utile and dulce are joined, for a field of amusement is opened, where the Philofopher, the Naturalift, or the Anatomift, may exercise his faculties with pleafure; even the learned and ingenious Dr. Munro, of Edinburgh, who has lately published a treatife on fishes, may find fomething interefting in the difcuffion of this problem, Are Pars young Salmon? Becaufe if he fhould difcover they are, and if, in confequence of that difcovery, a ftop is put to the very general deftruction of them, the number of Salmon in our rivers will be nearly doubled. The emigration of birds, such as swallows, woodcocks, and cuckows, the various changes which take place in the production of a butterfly, and the obfervations which are now made by the help of improved microfcopes on the fmalleft animalculi, are all, I will allow, matters highly deferving the attention of the natural Philofopher; but then I must be permitted to fay, cui bono? for in these discoveries the utile is not joined to the dulce, as would be the cafe in the folution of the queftion propofed by Glotianus. It firikes me, Mr. Urban, at this inftant, that as a very great benefit would be derived from the difcovery, that Pars become Salmon, fome honorary or pecuniary premium ought to be propofed by the Society in the Adelphi-buildings, or by the British Society for the encou ragement of the fisheries (of which the Duke of Argyle is Governor), to the perton who fhall, in a limited time, produce the moft fatisfactory account of the fmall fish, the Par. W. S. Mr. URBAN, Edinburgh, May 22. S the Memoirs of Great-Britain, which would not allow the affair, though fupported only by twenty-four votes, to be carried to the Commiffion of the General Affembly, where it would have been neglected, or have died quietly. 3. The ill-judged zeal of a Scotch Roman Catholic Bishop, which is well known to the people in Edinburgh. 4The keennefs of the Author, who was fuppofed by his enemies to act in that manner from a willingness to oblige the Miniftry, and not from the principles of Toleration. As a proof of this laft fuppofed caufe, many perfons are diverted with his boafted affection for the Roman Catholics, in page 170, and with his zeal for pillaging their churches, in page 23 of the Appendix; while Mr. Glaifford, a good Prefbyterian, declared that he would not touch what was dedicated to God, though by a religion that was not only contrary to his own, but everfive of it; and though the ufage of war, and the declaration of lefs fcrupulous perfons, would, with the world, have justified the robbery. The author introduces the Carronades again and again, as a late invention, by a worthy Gentleman in Edinburgh, and as one of the greateft inventions in modern times. Now, if he had inquired at the old fea-faring people belonging to the Clyde and to Liverpool, he would have learned that the principle of the Carronades, which confifts only in a fliding carriage and light gun, was far from being a late invention; these catriages having been ufed, many years ago, in the Welt-Indies, and in the cabins of merchant-fhips, under the name of Skeeds; for, as to the fights, or difparts, thortnefs, &c. they affect not the invention, they are like the fmall variations which we every day fee upon an A Volume Second, lately publifhed out suwe, or an old my chan. Tupo wall by Sir John Dalrymple, Bart. have produced many obfervations, I beg leave to give you fome, which relate to matters of fact, and which, therefore, deferve attention. In p. 170, the author takes great merit to himself for having conducted the Toleration Act in favour of the Roman Catholics; and fays, that its not being extended to Scotland was probably owing to a few of the Scotch Clergy. Is he quite fure that it was not owing to four other caufes? 1. The attempts of certain perfons to force a refignation of the then Miniftry, by an infurrection of the people. 2. The want of wifdom in the highest Ecclefiaftical Court in Scotland, known too, that finall mortars and coehorns were, inany years ago, wrought like fwivels upon the decks of thips. And need I mention, after this, the light guns of Gultavus Adolphus, and the leathern guns [that is, wide, thin, short guns of copper, covered with ropes and leather] of our Scottish ancestors, which were fpeedily carried from place to place? Much is faid of the merit of Car. ronades, but no proofs are given except ftrong affertions; while it is well known, that many experiments were made with them by General Officers, Engineers, Sea-faring perfons, and particularly by a Glafgow Profeffor, who gave his opinion of them in the following words: "They are are excellent for fmall merchant-fhips against privateers, because they are much lighter than common guns, take lefs room, are wrought by fewer hands, and because the fights of fuch thips are gene. rally of fhort duration. They may be ufed with great advantage in war-fhips, upon the poops and forecaftles, inftead of marines, but they certainly ought not to make the chief defence. And they will, with carrying-poles, make good field-pieces, in rough or in foft ground, because they are light, and have a large bore, whereas common field-pieces cannot be carried over fuch ground, have a fmall bore, and therefore are inferior to the Carronades when grape-fhop is fired. This is all that can be