of an author* of undoubted veracity, who was informed "by most credible witnesses, that subterranean sounds, like those of an organ, were heard towards sunrise by those who sleep upon the granite rocks on the banks of the Oroonoko:" and, as a still further support, other respectable travellers, Messrs. Jomard, Jollois, and Devilliers, heard at sunrise, in a monument of granite placed at the centre of the spot on which the palace of Karnack stands, a noise resembling that of a string breaking. Reasoning on such grounds, we would lastly remind our readers, that literature, as well as science, may and has profited by the distortions even of truth, as the follies of one age have paved the way for the philosophy of the next. Having thus far attempted something like a justification for ourselves, if not for the Bishop, and assigned some semblance of reasoning for not at once delivering him and his folio, in toto, over to the lowest dungeon-keep of him "who is the father of lies;" we shall briefly state, that although it is our intention, wherever and whenever we can, to lend the good Bishop a helping hand, we by no means pledge ourselves to act as his champions throughout: we are certainly disposed to do our duty fully and impartially; but, at the same time, convinced as we are, that on his skull Spurzheim would have found a pretty considerable bump of credulity, we shall consider ourselves privileged to feast our readers with some of his stories, and provide them with materials for an occasional hearty laugh, albeit at the expense of as worthy a man as ever sat upon the Bench of Bishops.

Without further digression, we shall therefore now proceed to introduce our readers to the Right Reverend Enoch Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen and member of the Royal Academy of Science in Copenhagen, who, on the 1st day of May, 1751, launched forth a ponderous folio on men and manners, beasts, birds, and fishes, rocks, and mountains; in a word, professing to give a full and true account of all that was curious and wonderful in the animal, vegetable, and mineral world, of the then little known, or, to speak more properly, the absolutely terra incognita of Norway. We have said, that a better man never existed; and if piety and good intention were the sine quibus non in the formation of a perfect historian, Bishop Pontoppidan might stand a fair chance of being placed on the highest pinnacle in the temple of fame; but, unfortunately, we, who know the world and what is required of those who live in and write for it, must, with grief and sorrow, confess that unless these sterling qualities are closely amalgamated with certain other worldly but essential ingredients, such as discretion, sober judgment,

* Humboldt.

calm and dispassionate inquiry, they will not carry their possessor safe over the shoals and quicksands to which we mortal navigators are exposed on the ocean of life; nay more, that if we trust to these alone, discarding the rest, we may not only go near to touch upon shoals ourselves, but, perchance, occasion the discomfiture, if not the absolute shipwreck, of many worthy followers, to whom we have professed to act as pilots. And much we fear these remarks will apply to the Bishop of Bergen. In the first place," his principal motive being (as he says in his preface) to promote the glory of God by a contemplation of his works," the Deity is enlisted at all times, "in season and out of season," and upon all possible occasions, as the direct and efficient agent. Accordingly, if a scanty population settle themselves in a remote and barren peninsula, where the winds prevent the growth of trees, turf of the best description abounds because "the wise Creator foresaw that, in the course of time, it would be most necessary." If the West coast is found to be environed by a rampart consisting" of a million or more of stone columns, founded in the bottom of the sea," they are placed there, first and foremost, as "a security against any naval power of an enemy." If a sea-monster appears in the North sea, he is sent by "the all-wise Creator, several hundred miles, to serve as an instrument to drive numberless shoals of fish into the creeks, &c. to be the subsistence of many thousands of people." If a swarm of grubs "destroy the cabbage, grass, hemp, and flax, but not the corn," he concludes, that they then are acting under orders not to touch it. If a couple of hunters, left by accident on a desert island, after eating grass and leaves suddenly fall in with a "little spot all overgrown with sorrel," it was evidently a miraculous effort of vegetation; and even the accumulation of" thirty-two pounds of suet found on one ram," is cited as "a striking instance of the succulency and increase God has been pleased to bestow on Norwegian grass." Here we have unquestionable proof, that our author's zeal was not according to knowledge. We shall now proceed to an examination of his work, following the order he has prescribed, and beginning with his chapter on the air and its phenomena.

CHAP. 1. Of the Air, and its Phenomena.

Under this head, we have, in connection with a long detailed account of climate, atmosphere, heats of summer and cold of winter, much learning and conjectural remarks upon the Aurora Borealis, which, as might be expected, serves as a fulcrum whereon the Bishop rests the lever of his whole philosophy, and which, notwithstanding the application of this whole force, he is compelled to leave pretty much as he finds it," a very dark problem, and involved in many uncertainties."

