manner in which the rings would be fixed thing of yearly occurrence to hear that a in their places within the tube, screwed, man-eater has posted himself near some disand pinned to the ground, Mr. Bateman trict-thoroughfare, whence he falls on unproceeded to describe the arrangements for wary travellers and toiling peasants, until, the supply of air. After the tube had been emboldened by practice, he even carries off constructed the most important question to his prey from within the village inclosures. consider was how the line should be worked. In the Chanda district alone one of these He proved that it would be impossible to brutes killed, in a short time, 127 people, use locomotives; that passengers would and stopped all traffic for many weeks on bc poisoned, and therefore the only plan the road from Mooll to Chanda. A tigress was to work the traffic by pneumatic in Chindwarrah slew, according to native pressure. How this could be accomplished estimates, 150 people in three years, causwas explained in detail. His own contribu- ing the abandonment of the villages, and tion towards the proposal was, he said, very throwing 250 square miles out of cultivation. small; the chief credit was due to his col- Another old tigress in Kurnool carried off league, Mr. Révy. The tube, he believed, sixty-four human beings within nine months, could be constructed in five years, and stopped the post-runners and police-patrols, would cost, allowing one million for contin- and scared away the labourers employed gencies, eight millions of money. This was on public works. One of his victims was a sum which would, he thought, allow of a the head constable. The brute's average handsome return being realized, and he allowance seems to have been one man hoped that the work would be acomplished. every three days. It was only by keeping together in numbers and making a horrible noise with tomtoms" that travellers could safely pass that way. At last a broad strip of jungle was cleared away from either side the road, and in due time the beast was hunted down.

From Allen's Indian Mail. DEATHS FROM WILD BEASTS IN INDIA. IT has been reckoned that at least ten thousand people die every year in India of snake-bites. The new plan of injecting ammonia into the wounds may tend to diminish the number of deaths from snakebite, if it succeeds in India as well as it has in Australia; but the havoc caused by tigers, leopards, and other wild beasts, if not greater in fact than it was some years ago, has at any rate been serious enough to draw from Lord Mayo a demand for help on the part of the local governments in devising measures to abate the evil.

"

Man-eating tigers are the special terror of the countryside. The taste for human flesh either grows with indulgence, or becomes a last resource of tigers of advanced age, whose energies are no longer equal to the demands of their appetite. We had always imagined that the latter was the true way of accounting for the ravages of the 'man-eating class, and the mangy appearance for which they are remarkable. It is certainly a curious fact that the tigers in the Oudh jungle seldom prey on man, being plentifully supplied with wild pig and other large game. There, too, they are such cowards that herdsmen armed with latties, or iron-bound sticks, often drive them away from their own cattle. A driver of a mailcart will also scare them away by merely sounding his bugle. Elsewhere, however, they are either bolder or have less choice of food. In the central provinces it is a

In the Bhagalpore district alone of Lower Bengal as many as 1,434 people were killed by wild beasts in six years. During the same period 13,401 deaths from wild beasts were reported for Bengal Proper, of which 4,218 are ascribed to tigers, 1,407 to leopards, 4,287 to wolves, 174 to hyænas, and 105 to bears; the balance being set down to boars, jackals, buffaloes, elephants, and mad dogs. On the other hand, it cost the Government £6,500 in rewards to secure the destruction in the same time of 18,196 wild beasts, of whom 7,278 were tigers, 5,663 leopards, 1,671 bears, and 1,338 wolves. In one year the loss of human life in the Central Provinces amounted to 506, many of whom were children; while 518 tigers, 895 panthers and leopards, 534 bears, 467 wolves, and 475 hyenas, were put to death. The wolves of Oudh in the same year killed 5 men, 2 women, 72 boys, and 80 girls. Each of the other provinces adds its quota to the butcher's bill. Of the numbers of cattle slain and of the loss entailed on their poor owners no regular estimate can be formed; but one man alone in South Canara complained of having lost 50 head of cattle through wild beasts; Captain Rogers tells of a tiger who killed half a dozen in a few minutes, and it is well known that thousands of villagers are continually reduced to utter poverty, followed by a long term of bondage to moneylenders, through the ravages of these unpleasant neighbours. The very spread of

cultivation tends to increase the suffering to the tune of £15,000 a year, tends, no caused by their neighbourhood. In the doubt, to keep the nuisance of wild beasts Neilgherries, for instances, the clearing in some check. As much as a hundred away of jungle for coffee plantations drives pounds has been given for the head of a the wild animals to seek their prey from man-eating tiger. But the rewards are the villages at the foot of the hills. On sometimes granted on very slight evidence; the other hand, the planting of new and for it is well known that a cunning native the conservation of old forests may afford will bring up an old head for a new one, or new haunts or new means of living to the sew a tiger's skin over the head of some beasts of prey. Superstition also plays smaller animal, and thus cheat a credulous no small part in the maintenance of these or careless official into passing an unfounded intolerable scourges. The Gonds, for in-claim. Perhaps the present scale of restance, instead of mustering in force to hunt | wards would bear amending, if, as we undown the tigers who wage war against them derstand, much too little is offered for the and their herds, have an idiotic way of regarding the tiger as a divinity whose wrath it is unsafe to arouse. If one of them falls a prey to the divinity's appetite for human flesh, the rest of the family are forthwith tabooed as displeasing to the object of their reverent dread, and must expiate their of fence by costly sacrifices, which may leave them penniless but will restore them to their caste-rights.