faid in their favour; and for this reafon, that though fine experiments have been made with them, yet the fame fuccefs cannot be expected in actual fervice; for it is well known, that a manufacturing machine cannot be ufed with advantage if it is much fubject to go wrong; and what would happen if the workers of it were expofed to wounds and to death? If, then, failors, with Carronades, are more apt to commit errors in loading and pointing, than with common guns, and it Carronades are much more apt to break their tackling, it feems to be overrating then, when their merit is raifed higher than as above-mentioned.". Now, was this opinion found to be juft by the teft of experience in actual fervice, or was it not? A fair enumeration of facts, by many perfons who have ufed them in fea engagements, ought to be the answer to this question, and not a parade of words. P. 7. Appendix. To the fame Edinburgh Gentleman he gives the invention of the double-fhip, though it is notorious that a trial was made of it by Sir William Petty about an hundred years ago, as a packet-boat between England and Ireland; that a model of Petty's fhip is in the Mufeum of the Royal Society of London; and that an account of this was published, before the Author's Memoirs, by the celebrated Dr. Franklin, page 108 of a volume of Philofophical Papers, with a propofed improvement to make the fides parallel which are oppofed to each other. P. 51. Appendix. He fays, That Archibald Duke of Argyle lived to the age of near ninety; and yet, if he had afked the friends of that diftinguished Nobleman, or looked at the common Newfpapers or Magazines, he would have known that his Grace did not complete his eightieth year. P. 99. He fays, That the Service of the Church of Scotland confifts of a Lecture with a Comment, a Sermon, two Prayers, thres Pfalms, and a Bleffing; and yet it is notorious, not only that there are three Pfalms, three Prayers, and a Bleffing, in the Service of that Church, but that the Author is witness to these three Prayers and Bleffing every Sunday forenoon that he is in St. Giles's church during the Seffions. Hoping for an explanation of thefe difficulties which relate to matters of fact, and are, therefore, important, I am, Sir, yours, &c. HISTORICUS. Mr. URBAN, IN Na pamphlet you have done me the honour to notice, Vol. LVII p. 812. I have stated, p. 102. 118. what appears to me to be the meaning of St. Peter, in thofe paffages of his ad Epiftle, chap. iii. which fpeak of the diffolution of the heavens and the earth, verfes 5. 6. 7. 10. 11. and 12; and have fhewn, from the language of the ancient Prophets in the Old Teftament, that the phrafe must be understood, not of the final deftruction of the world, but of the fall of particular flates and empires; and in the prefent inftance, of the deftruction of Jeru falem and the ruin of the Jewish fate and I have from thence inferred, what is the Apoftle's true meaning in the 13th verfe, when he fays-We, according to his promife, look for new heavens and a new earth; i. e. for a new and more perfect difpenfation, under the reign of the Meffiah. Then follows a practical ins ference from the whole of the Apofile's reafoning in this chapter, ver. 14. to the end. Wherefore, beloved, feeing ye look for fuch things; be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without fpot and blameless; and account that the long-fuffering of our Lord is falvation; even as our beloved brother Paul alfo, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you: As alfo in all his Epiftles, fpeaking in them of thefe things; in which are fome things hard to be understood; which they that are unlearned and unfiable wreft, as they do alfo the other fcriptures, unto their own deftruction. It hath exceedingly puzzled commentators to understand what these hard things are, of which the Apostle Peter declares St. Paul has written in his Epittles. Dr. Benfon has very candidly obferved, obferved, that he does not find any thing remarkably obfcure or difficult in what that Apostle has faid about the laft day. And he mentions Beza as obferving, that St. Peter has faid many things, and more obfcure things, concerning the laft day, than St. Paul hath done in any part of his Epiftles. See Benfon in loc. The truth I believe is, that commen. tators have wholly misunderstood the meaning of the Apoftle Peter, and then perplexed themfelves to find fomething in the Epiftles anfwerable thereto; but in vain. But if my interpretation of the defign of St. Peter is right, all difficulty upon this head vanishes at once. If he is fuppofed to treat of the ruin of the Jewish church and ftate, and the fubfequent erection of the Meffiah's kingdom, all is clear and eafy; for this is a fubject which the Apostle Paul undeniably dwells largely upon, and is indeed the principal theme in his long Epistle to the Romans, and is occafionally mentioned in most if not all his other Epiftles. The difficulty of understanding this Apoftle arofe, not from any peculiar obfcurity in his writings, but from the prejudices and prepoffeffions of the Jews, with regard to the perpetuity of their law, and their proud conceit of themfelves, as in every refpect fuperior to the reft of mankind. It was hard for a Jew, who confidered himself as the favourite of heaven, and his nation as the peculiar