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1814.]] Organic Remains found in Dorsetshire.

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twenty miles annually, and continued to trition, but the stones of which it is formproceed with unabating fury, being stopped neither by rivers nor mountains. No effectual means had been found to prevent their increase. The yellow bearded wheat alone withstand its ravages.

In your Magazine for January last is a copy of a letter addressed to Sir Joseph Banks, respecting some wonderful organic remains, found near the river Thames, such as the bones and teeth of the ele. phant, hippopotamus, deer, fresh water and marine shells, &c. I therefore take the liberty to send you an account of some organic remains that have been Lately discovered in the parish of Dewlish, in the county of Dorset, and its vicinity. There is a hill in the parish of Dewlish which was always supposed to He formed of chalk: only but last sum mer, about one hundred feet above the level of the foot of the hill, some sand was observed to be drawn out by a mouse; it was taken notice of, and General Mitchel sent workmen to seek for sand, and about five feet below the surface they discovered long pieces of wood, which appeared to be of the willow kind, but fell into small pieces on being touched; they also found two animals, as they sup posed, coiled up like a serpent, but which also fell to pieces when handled; what the workmen called hands are preserved, and are something petrified. I have one, and it appears like the upper jaw of an animal. The bars of the mouth are of a deeper colour and more petrified than the other parts, but no teeth visible, and the whole is a solid mass. I was not present when they discovered these remains, and they are now torn all into small pieces; so I cannot at present posi tively say whether it is animal or vegetable matter. The workmen told me that they also dug up a bone of an uncommon size, but many people came to see it, and it being rotten, was soon torn in pieces. I have some of the cellular part of the bone, but cannot say to what animal it belongs. The workmen were just come down to some more organized matter, when the snow came and prevented their further progress. A considerable quantity of matter is now tumbled into the pit, and has left visible the follow. ing stratas of matter. They all basset out, having only the green turf to cover them, dipping more than three feet per fathom into the hill. First chalk about three feet thick, white clay about two feet, sand about three feet, chalk two feet, gravel three feet: the gravel does not appear to have been ever rounded by at

ed are very smooth, particularly the large flints, which are very numerous. Then white clay about two feet thick; next chalk, the thickness not ascertained. I particularly requested the principal workman to take great care of what he in future found that was curious, when the pit was again opened, as I have no doubt but many organic remains are to be found on this spot.

About three miles above this spot, in the parish of Hilton, Dorset, the vale is well worthy the attention of the geologist and mineralogist: beds of bituminous schist, or slaty coal, (which will burs freely) may be traced from eight to ten miles, in the uppermost strata of which are found the shells of snails, and a a great many small cornua ammonis. I have dug up the remains of some animal, about a foot in diameter, which is almost all covered with a thick shell, so cannot be the cornu ammonis, nor is the shell exactly like the tortoise; but there area great number of tortoises found at Lower Melbury, in Dorset, highly petrified; they lie in beds with the exuvia of other marine animals. In digging clay for making bricks at Ansty, in the parish of Hilton, my workmen a few weeks ago found, about four or five feet beneath the surface, in a dark-coloured clay, some oyster-shells, I believe of the pearl kind. I have one perfect, both top and bottom shells united, and is in diameter nine inches, and measures twenty-six inches round; it weighs nine pounds all the shell, both top and bottom, is white and pearly, and drops off in scales by the touch.

At Okeford Fitzpain, a few miles from Hilton, the parish abounds with slaty coal and oxide of iron: this oxide has been analyzed, and found to contai three grains of fine gold in the pound weight.

At the end of the letter respecting fossils, in your January Magazine, is an acount of one Mary Howard, buried near Shoreditch Church, and when about twenty years after her gravewas opened, her flesh was found converted into spermaceti. I once saw an instance of the same kind in Dewlish Church-yard, the same parish where the fossils have been recently found.

A very fat woman was buried in that church-yard, and about twenty years after her grave was opened, to bury some other person, and I saw a great number of large pieces, resembling the fat of mutton, or sperinaceti, thrown out of the grave, the smell of which was very disa

greeable

greeable, so that the sight or smell of mutton was loathsome to me for a long time after. G. HALL. Ansty, near Blandford, Dorset, March 26, 1814.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

T

SIR,

HOUGH vaccination, or the common small-pox inoculation, be neither of them quite such perfect securities as they were thought, against taking the small-pox, they are however great and desirable securities. And vaccination is preferable, I think experience bas proved, as being milder and nearly as efficacious, less loathsome, unattended by almost any the slightest danger to life, and uninfectious. This last is a great public consideration. For these reasons I greatly wish to see vaccination gradually and freely establish itself.

