value is known. One remark may dismiss this head. If any one will cast his eye over the enumeration of topics, and reflect upon the fact, that the minutest information, on the best authority, is conveyed on every subject connected with soil, climate, produce, position, extent-external and internal structure—in a word, all attainable facts, relative to one small portion of a country. He must, assuredly, feel that such a work is a portion of the most perfect system of natural history and geography that ever entered into the mind of philosophy to conceive. And that if the same labours could be imagined to extend over the inhabitable globe-science should have little more to doand the history of both man and the world he lives on would be complete.

But we should but ill and ineffectively discharge our duty, if we were for a moment to lead any one into the mistake of supposing that even this praise can do justice to a work whose merit is not its connection with general science; but its vital necessity to the welfare of the community. To this we must entreat the attention of our reader, as the ground upon which we claim his interest. Hasty as our perusal of the work has been, and still more hurried as our notice is compelled to be-we feel that it would be useless if we may not convey some impression of its important pretensions to those who only neglect statistical information because they are not aware of its objects.

And first, let us invite the attention of our reader to the fact, that this is the sole foundation of well-ordered government and enlightened legislation. The universal application of the inductive principle, is now understood by every one. It is a part of the humblest education to learn, that all those results of reasoning which have any real authority, either in science or the practical knowledge of the world, derive that value from experience-obtained by such means as are applicable to each peculiar department of knowledge. The astronomer observes and compares observations, the physical in quirer makes experiments-the medical professor registers cases. In the same manner should the economist and the legislator be possessed of his peculiar data obtained by their ap

propriate methods of enquiry. He cannot, like the astronomer, make observations his ground of inference, because he has to deal with contingent states and transitory positions of feeling, interest, and event. Neither with the natural philosopher should he make experiments, because the health of nations and the welfare of mankind are dependent on the result. Yet, like the physician, he must possess himself with a register of cases, symptoms, and remedial effects. He must be aware of general and local causes of sane or diseased action. He must study the nature and operation of counterbalanced humours, actions, or tendencies of the state. A knowledge which theory can no more supply, than it could have composed the "mechanique celeste," or invented the facts of geology. Patient and minutely registered observation of climate, soil, population, trade, state of knowledge and opinion, history, and local interests chiefly arising out of these, must furnish the data of all sound inference or theory which can have any practical application. It cannot be reasonably lost sight of by the economist-that the adjustment of conflicting interests requires the most precise understanding of those interests; so also the equipoise of rights, and jurisdictions,-motive impulses and powers,—of collisions and oppositions, which are capable of being ruled for good or evil, by skill to be derived from the deepest knowledge alone. Can it be, for a moment, believed, by any one whose brain is clear from the prejudices of faction, that legislation is so much more easy than any other science, that it can be safely meddled with by ignorance, or the random knowledge of a coffee-house, or guided by the conflicting statements of a political debate. Unhappy, indeed, must be the result, if the ordering of great changes is to be at the mercy of a rash spirit of experiment and presumptuous theory which has been discharged from every other department of human reason. To this disregard and ignorance of statistic facts, it is due, that among all the varied applications of industry and talent, the statesman alone destitute of the first elements of his science is seen to grope along a doubtful path of rash conjectures and perilous trials which precipitate him from error to error

down the steep of the revolution. To this it is to be attributed if cabinet policy and popular opposition are but a game of deception and chance; and if the country, deeply as its interests are at issue, looks on with careless or blindfold interest, and take the worser part.

On so extensive a foundation of facts must all just policy be laid; on so large a basis of facts, of which none is unimportant; that it is only by the fullest and most minute register of all circumstances that can in any way affect a country through its whole extent, that the acts of the legislature can be impartial, permanent, or extensively beneficial. A very simple illustration of this position may be found in the very occasion of the survey, which had its origin in financial expediency. The impossibility of justly distributing the burthens of local taxation, was long felt by the legislature, and the continued subject of petition and popular complaint. For not only were the local assessments unequal, being made upon the fallacious principle of the equal value of equal areas: but it was even impossible to remedy this evil, so as not to leave abundant cause for complaint until a precise valuation founded on all the varied and numerous considerations which constitute the local value of land could be attained. Now it requires little knowledge to perceive what numerous particulars should be taken into account in order to obtain such an estimate; the nature of the soil, the quantity of fuel and water, the vicinity and demand of markets, the population, the direction and value of human labor, all these and such considerations, with their remote and proximate causes, and grounds of permanency or change, must enter to the utmost attainable extent into the computation. Every one is aware of the extreme instance; that the value of an acre of ground can vary from twenty pounds in the agricultural outlet of a metropolis, to one in some remote sheepwalk at the distance of a hundred miles; and it may be felt in how many degrees, and from how many added causes the same extent of surface might rise or fall between these limits.