people of God, to imagine that they fhould be caft off, their polity deftroyed, and their city and country laid in ruins. It was hard for them to understand that their fall, as St. Paul fpeaks, would be the riches of the Gentiles, whom they heartily defpifed, and that they fhould enjoy the privileges and bleffings of the Meffiah's kingdom, exclufively of the Jews, as fuch. Truths, humiliating as thefe, could not but be hard to be under. ftood, and ftill harder to be received; and accordingly we find but few, comparatively, who could diveft themselves of these prejudices, even though the elo. quent Paul endeavoured, by every argument in his power, to ftir them up to jealoufy. Rather than admit fuch pride. confounding notions into their minds, they rejected the Meffiah, whom they anxiously expected at that very time, against the strongeft proofs of his claim to that high character, and chofe to abide the confequences of their unbelief, dreadful as they had often been told they would be. Exactly agreeable to this interpretation is the meaning of the Greek words, which in our Bibles are translated Unlearned and Unftable. The former, fays Dr. Benfon, is often ufed by Greek writers for men of an indocible temper; not perfons who are unlearned, but who are averfe or unwilling to learn. By the latter I understand, perfons who are not well established or confirmed in any matter, and may perhaps be applied to fome, whom the Apostle had in view, when he wrote, as wavering upon this point. This interpretation is fo natural, fo perfectly confiftent with known and acknowledged facts, and so consonant with the matter of St. Paul's Epiftles, that I am unable to see that the flightest objection can be made to it; and it harmonizes fo well with the preceding context, that I have not the Imalleft doubt of its being the true meaning of the Apoftle. Yours, &c. N. P. NISBETT. CORYLUS AVELLANA LINNÆI; THIS tree is to be found in moft parts of the kingdom, but abounds particularly on chalky foils. When left to rife in a fingle ftem, it will acquire a confiderable fize as well as height; and its foliage will help to diverfify plantations agreeably. The distance of time between the opening of the bloom and the ripening of the fruit is longer in this than we can recollect it to be in any other deciduous tree, for its elegant, though minute, female bloom often appears early in February. We have remarked that Hazel or Filbert-trees, when they first blow, produce female and no male bloom, contrary to what is ob ferved on most other monacious trees when young. The Filbert, from the thinness of its fhell, and the fuperior flavour of the kernel, is probably a variety of the Hazel meliorated by cultiva tion. The Hazel is profitable in coppices, furaishing hoops of the most durable kind; and the neatnefs of the wicker rodhedges made of this tree is one of the ornaments of agriculture almost peculiar to the chalk. But the frequent custom of fuffering hedge-rows of Hazel, feveral yards in breadth, to furround arable inclofures, is certainly an improvident method of tillage; fince thefe rows, being open at bottom, leave the corn defence lefs, and when cut down confume the greatest part of their produce in the dead dead hedge, which is neceffary to preferve the fucceeding fhoot from the brouzing of cattle. On this account, all woods and plantations should be formed as nearly fquare as poffible, that fhape requiring the leaft extent of fence. The only objection to this tree is, that it is much trefpalled on and broken down, for the fake of the nuts, in plentiful years. From the advice which Thomson gives to the ruftics, we apprehend he was not an owner of any Hazelcoppices; for this kind of rural gallantry, however pleafing it may appear in the defcription of the Poet, is in fact exceedingly destructive. "Ye fwains, now haften to the Hazel-bank;" Where, down yon dale, the wildly-winding brook [array, Falls hoarfe from fteep to steep. In clofe Fit for the thickets and the tangling fhrub, Ye virgins comte. For you their latest fong The woodlands raife; the clustering nuts for ground, was also made of a branch of this tree. Vaniere, a Jefuit, who lived in the beginning of the prefent century, tells us in his Prædium Rufticum the fratagem by which he expofed a practifer of this art in the act of ufing an Hazelwand : "Me præfente fuam nuper jactantior artem In cœlum cum ferret aquæ fcrutator & auri; Ac rudibus rem pene viris fuaderet, avará Spe lucri faciente fidem; fruticante fub herbà Quem reperit nummum, fub eodem gramine rurfus Miranti fimilis coram depono; manuque Inflectente volens, non per fe vergere ramum, Errantes oculos aliò dum conjieit, aurum Clam tollo: Corylum rurfus movet ille, manufque Continet immotas; & virgam cuneta trahentis Demonftrat flecti deorfum vi folius auri. Atqui aurum nullum eft, aio: risere repertos Fraude dolos; quos ille fugâ tacitoque pudore Confeffus, tamen auriferam non abdicat artem." Lib. i. Some have fuppofed that this delusive fcience, called Rhabdomancy, (divination by a rod,) is alluded to in the following verfe of Hofea," My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their off declareth unto them." ch. iv. As Europe received in very early times many fuperftitious customs from the Eaft, together with many useful inventions, the conjecture is