But I utterly, object to a lately revived proposal, as I did when it was first made, of prohibiting the common, the small-pox, inoculation, making it subject to penalties against the persons who so inoculate themselves, or their relatives, and the surgeon who inoculates otherwise than with the vaccine.

It appears to me that all this would be perfectly unnecessary, impolitic, unjust, and destructive of the very end proposed, of promoting paccination in preference to the inoculation formerly alone in use, and now for a considerable time on its decline.

The defenders of vaccination cannot deny that the common inoculation is a preventative, and is, comparatively to the natural small-pox, a great benefit. This they do, and upon their own principles they must, admit. That there is in their opinion, and in mine, and that of many others, a better and a more unexceptionable preventative, will not justify prohibiting that which has been long adopted.

If persons do not see all the good that is allowable, they should be allowed to avail themselves of so much as they do

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and it has within very few years been making a wonderful and encreasing pro gress, I wish it every success.

But after a century passed in gradually introducing the common inoculation, and reconciling the people to its adoption, it would be as strange as it would be unjustifiable and unpardonable to pass a law that should prohibit the use of it.

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Nothing could make it infamous so to inoculate for laws will not alter opinions. And a surgeon who should judge the common inoculation preferable, and therefore administer it, might be erros E neous, but could not possibly be infamous. Nor could parents be so in acting to the best of their judgment to se cure the life and health of their children. And as for penalties, what domestic inquisition is to ascertain the fact; and how is the penalty to be enforced?

It may be proper to provide reasona. ble penalties against persons under the common inoculated or natural small-pox, negligently spreading the infection, which is certainly a misdemeanor at com mon law.

It

3 may be proper, with regard to the poor, and I think is so, to pay the expence of vaccination by subscription, in behalf of those who may be unable to afford that small expence.

But to go beyond these limits would be to pass beyond the bounds both of policy and of common right.

And although an act of parliament, such as already mentioned, has been re commended to prohibit, under penalties on the parents, friends, and operator, and I suppose on the patient if adult, inoculation with the virus of the smallpox, I do hope that such an act never will, or can, pass. And if it did, I believe it would be the means, and perhaps the only means, of reviving, confirming, and unboundedly extending, the now almost extinguished prejudice against vaccina tion. CAPEL LOFFT.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

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1814.7

sons of Ishmael.

And Lord Byron and Dr. Reid.

If such information must be so frequently repeated, it were better to prefix it in plain prose, as a running title to each page, and reserve the Tchocadars,' the Galiongees,' the Mus selims, and the Mangabrees,' with their 'Ollahs' and 'Chibouques,' for an improv ed version of Blue Beard. The 'Childes' and Giaurs' belong also to the same af fected family. Surely Lord Byron need not be told that the distinction obtain ed by visiting remarkable situations is a species of celebrity which of all others is acquired with the least expenditure of intellect. Minds of a lower order may court this distinction, and endeavour to be known from the countries they have seen; for if the words, Trojan or Persian, Russian or African, become connected with their names, they acquire an importance their own genius would never have conferred. It is said too that these titles bear a higher price in the market, and are more reverenced in the Row,' than the hackneyed appen dage of LL. D. with or without the A double SS of Dr. Pangloss.

The lovers of genuine poetry must wish that Lord Byron would cease to vitiate our language with these barbarous terms; that he would leave these abominable Turks and Tartars, and tune his harp to the pains and pleasures of beings with whom their sympathies could be in uni son. They want not to be reminded that his lordship has seen Parnassus, for without this information they can recog nize him as a true high priest of the Muses. Let me also whisper to his lord ship, that with his fertile resources he has no excuse for borrowing or stealing thoughts and lines without acknowledg. ment. A poet who compels his Muse write by the surface for a stipulated sum, who engages to cover a given quantity of. paper with a certain quantity of words, may be expected to employ the scissars and the paste as well as the pen, in order to eke out the space required by his em ployer. Lord Byron will not be classed by posterity with poets of this order. “He makes a solitude and calls it peace." Page 46.

