"Many days elapsed before we again beheld the tall giraffe, nor were our eyes gladdened with his sight until after we had crossed the Cashan Mountains to the country of the Baquaina, for the express purpose of seeking for him. After the many contretemps, how shall I describe the sensations I experienced as, on a cool November evening, after rapidly following some fresh traces in profound silence, for several miles, I at length counted from the back of Breslau, my most trusty steed, no fewer then thirty-two of various sizes, industriously stretch.

tled carcase presenting a fair and inviting mark, ad accompanied us from the last encampment. I had the satisfaction of hearing two balls tell 'he country had now become undulating, exroundly upon his plank-like stern. But as well t'nsive mimosa groves occupying all the valley, might I have fired at a wall; he neither swerved as well as the banks of the Tolaan winding from his course nor slackened his pace, and among them, on its way to join the Mariqua. pushed on so far ahead during the time I was Before we had proceeded many hundred yards, reloading, that, after remounting, I had some our progress was opposed by a rhinoceros, who difficulty in even keeping sight of him among looked defiance, but quickly took the hints we the trees. Closing again, however, I repeated gave him to get out of the way. Two fat the dose on the other quarter, and spurred my elands had been pointed out at the verge of the horse along, ever and anon sinking to his fet- copse the moment before. One of which Richlock the giraffe now flagging at each stride-ardson disposed of with little difficulty, the other until, as I was coming up hand-over-hand, and leading me through all the intricacies of the success seemed certain, the cup was suddenly | labyrinth to a wide plain on the opposite side. dashed from my lips, and down I came head- On entering which, I found the fugitive was long-my horse having fallen into a pit, and prostrate at my feet in the middle of a troop of lodged me close to an ostrich's nest, near which giraffes, who stooped their long necks, astounded two of the old birds were sitting. Happily, at the intrusion, then consulted a moment how there were no bones broken, but the violence of they should best escape the impending danger, the shock had caused the lashings of my pre- and in another were sailing away at their utviously-broken rifle to give way, and had doub- most speed. To have followed upon my then led the stock in half, the barrels only hanging jaded horse would have been absurd, and I was to the wood by the trigger-guard. Nothing dis- afterward unable to recover any trace of them. mayed, however, by this heavy calamity, I remounted my jaded beast, and one more effort brought me ahead of my wearied victim, which stood still and allowed me to approach. In vain did I now attempt to bind my fractured rifle with a pocket-handkerchief, in order to admit of my administering the coup de grace. The guard was so contracted that, as in the tantalizing phantasies of a night-mare, the hammer could not by any means be brought down upon the nipple. In vain I looked around for a stone, and sought in every pocket for my knife, with which either to strike the copper-cap and bringing their peacock necks to crop the tiny leaves about ignition, or hamstring the colossal but harmless animal, by whose towering side I appeared the veriest pigmy in the creation. Alas! I had lent it to the Hottentots to cut off the head of the hartebeeste, and, after a hopeless search in the remotest corners, each hand was withdrawn empty. Vainly did I then wait for the tardy and rebellious villains to come to my assistance, making the welkin ring, and my throat tingle with reiterated shouts. Not a soul appeared, and in a few minutes the giraffe, having recovered his wind, and being only slightly wounded on the hind-quarters, shuffled his long legs, twisted his bushy tail over his back, walked a few steps, then broke into a gallop, and, diving into the mazes of the forest, presently disappeared from my sight. Disappointed and annoyed at my discomfiture, I returned toward the wagons, now eight miles' distant, and on my way overtook the Hottentots, who, pipe in mouth, were leisurely strolling home, with an air of total indifference as to my proceedings, having come to the conclusion that 'Sir could not fung de kameel' (catch the giraffe), for which reason they did not think it worth while to follow me, as I had directed. Two days after this catastrophe, having advanced to the Tolaan River, we again took the field, accompanied by the whole of the male inhabitants of three large kraals, in addition to those that

that fluttered above their heads, in a flowering mimosa grove which beautified the scenery. My heart leapt within me, and my blood coursed like quicksilver through my veins, for, with a firm wooded plain before me, I knew they were mine; but, although they stood within a hundred yards of me, having previously determined to try the boarding system, I reserved my fire.