With the same principle, few questions of internal polity are unaffected :

the effect of the varied combination of a few chief elements is not only productive of great variety of partial results, but the general political condition of the country is no more than the cumulative effect of the same first causes, combined with the influence of these local results. This is universally true; the whole is in all cases determined by the active causes which affect its parts. With this principle, therefore, no great question of national economy is unaffected. And sound legislative wisdom is the combining such principles into a comprehensive view of the interest of the nation. Thus alone can it be justly said to be provident or impartial, or effectively maintaining the just rights of every place, class, and interest.

We cannot indeed quit this topic, without observing how nearly connected with the want of useful information upon statistical facts, are the numerous errors and difficulties, in which our legislature has now for so long a period been involved. Those national disorders of which the true causes were not distinctly traceable by rash theory and helpless ignorance, were but too naturally attributed to causes which either had no existence or no connection with their supposed effects. In his ignorant terror, the inexperienced pilot ran his vessel upon the lee shore, and was wrecked upon the crags to which he had recourse for safety. Thus embarrassed, or terrified, by popular commotion, the statesman, ignorant of causes, may take for his guide the clamorous outcries of faction, which it is his safety to disregard; or seek refuge in the outbreak of popular passions which it is his duty to repress, and thus yield to the pressure of impulsive forces without heeding their direction, till he is hurried with increasing velocity upon the shelves of national wreck. To such an ignorance of political causes are we indebted for that portentous discovery of modern liberalism; the desperate compendious principle of concession :-a fatality of compliance, by which each meretricious consent is the recognized reason for that which follows, until nothing worth taking shall be left.

To the proprietors of the country, the study of this important compilation is equally to be recommended, whether in relation to their individual welfare

or public duties. For not only have they to discharge the duties of watch ful constituents, but a still nearer and more immediately personal interest is to be consulted in acquiring a full, perfect and minute knowledge of such causes as can even remotely affect, or be brought to bear upon the value of property. By means of this extensive compilation, a relative knowledge of such causes is to be acquired. The country proprietor can be provided with a full view of whatever agricultural skill, legislative provision, or manorial arrangement may have effected in other districts. He may adjust speculation by the growing wants of remote places, or by the reflected light, which analogous facts cast upon the sphere of his own observation. He may learn wisdom from the experience of the whole country; and by an extensive conversation with mankind, learn to secure advantages or avoid evils. He is, by a work like this, supplied with the ground-work of an economy as extensive as he has enterprise or talent to avail himself of.

Whatever may be the general importance of these considerations, it is much augmented, when referred to the peculiar state of this country, where so much in every way remains to be done, both as regards commerce and the rural economy of the country. The introduction of the extensive improvements, required to bring into full operation its productive powers and great commercial advantages, must require the nicest application of principles, to the most extensive and accurate knowledge; of this the reports and memorials drawn up by the ablest engineers and surveyors on special questions, relative to the reclaiming of bogs and waste lands, to canals and internal navigation, &c. afford ample proof to those who will take the trouble to peruse them, that a right view of the interests dependent upon such questions, is an indispensible preliminary to the diffusing rational views on national improvement, without which neither the legislator nor his constituents can be competent to rise above the petty cares of faction.

But there is a more extensive secondary effect to be looked for from the publication of this accurate and well-authenticated register of local

facts. The popular influence of knowledge has always been looked as com paratively remote. But the channels of social communication have been augmented both in number and power; intelligence has grown in the hotbed of revolution, and they who have employed themselves in deluding the people, have at the same time, sharpened their intelligence and awakened their curiosity. Sound opinions and correct principles, soon form themselves into popular maxims, and find their way downward through many unsuspected ways. The peasant who has obtained a vicious schooling in the rudiments of policy from the sower of sedition, has his mind stirred for better seed; and though in this country at least, the dupes of our political Mokanna have been as it were nourished with infatuation, yet as the mind cannot unlearn, we must chiefly trust to that spreading of sound knowledge, which alone can have any effect in dissipating national illusions, with which no sound government can coexist. This indeed is a truth of so much importance, that we cannot pass it by without a word.

Where all is wrong, right principles can no more apply upon the ordinary supposition, than the regimen of health can be applicable to a state of disease. Political disorder must be met by such means as are in the strictest sense remedial, but it is equally true that such remedial means cannot, without absurdity, be ordered upon the assumption that disorder is the permanent state. To manufacture constitutions for a nation convulsed from end to end by faction, and involved in error and intellectual darkness approaching to barbarism, is the analogous mistake of modern liberals; and in the highest degree indicative of their characteristic rashness and want of statesmanlike policy. Instead of recognizing the fact, that the causes to be dealt with lie in the disordered state of the national mind, they have laid their ignorant hands upon the constitution, to seek for and to remedy them.