from Tacitus,

to

"Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant." with other lines, should have been mark ed with inverted commas. “The mind-the music breathing from her face." Page 9. This is said to be borrowed from Wordsworth, but Lord B. has undertaken the defence of it in a note, in which he denounces on anathema against the taste

299

of those who refuse their admiration. The note reminds us of Peter, in the "Tale of the Tub," who asserted that "this bread was very good mutton," and in proof of it, curses the unbelieving souls who shall dare to deny his veracity. Perhaps the line did not require an apo logy. It is the privilege of the poet to de scribe objects as they affect the mind, rather than the senses; and to regard the feelings with which impressions are as sociated, more than the external qualities by which these impressions are excited. To deny the poet this right would be to take away the soul of poetry, and to leave in its stead a lifeless corpse.

The feelings of the poet should however have their foundation in nature, and be in general harmony with those of well-cultivated minds; where this is wanting, the stile becomes obscure, and the meaning perplexed. Perhaps traces of this defect may be observed in the poems of Lord Byron, to whom Dr. Johnson's censure of Dryden will he sometimes applicable. "He delighted to tread on the brink of meaning, where light and darkness mingle, to approach the precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy." ." At the conclusion of the note already refere red to, we have a prose illustration of Dr. Johnson's remark. "This passage (says Lord B.) is not drawn from imagination but memory, that mirror which affliction dashes to the earth, and looking down upon the fragments only beholds the res flection multiplied." In these lines, which have been praised by some, t the fi gures are not only indistinct but incorrect. The remembrance of a beloved but lost object is not dashed to the ground by affliction, it is pressed more closely to the heart.

In the Report of Diseases by Dr. Reid, given in the Monthly Magazine for 1809, an image of a similar kind is introduced with singular propriety and force, which may serve to evince that figurative language is neither less poetical nor less fascinating for being philosophically correct. The doctor describes two cases of mental disease" One of them was an instance of extreme imbecility, which had been gradually induced by a succes sion of epileptic paroxysms, each of which took something away, until the mind was stripped altogether of its energies and en- < dowments. At length it presented a tablet from which was effaced nearly every impression of thought, or character of intellectual existence.

3

"The other case was that of a young man who, from indiscreet exposure during

course

a course of medicine, was suddenly seized
with delirium, which, on account of an
hereditary bias in that direction, is in
danger of settling into a chronic, and
perhaps cureless, aberration of the men
tal powers. The mind in the latter in-
stance, shattered by disease, may be
compared to the small fragments of a
broken mirror, which retain the faculty
of reflection, but where, although the
number of images is increased, there is
no one entire and perfect representation."
I cannot conclude without expressing
wish that Dr. Reid would reprint his Re-
ports of Diseases,with such revision as his
more matured practice may suggest; be-
side their value as a medical history,
they contain many aphorisms of practical
wisdom, nor are they less distinguished
for perspicuity and elegance of style than
for originality of thought. It is impossi-
ble to peruse these reports without feeling
that they are the productions of no com-
mon mind.
R. BAKEWELL.

Robert-street, Bedford-row.

a

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

YOU

OU will highly oblige me by giving room to the following observations in your extensively circulated miscellany, in the hope they may not prove unaccep. table to the curious, and convey communication of considerable importance to several persons whose legal rights are thereby particularly distinguished.

T. L. CURSHAM, M.A. Vicar. Mansfield, Notts. Jan. 18, 1814.

Bella Valla, alias Beau Vale Priory, Natts. By accident, the Leiger Book of this religious house is now in my hands. It appears perfect in all its parts. From every information I am able to collect, no doubt can exist but that it is the same to which Thoroton had recourse in his

deaconry of Richmond, diocese of York. These endowments are first given in the body of the deeds of appropriation, and afterwards in separate acts. They took place at a late period in the year 1348. I am ignorant whether they be registered in the Archiepiscopal Records at York, in which diocese Notts is; but as many at this day are not discoverable, to the great loss and detriment of the vicars, I may perhaps render a service by giving publicity to the repository of these three. Numerous clergy and others are at this moment instituting expensive, and often fruitless searches for these necessary documents. It is well known to what causes their so frequent absence is to be attributed.