"Notwithstanding that I had taken the field expressly to look for giraffes, and in consequence of several of the remarkable spoors of these arimals having been seen the evening before, had taken four mounted Hottentots in my suite, all excepting Piet had, as usual, slipped off unperceived in pursuit of a troop of koodoos. Our stealthy approach was soon opposed by an illtempered rhinoceros, which, with her ugly oldfashioned calf, stood directly in the path, and the twinkling of her bright little eyes, accompanied by a restless rolling of the body, giving earnest of her mischievous intentions, I directed Piet to salute her with a broadside, at the same time putting spurs to my horse. At the report of the gun, and sudden clattering of the hoofs, away bounded the herd in grotesque confusion, clearing the ground by a succession of frog-like leaps, and leaving me far in their rear. Twice were their towering forms concealed from view by a park of trees, which we entered almost at the same instant, and twice, on emerging from

the labyrinth, did I perceive them tilting over | most estimable trophy I had ever gained. But an eminence far in advance, their sloping backs on proceeding to saddle my horse, which I had reddening in the sunshine, as with giant port left quietly grazing by the running brook, my they topped the ridges in right gallant style. chagrin may be conceived when I discovered A white turban that I wore round my hunting- that he had taken advantage of my occupation cap, being dragged off by a projecting bough, to free himself from his halter and abscond was instantly charged and trampled under foot Being ten miles from the wagons, and in a per by three rhinoceroses, and long afterward, look- fectly strange country, I felt convinced that the ing over my shoulder, I could perceive the un- only chance of saving my pet from the clutches gainly brutes in the rear fagging themselves to of the lion, was to follow his trail; while doing overtake me. In the course of five minutes the which with infinite difficulty, the ground scarcely fugitives arrived at a small river, the treacher- deigning to receive a foot-print, I had the satous sands of which receiving their spider-legs, isfaction of meeting Piet and Mohanycom, who their flight was greatly retarded, and by the had fortunately seen and recaptured the truant. time they had floundered to the opposite side Returning to the giraffe, we all feasted merrily on and scrambled to the top of the bank, I could the flesh, which, although highly scented with perceive that their race was run. Patting the the rank mokaala blossoms, was far from desteaming neck of my good steed, I urged him spicable, and losing our way in consequence of again to his utmost, and instantly found myself the twin-like resemblance of two scarped hills, by the side of the herd. The lordly chief being we did not finally regain the wagons until after readily distinguishable from the rest by his dark the setting sunbeams had ceased to play upon chestnut robe, and superior stature, I applied the trembling leaves of the light acacias, and the muzzle of my rifle behind his dappled shoul- the golden splendor which was sleeping upon der with my right hand, and drew both triggers; the plain had gradually passed away." but he still continued to shuffle along, and being afraid of losing him should I dismount, among the extensive mimosa groves with which the landscape was now obscured, I sat in my saddle, loading and firing behind the elbow, and then placing myself across his path to obstruct his progress. Mute, dignified, and majestic stood the unfortunate victim, occasionally stooping his elastic neck toward his persecutor, the turs trickling from the lashes of his dark humid eye, as broadside after broadside was poured into his brawny front.

'His drooping head sinks gradually low,

And through his side the last drops ebbing slow From the red gash fall heavy one by one, Like the first of a thunder shower.' Presently a convulsive shivering seized his limbs, his coat stood on end, his lofty frame began to totter, and at the seventeenth discharge from the deadly grooved bore, like a falling minaret bowing his graceful head from the skies, his proud form was prostrate in the dust. Never shall I forget the intoxicating excitement of that moment! At last, then, the summit of my ambition was actually attained, and the towering giraffe laid low! Tossing my turbanless cap into the air, alone in the wild wood, I hurraed with bursting exultation, and unsaddling my steed, sank, exhausted with delight, beside the noble prize that I had won.

"While I leisurely contemplated the massive form before me, seeming as though it had been cast in a mould of brass, and wrapped in a hide an inch and a half in thickness, it was no longer matter of astonishment that a bullet discharged from a distance of eighty or ninety yards should have been attended with little effect upon such amazing strength.