The head-money granted by Government,

cubs in comparison with full-grown tigers. The quickest way of extirpating the brutes would be to encourage the destruction of young animals by a larger bounty for their heads. Sportsmen naturally shrink from attacking these scourges with other than the sportsman's usual weapons; but even Captain Rogers in his report avows himself a thorough convert to the use of traps and other wiles against foes so widely destructive.

lowed. No information is given on this point, which is of some little importance; but the Lancet, for our consolation, under the head of "Things not Generally Known, "says that a similar occurrence has been known in compounding the extract of colocynth with the oxide of silver, and that, with creosote or oil of cloves this salt is reduced to the metallic state with the production of heat, amounting often to an explosion. In fact, there are some pills which are nothing more nor less than infernal machines, and people with volcanic temperaments and undermined constitutions, for whom they are prescribed, should be careful to take thein in secluded spots, where no one but themselves can be injured in the event of the explosion.

Pall Mall Gazette.

Ir is really terrible to find out every day some new danger to which we are exposed. If there is one thing which people have hitherto confided in it is a pill-box; it is allowed to lie about anywhere, it is shut up in a drawer or a cupboard, or is carried in the pocket. A general panic will therefore be caused in many a household by the account given in the Pharmaceutical Journal of what recently befell a lady for whom a doctor had prescribed twenty-four pills, each containing two grains of the oxide of silver, a twenty-fourth of a grain of muriate of morphia, anda sufficiency" of extract of gentian; the pills being coated with silver in the usual manner. The pills, it is stated, were delivered to the patient in an ordinary pill-box, but the lady, being in her nursery and having no pocket in her dress, placed the box in her bosom, probably next the skin. Little did this unfortunate lady know the deadly peril which awaited her. In three-quarters of an hour a severe explosion occurred; her under-clothes were reduced to a M. ANDRE LEROY, of Antwerp, is engaged on tinder, she was seriously burned, and, but that a Dictionary of Pomology; three large volumes she had the presence of mind to extinguish the are ready, and treat of pears, apples, quinces, flame with her hands, would probably have been service-trees, and medlars. Two more volumes destroyed. Oxide of silver being reduced by will complete the work, one of which will treat contact with vegetable extracts is, it seems, in of stone-fruits, the other of grapes and miscellathe habit of exploding. It is really as well peo-neous fruits. Each species of fruit is treated in ple should be made aware of the danger they an elaborate way, and to the mode of its culture run, in order that they may have magazines for is prefixed a history of its culture (besides sevpill-boxes attached to their dwellings. We eral types of each variety, 915 varieties of pears should also be glad to know if pills of this na- are described), and each description is accomture are liable to explode after they are swal-panied by a woodcut.

There a slim youth, while all but he are kneel-"How long, O Lord, how long? Must then for ing,

"If there be one who with his faith not palters,
But holds the truths divine not taught in vain,
And if about her desecrated altars
One shred of true religion yet remain,

Stranger! what though these sounds and sights. Among their ranks will not the late avenger

"Or will the waters break from Earth asunder, | There, where the stately Barberini palace, In some new flood the sons of pride to drown, Like some new Nimrod's fabric Heavenward And the insulted Heavens descend in thunder climbs, Upon this masque of impious mockery down?"

Enduring monument of Christian malice,
By outrage wrested from the Pagan times;*

Where, lulled and drowsy,with the distant hum,
The sentinel keeps watch upon the town,
And from the heights of old Janiculum
On Father Tiber's yellow face looks down;

Where in their southern grace the moonbeams
play

On Caracalla's tesselated floors,

And rescue from the garish light of day
The Colosseum's ghostly corridors;

Where Raphael and all his great compeers
Art's form divine in giant-mould have cast,
The very air is heavy with the years,
The very stones are vocal of the past.

Still, as we saunter down the crowded street,
On our own thoughts intent, and plans, aud
pleasures,

For miles and miles, beneath our idle feet
Rome buries from the day yet unknown treas-

ures.

The whole world's alphabet, in every line
Some stirring page of history she recalls:
Her Alpha is the Prison Mamertine,
Her Omega, St. Paul's without the Walls.
Above, beneath, around, she weaves her spells,
And priest and poet vulgarize in vain :
Who once within her fascination dwells,
Leaves her with but one thought to come
again.

So cast thine obol into Trevi's fountain -
Drink of its waters and, returning home,
Pray that by land or sea, by lake or mountain,
"All roads alike may lead at last to Rome."
Easter, 1869.

H. C. MERIVALE,

* "Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini."

THE POPE A DESCENDANT OF A JEW. A solini published a genealogical pamphlet, in correspondent of a Continental contemporary which he demonstrated the Jewish origin of the writes as follows to the Jewish Chronicle:-I Mastai. The writer was cited before the tribuhave to make a communication which will undoubtedly prove most interesting to the readers of your paper · namely, that a man thoroughly acquainted with Roman and Italian families has incontestible proofs that the relatives of the present Pontiff, Pope Pius IX., the family of the Mastai, are of Jewish descent. The Mastais derive their title of nobility from one Ferretti, who belonged to a family of the ancienne noblesse, but had married in Sinigaglia a baptized Jew, of the name of Mastai. Already twenty-four years ago, when Count Mastai Ferretti ascended the Papal throne as Pius IX., the Marquis Con

nal, and his writing burnt. A deadly feud sprang up between the Mastai and Consolini families. One of the Consolini fell by the hand of one of the Mastai, such occurrences not being very rare in Sinigaglia. The whole story would have been well-nigh forgotten, had not a Roman publisher discovered among a heap of dust-covered volumes a copy that had escaped detection, published it anew, and substantiated the truth of its statement by fresh proof. The Correspondance de Rome tries to question the authenticity of the statement, but without success.

Second Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of America. Archeology and Ethnology
Eulogy at the funeral of George Peabody. By HoN. R. C. WINTHROP, LL.D.
Peabody Education Fund. Annual Meeting Feb. 15, 1870.

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