The identity of this Register Book, for legal purposes, may be questioned, as it is not deposited in an office of records, but in private hands. This must be decided by abler judgment than I can presume to offer. Its internal evidence and correspondence with Thoroton's publication, may perhaps entitle it to the rank of an original. If this be the case, it appears of considerable impor tance to the vicars, whose endowments' are enumerated in it. It is a well known point of law, that “talibus ordinationibus nullum tempus occurrit ;" in other words, that no prescription will invalidate their contents; that they are esteemed in all cases as conclusive evidence to ascertain the vicarial rights, as if the deeds were of yesterday's production.

Should further information respecting this Chartulary be acceptable to any one who may read these pages, I shall be happy in giving extracts and translations, (on account of the abbreviations,) on application for that purpose.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

OUR correspondent Linnæus is mis

History of Notts; in his notes to that
work he refers to it, and gives extracts
from it, which exactly correspond with
the supposed original. It commences
in the sixteenth year of King Edward III.
at which time the Priory was founded for
Monks of the Cistertian order, and con-
tains the letters patent for its foundation;
an account of the different properties as
signed for its support; conveyances of
lands, &c.; exchanges; the internal re-
gulations of the house, and what appears
of most consequence, and is omitted by
Thornton, the appropriations of, and
subsequent endowments of vicarages in
the churches of Grysley, alias Griesley,
and Selston; in the county of Nottingham,
and Farnham, or Fernham, in the arch-poisonous.”

on supposing he is the only

one who ever took notice of the peculiar manner in which the scarlet-flowered French bean twines itself round sticks of poles. I was led some years ago to ob serve the direction which scandent plants take, from seeing the following erroneous assertion in Adains' Summary of Geography and History, p. 88. "Of the Plante contorte, or such as twist round other plants, some in climbing follow the direction of the sun, as the scarlet kidney-bean, &c. others in climbing follow a contrary direction, as the black briony. The former kind are wholesome and nutritive; the latter noxious, and generally D. COPSEY.

For

1814.] Relative Height of the Red and Mediterranean Seas.

For the Monthly Magazine.
On the RELATIVE HEIGHTS of the MEDI-
TERRANEAN and the RED SEA, or ARA-

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BIAN GULF.

Ibrat
T is a certain truth," said the cele-

Father Boscovich, in 1772, that the general balance of the waters on the face of the earth can be deranged only by some extraordinary incident, such as that of an abyss opening on a sudden in the bottom of the sea, by which a temporary lowering of the surface, over that gulf, would be produced.

"All seas having a communication with the ocean (excepting the Caspian, and some other smaller internal seas, from which no outlet is visible), the general level of the sea must be always maintain ed. It is therefore without any reason, not to say absurd, that fears are entertained respecting the opening of a canal, or other communication, between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, as if thereby Egypt and other countries, on both shores of the Mediterranean, would be inundated and overwhelmed.

"Should the smallest inequality of level in those seas take place, the waters would soon find their way round the

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Cape of Good Hope, and the true balance of surface would very speedily be restored."

Such was the opinion of Boscovich; but in it he formed an erroneous judg

engineers employed in the expedition to Egypt. In a memoir on the communica tion between the Indian ocean and the Mediterranean, through the Red Sea and the isthmus of Suez, it is shown that the surface of the Red Sea, at high water of spring tides at Suez, is more elevated than the surface of the Mediterranean, taken at low water of spring-tides, at Tineh, the ancient Pelusium, by 9.908 metres, or 3 feet English.

From the same researches it also appeared that the waters of the Red Sea might overflow the Delta; and that therefore the apprehensions of the ancients and the moderns on that head are not without a good foundation.

A difference does therefore exist between the level of the Red Sea and that of the Mediterranean; a fact not easily explained, but well deserving the atten tion of any modern Boscovich. Ipswich, Jan. 1814. INQUISITOR.

POPULATION OF MONMOUTHSHIRE, according to the Returns of 1811.

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$794

70 1,633 1,737

3,370

Usk

1,662 1,789 2550

Wentlloog

Monmouth

Local Militia

Totals

935 444 410 3,813 3,868| 7.681

2,825 2,984 51 63 1,150 1,555 279 7,916 8,355 16,269

661 753 4 14 146 375 232 1,630 1,875| 3,503

11,766 12,543 158 361 5,815 4,812 1,916 30,987 31,140 62,127

919

919

MONTULY MAG. No. 254.

2 R

NORFOLK

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