We must now endeavour to afford some account of the special matter and arrangement of a work to which we attach so much national importance.

We should have much pleasure in presenting our readers with an abstract of the contents of this part--were such

valley of Pennyburn. A general view of this tract, when seen from the road to Culmore, combines the characters derived from its moderate height and frequent subdivision: it then appears a wide and undulating plain, bounded on the S. by the higher ground of the parish, and on the N.W. by the southern hills of En

nishowen.

"LAKES. The lake of Ballyarnet, the only one in the parish, occupies portions of three townlands-Ballyarnet, Ballynashallog, and Ballynagard. It is small, containing only 3A. 3R. 27P. and fills a shallow basin in the surrounding bog. Its height above the level of the sea is about 100 feet.

"RIVERS.-The_Foyle is formed by the junction of the Mourne and the Finn at Lifford the former having also received, in the county of Tyrone, the waters of the Derg from that of Donegal; it also receives the Deel, from Donegal, below Lifford, and empties itself into Lough Foyle at Culmore. The ancient Irish, however, appear to have applied the name Lough Foyle to the river, up to Lifford, as well as to the present lough;

but, in the accounts of the early settlement by the English, they are distinguished as the harbour of Lough Foyle' (the present lough) and the river of Lough Foyle,' by which name the river is called in the Down Survey, as well as in some later documents.

"The ancient Irish name of the river and lake thus conjoined was Loc Feabail mic lódáin, or the Lake of Feval, the son of Lodan,' and it is always so written in the Annals of the Four Masters and other authorities. The origin of this name is explained in the Dinnseanchus-a MS. work anterior to the twelfth century-by a legend of the Tuatha-de-Dananns, who are stated to have been a Greek colony, importing that, at the time when the lake was formed, Feval, the son of Lodan, was drowned, and that its waves cast his body on the shore, and rolled a stone over it, which formed his sepulchral monument, The similarity of this legend to that of Selim in Byron's Bride of Abydos' will hardly fail of striking the reader.

"The river flows from S. W. to N. E. in a deep and tranquil bed, within the tideway. Its greatest breadth above Derry is at New Buildings, in Clondermot, where it measures nearly half-a-mile. Below Derry is an expansion of it, called Rosses' Bay, which is 14 mile broad.

At the city itself it is narrowest, being only 1068 feet wide at the bridge. Its depth at high water is 22 feet, opposite Carrigan, where it enters the county of Londonderry: opposite Prehen it is 24, and it gradually increases to about 43, its depth at the bridge of Derry. The point where it enters the county is about 4 miles above the city. Its banks in this parish are bold, excepting at Pennyburn, where it is met by a transverse valley, and their beauty is heightened by ornamental woods, which spread in many places to the water's edge.

"Of the rivulets, which are insignificant, the greater number either flow into the river Foyle or Lough Foyle; one, which passes by Coshquin, flows into Lough Swilly, in the county of Donegal.

Within a tract of not more than twenty acres, in

"The springs are numerous.

Springhill and Creggan, no fewer than eight occur. These springs, percolating through the detritus of rocks, which abound in oxide of iron, become frequently charged with ochreous particles, and are sometimes slightly chalybeate. the parish in insulated patches. "BOGS.-The bogs are scattered through

natural.

"WOODS.-In Ballynagalliagh alone there is a small patch of wood, apparently It is possible, however, that some natural wood may have been preserved in the demesnes along the Foyle, which are all rich in ornamental planting.

"COAST.-The shore of Lough Foyle, where it borders the parish, is low and fat.

"CLIMATE.-In an able essay by Dr. Patterson, the mean temperature of the city is stated to be 49, which is nearly that of the earth, as indicated by the mean of six wells in different parts of the city, the extremes being 17 and 71. The range of the barometer is from 28.6 to 30.6, and on an average of twelve years, the medium number of fair days is 126. The hygrometer of Le Luc varies from 26 to 523, and the mean annual depth of rain is 34.2 inches; the latter has, however, been stated by Mr. Sampson at 31. The ratio of winds during nine years was N. 295-S. 398-E. 283W. 1005-N. W. 737-N. E. 265-S. W. 599-S. E. 454.

"To estimate with certainty the variations, if any, of this climate, long continued and carefully conducted observations would be necessary. In defect of such, it may be mentioned that the farmers believe and assert that a marked amelioration has taken place, the times of seeding