"Two hours were passed in completing a drawing, and Piet still not making his appearance, I cut off the ample tail, which exceeded five feet in length, and was measureless the

Singular and striking as is the form of the giraffe, it only furnishes a proof of the wonderful manner in which an all-wise Creator has adapted means to ends. A vegetable feeder, but an inhabitant of sterile and sandy deserts, its long slender neck and sloping body, enable it to reach with ease its favorite food: leaf by leaf is daintily plucked from the lofty branch by the pliant tongue, and a mouthful of tender and juicy food is speedily accumulated. The oblique and narrow apertures of the nostrils, defended even to their margins by a chevaux de frise of strong hairs, and surrounded by muscular fibres by which they can be hermetically sealed, effectually prevent the entrance of the fine particles of sand which the suffocating storms of the desert raise in fiery clouds, destructive to the lord of the creation. Erect on those stilt-like legs, the giraffe surveys the wide expanse, and feeds at ease, for those mild, large eyes are so placed that it can see not only on all sides, but even behind, rendering it next to impossible for an enemy to approach undiscovered. As we reflect on these and numberless other points for admiration presented by the giraffe, we involuntarily exclaim with the Psalmist, "Oh, Lord! how manifold are thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all!"

"Nature to these, without profusion kind,

The proper organs, proper powers assigned;
Each seeming want compensated of course,
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
All in exact proportion to the state,
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate."

the value of the inference; but no Copernican can doubt that the sun is forever turning, and that with unimaginable swiftness and impetuosity.

At the distance, then, of more than ninetyfive millions of miles, this dim spot which men call earth, this great globe and all its dwellers, this ever-spinning planet, revolves around the sun once every year, that revolution being both the cause and the measure of that space of time. Its orbit is not a circle; it is an ellipse, but not very far removed from the circular path. The terrestrial axis is not at right angles to that ellipse, else there were no seasons; it is somewhat inclined. The earth, once regarded as the fixed and solid centre of creation, is now to be con

height; the greatest depth of the ocean is prob- | The explanation of those spots, afforded by the ably little more than five miles, although Ross discoveries of Wilson and Herschel, diminishes let down 27,000 feet of sounding-line in vain on one occasion. So that the earth's surface is very irregular; but its mountainous ridges and oceanic valleys are no greater things in proportion to its whole bulk, than the roughness of the rind of the orange it resembles in shape. The geological crust-that is to say, the total depth to which geologists suppose themselves to have reached in the way of observation-is no thicker in proportion than a sheet of thin writing paper pasted on a globe two feet in diameter. The surface of the earth is some 148,500,000 of miles in extent; and only one-fourth of that large space is dry land, the rest being ocean and ice. The atmosphere rises all round to a height between forty-five and fifty miles above the sea-ceived of as a globular sphere of some fire-blown level. The solar radiance sends such heat as it brings no deeper any where than 100 feet into the surface or scurfskin of the dry land-from forty to a hundred feet, one-third of the sun's heat being absorbed by the air. Yet the deeper man digs beyond the hundred feet, the warmer he finds the earth, and that at a somewhat determinable rate of increase. Supposing that rate of increment to go on toward the centre, it is computable that the solid underwork of the world, say granite by way of conjecture, must be in a state of fusion at no vast depth from the ground on which we tread. Let the scientific imagination descend a little lower, and it will find the melted granite in the form of a fiery vapor or gas-the dry steam of a red-hot liquid, in which the rock-built foundations of "the everlasting hills" melt like icebergs. But this is conjectural and probable, not observable and proved.

