bow to the vice-chancellor and proctors." All this the public may wonder at, and rest satisfied with the assurance that all these mummeries, of which they cannot divine the use, are "necessary to the well-being of the university;" that these things are not contrary to their reason, but only above it, the last of which is most unquestionably true. Or if they (the public) be recently arrived from China, they may conceive a great augmentation of dignity to both candidate, vice-chancellor, and proctors, when the first, making the tour of an oaken chair, bows mournfully to the second, and nods smilingly to the third, as the thing is generally done.

But the freshman, the youth in the first year of his noviciate, to whom the vice-chancellor is the greatest man in the worldthe fellows of his college the happiest, he fixes his eye on quite another page of the book in question. The lists of the wranglers of past years are his study; with them his mind is fired with noble rage-he knows by heart the names of the first six of each year since the commencement of the catalogue, nor is he much concerned by the reflection that by far the greater portion of even the first of these names is now consigned to utter oblivion. Why, notwithstanding, the study of mathematics should be deemed of greater importance than any other, is a question we will not now stop to discuss; we will now only attempt to carry the reader through some of the scenes of a college life, and we hasten to redeem our word.

We will suppose him admitted-if he is not, he has only to go to some master of arts of the college which he professes to enter, there to translate some five lines of Virgil and three of Homer, answer that Sicily is in the Mediterranean and Greece in the south of Europe, that is if he knows it-to pay fifteen pounds or thereabouts, to be forfeited if he is caught stealing the college plate, and the thing is done.

On a fine morning about the middle of October, behold our

Jurabis-quod in Bibliothecam publicam et museum Honoratassimi Domini Viaconitio Fitzwilliam admissus, jam coto tuo ita uteris ut quartiem in te est, nihil detrimenti capiat vel Bibleotheca vel Museum prædictum. A man would violate this oath by walking into the library without cleaning his shoes;-to suppose that those who would steal the books would care for the oath, is too absurd.

young aspirant at the door of the White Horse, Fetter Lane. He will be surrounded with ten or twelve more on the same errand, all laden with huge bales of luggage and with admonitions paternal and maternal, the one not to study too little, and the other not to study too much. The expression on their countenances is somewhat comical, something like what one would imagine to be that of an old Greek newly arrived in the Elysian fields, conscious of a new life of which they don't know whether to be glad or afraid, and scanning their comrades to see what they can make of them. In the midst of these will be a triton among the minnows-some old college stager-only one, because the freshmen go up some days before the rest-a man in a bear-skin coat with six pockets, and with all the ease which the consciousness of so much lumber room naturally gives one. Observe his air of importance as he jostles the new fry about in his way to and from his own luggage-how he has already secured the best place with the coat aforesaid-how proud he is of his privilege to speak familiarly to the coachman-with how knowing an air he takes his seat not a moment before the coach sets off. His next feat is to exhibit to his admiring fellow traveller the newest machinery for lighting cigars, not always easily understood; and having satisfied himself by a few puffs that the weed is fairly lighted, he takes it out of his mouth and observes, that "he had thought in the morning that it would rain like bricks, but that now he believes the clouds will turn out a failure;" expressions on the beauty and peculiarity of which he leaves his auditors to ruminate at their leisure. There is nothing more distinctive than a Cambridge man's slang, and it has its use too, for it serves to give a knowing air to many conversations which would be flat enough in all conscience without it. "Like bricks," is the commonest of their expressions, or used to be. There was an old landlady at Huntingdon who said she always charged Cambridge men twice as much as any one else. Then, "How do you know them?" asked somebody. "Oh, sir, they always tells us to get the beer like bricks."

But our freshman, after passing one fifty miles of the dullest country in England, is getting near to Cambridge, and his fear of meeting his tutor takes away from any pleasure he might have in the sight of its grey old towers. To his tutor he hurries accordingly, who is rejoiced to see him, though he has forgotten his name, and invites him to breakfast the next morning. And now begins that system which pervades, more or less, the whole of university discipline, destroying its vigour and corrupting its excellencies-we mean what is vulgarly known by the name of humbug. It seems as if some people imagined that

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