not improbable. Divination by arrows, a method of a fimilar kind, mentioned in Ezekiel (ch. xxi.), continued among the Arabs till the days of Mabomet, who in the Korán forbade his followers this idle attempt at prefcience *. The facility with which mankind have in every age and in every country given up their understandings and the evidence of their fenfes to impofture, particularly when actuated by the vain hope of prying into futurity, is wonderful. T. H. W. Mr. URBAN, May 31. condition of flaves in general, being a THE abufe made by mafters of their power over their faves, and the fubject by which the attention of the publick is at prefent engaged; the following account of the manner in which flaves were used among the Romans, may prove acceptable to the reader,. "O true believers, furely wine, and lots, and images, and divining arrows, are an abomination of the work of Satan; therefore avoid them, that ye may profper." Sale's Koran, Cap. v. p. 94. Mailers, "Mafters, at Rome, were poffeffed of an unlimited power of inflicting chaf tifements upon their flaves, over whofe life and death they had, moreover, an abfolute authority. A great number of different inftruments were accordingly contrived for punishing flaves. Some confifted of a flat ftrap of leather, and were called ferula; and to be lafhed with the ferule was confidered as the mildest degree of punishment. Others were made of a number of cords of twisted parchment, and were called feutica. Thefe fcutice were confidered as being one degree higher in point of feverity than the ferule, but were much inferior to that kind of fcourge which was called flagellum, and foinetimes the terrible flagellum which was made of thongs of ox-leather, the fame as those which carmen ufed for their horfes. We find, in the third Satire of Horace, an account of the above inftruments, and of the gradation in point of severity that obtained between them: Regula peccatis quæ pœnas irroget æquas, "The following is the literal tranflation of thefe lines: Make fuch a rule of conduct to yourself, that you may always proportion the chaftifement you inflict to the magnitude of the offence; and when the offender only deferves to be chattifed with the whip of twifted parchment, do not expofe him to the lafh of the horrid leather fcourge; for, that you fhould only inflict the punishment of the flat ftrap on him who deferves a more fevere lafhing, is what I am by no means afraid of." "A certain particular kind of cords, manufactured in Spain, were alfo ufed for lafhing flaves, as we are alfo in formed by Horace, who, in one of his Ddes, addreffes one Menas, who had formerly been a flave, by the following words: "Thou, whofe fides are ftill difcoloured (or burnt) with the ftripes of Spanish cords. (Ibericis perufte fuibus latus). "So generally were whipping and lafhing confidered among the Romans as being the lot of flaves, that a whip, or a fcourge, was positively become a mong them the emblem of their condition. Of this we have an inftance in the fingular cuftom mentioned by Camerarius. It was ufual, that author GENT. MAG, June, 1788, relates, to place in the triumphal car, behind the triumpher, a man with a whip in his hand; and the meaning of this practice was, to fhew, that it was no impoffible thing for a perfon to fall from the highest pitch of glory into the most abject condition, even into that of a flave. "Suetonius alfo relates a fact, which affords another remarkable inftance of this notion of the Romans, of looking upon a whip as a characteristic mark of dominion on the one hand, and of flavery on the other. Cicero (fays Suetonius, in the life of Auguftus), having accompanied Cæfar to the capitol, re lated to a few friends, whom he met there, a dream which he had had the night before. It feemed to him (he faid) that a graceful boy came down from Heaven, fufpended by a golden chain; that he ftopped before the gate of the capitol, and that Jupiter gave him a whip (flagellum). Having afterwards fuddenly feen Auguftus, whom (as he was ftill perfonally unknown to several of his near relations) Cæfar had fent for and brought along with him to be prefent at the ceremony, he affured his friends that he was the very perfon whofe figure he had feen during his fleep.' Juvenal likewife, in one of his Satyrs, fpeaks of Auguftus conformably to the above notion of the Romans. The fame (fays he) who, after conquering the Romans, has fubjected them to his whip.' Ad fua qui domitos deduxit flagra Quirites. "So frequently were flagellations the lot of flaves, that appellations and reproachful expreffions alluding to that kind of punishment were commonly ufed to denominate them. Plautus, who had been fervant to a baker, and who was much acquainted with every thing that related to flaves, has made a most frequent ufe of fuch nicknamee and expreffions. Slaves are called in his fcenes, refiiones, on account of their being beaten with cords, and bucada, on account of the ox-leather thongs ufed for the fame purpose. The fame author ufually denominates flaves with the words flagritribe (à flagris terere} ulmitribe, plagipatida, &c. Terence, though an author remarkable for his obfervance of decorum, frequently uses the expreffions of verberones, and flagriones, in fpeaking of flaves. The expreffions, verberones and fubverbufti (thele |