Far away from this spinning and perilous globe of ours, at the distance of some 95,000,000 miles, stands the sun. A ray of light, starting from his surface at any given moment, takes eight minutes to reach us, although light runs at the speed of 195,000 miles in a second. The sun is 1,380,000 times as large as the earth, and 355,000 times as heavy; but the stuff of which he is made is just about a fourth part as dense as the average matter of this world. The sun is of as light a substance, taking his whole body, as coal; whereas the earth is twice as heavy as brimstone, striking the mean between the air, the ocean, the dry land, and the internal vapor. The sun has an atmosphere like the carth, or rather he has two. One of them, close upon his solid surface, seems to resemble our own; it bears cloudy bodies in its upper levels. The other is a sort of fiery gas, surrounding the former, kindled and sustained in the calorific and luminous state, no man knows or can conjecture how. Storms in the lower atmosphere are constantly blowing this phosphorescent airy envelope aside, so as to afford us glimpses down into the (comparatively) dark and black recesses beneath. These are the spots on the sun. Galileo inferred the rotation of the sun on his axis from the motions of those spots.

stream, bounded by a film of rock like a soapbubble, carrying an unresting sea in the hollows of its rind, swathed in a soft gauze of air, going round upon itself every day, running round the sun every year; and all that with so much silence, security, and stillness of speed that nobody ever suspects the dread predicament of physical circumstance in which he wakes and sleeps, lives and dies, does good of evil, and passes away to judgment. It is difficult to realize the truth, now that it is told; for the knowledge of the intellect is one thing, and the consent of the whole man is quite another.

Precisely as the earth goes round the sun from year to year, the moon goes round the earth from month to month, and that at a distance of some 240,000 miles; the same lunar side or hemisphere being always turned toward us, although that satellite turns upon her own axis as well as the earth and the sun. The earth is in repose so far as the moon is concerned; it is her sun. The two combined, being as true a unity as any chemical molecule which is composed of two atoms, go round the sun as if they were one; the earth carries her moon with her. So that it is possible, if not probable in the first instance, that the sun, though in repose as to the earth and her moon (and, indeed, to all the planets yet to be mentioned) may be in motion on some vast orbit of his own; an orbit along which he carries all his planetary adherents with him, just as the earth takes her moon round the sun. It is curious to perceive how, not only in the case of our own moon, but in the cases of the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, and actually in those of all the planets considered as the moons of the sun, the Platonic epicycle really holds good. The earth turns on her heel, with the moon held out at arm's length, while she goes round the amphitheatre before the solar eye; so do the other moon-bearers. So does the sun himself upon a vaster arena and before a greater spectator, like another Briareus; holding out his seventeen planets, and nobody knows how many comets, in his hundred hands. The moons, of those solar planets which have them, represent the epi-epicyclical orbits of the Ptolemaic theory.

THE CONVICT'S TALE.

It is curious, and also touching, to notice how often the errors of man are thus the shadows of

truth. Were it not for the preceding shadows, IN the gloomy cell of the condemned were

indeed, the substance would never arrive; and therefore the Ptolemaics of the world are second, in value and in merit, only to epochal discoverers like Copernicus.

Suppose the sun to be represented by a radiant little orb two feet in diameter, in order to bring it within the measure of our eye; then this great gobe of ours, with all its stupendous histories, is no bigger than a full-sized pea in proportion, revolving at the distance of 215 feet. Neptune, the outermost and last discovered of the planets, would stand at the distance of a mile and a quarter from a sun of that imaginary size, and it would be no larger than a cherry. Another cherry at the distance of three-quarters of a mile would stand for Uranus. Saturn would be a small orange at two-fifths of a mile from our two-feet solar body. A middle-sized orange, at the distance of a quarter of a mile, would be his Jupiter. At some 500 feet the nine little planets, commonly called asteroids, probably enough the fragments of an exploded orb, and now moving in a sort of group, would be represented by as many grains of sand. A pin-head, at 327 feet, would do for Mars. Then comes the earth. Still nearer the sun, namely at 142 feet from our present model, revolves Venus, of the dimensions of a pea. And finally little Mercury wheels along his orbit, with a radius of 82 feet, and the dimensions of a mustard seed.