With laudable diligence, he presents his readers with the opinions of those who had made it the subject of their lucubrations. Thus, Captain Heitman," a great naturalist of Norway," a person, moreover, "of great erudition and experience in philosophy," observes, that in the frigid zone" the force which gives motion to the high winds is there at its utmost height, insomuch that sometimes the lower region of the air, which is filled with nitrous vapours, is whirled round; and then is formed that light in the air called the Lottetskein, or Northern light." Dr. Nicholas Boerner, one mighty in physics, is expressly of the opinion that this light "is nothing but saline sulphureous vapours, kindled in the upper air, by a change it undergoes in autumn, spring, and other times, when the sun has not power sufficient to rarify and disperse these sulphureous particles." The "celebrated Wolfius" goes a step further, pronouncing it to be a sort of atmospherical fuel "substance yet unmature for lightening," or an "imperfect tempest." Others, again, are quoted as authorities for considering it to be nothing more "than a mere refraction, or reflection, of a flame issuing from certain volcanoes," which, in favour of this truly philosophical conjecture," are supposed to lie beyond Greenland, near the North Pole." As many rational difficulties were started, as to the difficulty of steering and taking an accurate departure, had our Discovery ships been fortunate enough to have reached this North Pole, this hint would have deserved the attention of Captain Parry, and we therefore earnestly recommend it to the consideration of that gallant and persevering officer, or any succeeding aspirant for polar pre-eminence. It is but fair, however, to add, for we would not willingly mislead, or waste the valuable time of these intrepid navigators, that the theory is by the Bishop, and some others, deemed a "position too weak to build any thing on," and that many, instead, consider this light as a reflection, or reverberation, not from the flame of fiery mountains, but "from the sun itself," when, far beyond Norwegian horizons, "it meets with some evaporating clouds at such a height as to be within the contact of the sun's beams in their ascent." This hypothesis the Bishop also admits to be somewhat doubtful, in as much as it requires certain "concurrence of causes," which we quite agree with him it would be very difficult to enlist in its support; such being the prevailing opinions of the learned world of the Pontoppidean æra. Our author then proceeds to offer a solution of his own, which, if not strictly correct, we quote with pleasure, as an earnest of our wish to befriend him when we can, and as a proof, at least, that however credulous he might be on some occasions, in a credulous and but very partially

enlightened age, his natural acuteness and penetration, when he exercised his own judgment, often led him to opinions near the truth. It is not our intention to enter into a detailed explanation of the mysteries of these "merry dancers" of the North, as they are often called: where wiser heads than ours have often failed, it would be as presumptuous as it would be obviously irrelevant, in an article like the present. Whether it is the rush of the electric fluid through the rarified air of the higher strata of the atmosphere, or whether it is that fluid rendered visible by positive and negative action in its course from the Northern to the Southern poles, we leave, therefore, for the decision of others; but, we trust, we shall not be considered stepping beyond our bounds, in merely stating, as our opinion, that in some way or other these lights are connected with electricity; and such was the conclusion to which our author arrived, though the science of electricity (then in its infancy) was comparatively little known and less understood his suggestion is, that "the original cause of the Northern light lies in the electricity of the ethereal air," and, " consequently, that it has existed at all times and in all places, though not visible to us without a concurrence of certain concurrent circumstances and junctures," which he proceeds to enumerate; some of which, we are ready to allow, lack somewhat of sound philosophy, but, in principle, we are equally bound in candour to admit that he is not far from the truth. On one contested point, his evidence is indeed at variance with that of witnesses whose opinions are incontestibly of the greatest weight, namely, our above mentioned polar navigators, who, we believe, were never fortunate enough to hear the emission of those sounds of which Pontoppidan speaks as heard distinctly "in a glaring North light and calm weather, with an explosion in the air like the sudden breaking of ice." This assertion, however, is corroborated by others, whose veracities we should be unwilling to suspect: such as, for instance, Dr. Henderson, who passed a long and dreary winter in Iceland. His words are: "When they (the Northern lights) are particularly quick and vivid, a crackling noise is heard resembling that which accompanies the escape of the sparks from an electrical machine." Sir Charles Giescke, who had frequent opportunities, in Greenland, of observing them streaming forth with peculiar brilliancy, makes a similar remark. Gmelin, in describing their terrific effect on the borders of the icy sea, mentions animals as terror-struck, and the dogs of the hunters seized with such dread that they couch on the ground, while the meteoric streams crackle and hiss, and make a whistling sound and noise equal to that of artificial fire-works; and,

lastly, that respectable traveller, Hearne, says, that he has heard them make a rustling and crackling noise," like the waving of a large flag in a fresh gale of wind."

Nearly allied to the corruscations of the Northern lights, is the luminous appearance occasionally observed in sea-water, in explanation of which, as in the former case, the Bishop, after stating the absurd theories of others, adds his own, which, if not true, is at least borne out by modern evidence. Captain Heitman asserts it to be occasioned by "saline particles, which, upon a motion of the sea, begin to sparkle and cause an effulgence." But the captain's theory sinks into insignificance before that of M. Urban Hierne, a Swedish naturalist, who, deriving the sea-salt from the sun, "judges this sea-light to be a kind of phosphorus formed from the luminous particles of the sun, and even of the moon, impregnated by water," whereas the Bishop conceives it to originate in minute and almost invisible animalcula : we wish indeed he had stopped here, but, unluckily, he proceeds in uniting the ignis fatuus within the bounds of the same philosophy, and pronounces that old friend of our juvenile days, "Jack-a-lanthorn," to be nothing more than a scintillating maggot. "To which (that is to the moorild, or sea-fire) my present addition shall be this, the ignes lambentes, or lambent flames, so well known, which, by their hovering about the ship's rigging, and often settling on the masts, though without doing any damage, strike a terror into the seamen; and, likewise, those ignes fatui, or jack-alanthorns, which deceive the traveller by land, must, according to this principle, be no more than worms bred in the sulphureous oils* with which both sea and land are filled." We refer such of our readers as may wish to see the evidence of the luminous property of the ocean, as derived from insects, to a very interesting paper fully proving the fact, in vol. vii. p. 402, of the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal.

In speaking of the temperature of Norway, he mentions, as a wonderful instance of the divine economy," which he would hesitate to commit to writing did not thousands of witnesses confirm it, that "when the winter rages with such severity in the East parts that all the fresh waters are frozen, the lakes and bays are open on the West side." As an answer to those who are inclined to question his opinion of this effect, as an immediate result from the special interference of Deity, he adds, but "this is no miracle, but purely the result of the

* This was also Lord Bacon's opinion. The sea "hath a little oiliness in the surface thereof, as appeareth in very hot days." Fol. Edit., vol. iii., p. 134.