Add the terrestrial moon, the four moons of Jupiter, the ring within ring that whirls round Saturn like an endless moon, the eight ordinary noons of that extraordinary planet, the moons of Uranus and Neptune (yet uncertain in their number), and it is impossible to say how many comets, not to forget the enormous groups or hosts of comparatively small stones or meteors, which are believed to be revolving round the solar centre like pigmy asteroids; and the Copernican conception of the mere constitution of the solar system, as developed by time and toil, is completed. The sun is 882,000 miles in diameter; the earth is 7926; Juno is 79; Saturn, 79,160, and so forth. The earth is more than five times as heavy as water; Saturn is as light as cork. The earth rotates in twenty-four hours; Jupiter in ten. The earth revolves in a year; Mars in a year and ten months; Mercury in about three months; Venus in seven and a half months; Jupiter in eleven years; Saturn in twenty-nine; Uranus in eighty-four; Neptune in a hundred and sixty-four. A summer in Mercury lasts some three weeks; in Neptune forty-one years. Light leaps from the sun to the earth in eight minutes; to Neptune in four hours. In short, the reader has to consider thousands of discovered facts, to carry with him a whole world of indubitable inference, and to study a truly wonderful bringing of the whole machinery, or rather organization, to geometrical law, before he can apprehend how glorious a whole the Copernican astronomy has become.

two persons.

A muscular and powerfully

made man, heavily ironed, sat on a low bench placed in one corner. At a glance an observer would have pronounced him a native of Ireland His head was well-formed, and covered with a thick mass of curling hair, of a light-brown color. The form of his mouth indicated courage and decision, and in the large blue eyes there was a thrilling expression of suffering and de spair, which is never seen among the hardened in crime. It seemed as if the overburdened spirit looked forth from those mirrors of the soul, and in his extremity asked sympathy and consolation from those among whom his fearful lot was cast.

His companion was a Catholic priest, the tones of whose voice, as he spoke in soothing accents to the condemned, were soft and clear as those of a woman.

The prisoner spoke, and his voice sounded dull and hollow. Hope was extinguished in his soul, and all the lighter inflections which express the varied emotions stirring within us, had ceased to vary the monotonous sounds which issued from his lips. A few more hours, and for him Time would have ceased to revolve. What then had he to do with human aspirations-with human joys? Nothing: his fate on earth was known-an outlaw's life, a felon's death!

The prisoner folded his manacled hands over his breast, and said:

"Why should I seek to prolong my wretched existence by asking such a commutation of my sentence? Death is but one pang, whereas solitary confinement for life, to which I should probably be doomed, would be a living torture. To live forever alone! Think what that must be even to a man innocent of crime, and feel how far worse than the bed of Procrustes it must be to one like me. No, holy father, let me die before the time appointed by Nature. Thus let the tender mercies of my race toward me be consummated."

"You are reckless, my son," said the priest, mildly. "Think how far worse it will be to face an offended Judge in your present mood, than to live for repentance.'

"Repentance!" repeated the prisoner, in the same passionless manner; "that is ever the jargon of your cloth, father: you condemn a man without adverting to the motives, which, in his view, often sanctify the act."

I will give you the history of my life, and the conventional forms of society, I keenly felt you may judge me :

I can not deny that in this absorbing object the shrieks of drowning wretches were too often Even as I spoke the baleful light streamed unheeded, while we appropriated their property; far up into the rapidly darkening air; a private but I can truly say that I was never deaf to the signal had been given to one of his men, and voice of entreaty, and frequently drew on my- it was now too late to remonstrate. I rushed self the anger of my father by saving those to my own boat, calling on a boy, who somewhose claims on his spoils sometimes seriously times accompanied me on such occasions, to folinterfered with the profits of the expedition. low. One glance at the ship assured me that He never, however, refused to relinquish prop-in five minutes she would be on the sunken rock erty thus claimed; for he was exceedingly de- over which the light gleamed, and no human sirous of allowing no serious cause of complaint power could prevent her from instantly going to to reach the ears of those who might make him pieces. My boat had weathered many a storm feel the strong arm of authority, even in the as severe as this threatened to be, and I was out-of-the-way place in which he had fixed his fearless as to the result. I resolved to die, or residence. At an early age I considered my-save some of the helpless creatures I had seen self as having no superior in my wild occupa- on the deck of the doomed ship. A whistle tion. The strong energies of my nature had no brought a large Newfoundland dog to my side.