not of our mind is but too evident from the duets before us, for stranger and more lamentable vagaries, and a more pitiable murdering of a fine work, it never fell to our lot to witness. To speak of the arrangement alone, compare the small portion of the first finale, which is here vouchsafed to us, with the admirable and elaborate arrangement of the same finale by Dr. Crotch. The slovenliness and want of effect in the former will be seen in striking contrast with the care and faithful rendering of the original which distinguish the latter. But what are we to say when we find the second finale (a piece of music, as well from its scientific arrangement as from its dramatic treatment, every way worthy of the chef d'œuvre it concludes) transformed, in the merciless hands of the arranger, into a pol-pourri of favourite airs! As if there were no composer better fitted for his purpose-no inventor of favourite airs ready made to his hand, without troubling him either to transpose or curtail-no composer who writes with especial eye to the edification of the young ladies, or none who never introduce into their compositions anything heavier than a waltz, or at most a favourite air! As long as there are such we would beg Mr. Watts to keep off his unhallowed hands from Cimarosa, and from all who have written for posterity.

Six Grand Waltzes. By Miss Mounsey. Clementi, Collard, & Collard, 26, Cheapside.

The Erl King. The poetry by Goethe, with an English translation by W. Bartholomew, Esq. The music by Miss Mounsey.— J. A. Novello, 69, Dean-street, Soho.

IN these waltzes Miss Mounsey has escaped the Strauss mania, which is beginning to make such great ravages, and has apparently taken Beethoven for her model, without, however, being in the slightest degree amenable to the charge of imitating, still less of copying, his phrases or ideas. They are beautiful, and sufficiently ornamented without being flippant, the usual besetting sin of compositions of this class; and being such they deserve the popularity they have by this time, doubtless, obtained.

The Eri King is a composition of a very superior order. The poetry presents considerable difficulties, not with regard to the language, but to the feelings and emotions to be depicted. Over these difficulties the fair composer has triumphed most completely. The introduction is admirable, and most successfully pourtrays the dark and stormy night in which the father is hiding with his "lovely boy." The fears of the child, the blandishments of the " Erl King," the horror of the father on discovering the terrible reality, are all depicted with a power, a truth, and, at the same time, a poetic feeling, which must be in the highest degree delightful to those who wish to see, in the cultivators of art, that earnest striving after ideal excellence, without which art degenerates into a mere idle and sensual gratification.

EXTRACTS FROM FOREIGN JOURNALS.

ZOOLOGY.

ON A NEW GROUP OF INSECTS OF THE FAMILY Mantida.-M. Duméril has communicated some observations on a new group of insects of the family of Mantida. The forms of the species belonging to this family are most singular; some resembling walking sticks, others appearing like green leaves fastened together, and walking thus united. Their head, abdomen, legs, &c., present the greatest varieties of shape, from which they have received names expressive of their reinarkable contour, as Spectres, Phasmes, Phyllis, Mantes or Diables, Pregadious. It is a new group of this family, named, by M. Duméril, Anomides, (Anomide), that M. Lefebvre has described. He has collected several species in Egypt. In a monagraph on the subject, he gives an account of the organization of the two new genera, which he names, the one, Eremiophilus, because he has only met with it in deserts; the other, Heteronutarsis, on account of the tarsi, and especially the nails, being different in the posterior and anterior legs.-Another paper, by the same author, will describe the larva and perfect insect of a new species of Clerus, which he has found in a medullary substance with which the bottom of an insect-tin was covered, and which proceeded from the root of Æschynomene paludosa.

ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EGGS OF Planorbis.—M. Jacquemin has communicated to the Académie des Sciences of Paris new details relative to the development of the eggs of Planorbis. He indicates, each day, the progress of this development, observes on the tenth day the first trace of the formation of the testicle, on the eleventh the pulsations of the heart, and on the thirteenth the action of deglutition. On the fourteenth day the hatching takes place; but pulmonary respiration only commences six or eight days afterwards.-Echo du Monde Savant.

BOTANY.

ON TWO NEW SPECIES OF Spitzelia. We have already more than once had occasion to speak of the works of M. Schultz, Sur les Chicoracées, (Cichoracea). In the first article we described the genus Spitzelia, Delile; and in the second we spoke of another species of the same genus, Crepis radicata, Sieber. Through the kindness of M. Ad. de Jussieu, the author has been enabled to add to this genus two other plants, Picris lyrata, Delile, and Leontodon coronopifolium, Desf. M. Schultz arranges the species of his new genus in two groups, and distinguishes them as follows:

I. Scariositas acheniorum radii basin fere usque in pilos divisa.

1. S. ægyptiaca.-Acheniis disci breve rostratis.

2. S. Sieberi.-Acheniis disci truncatis.

II. Scariositas acheniorum radii cupuliformis, ad medium tantum in pilos divisa.

3. S. lyrata. Caule foliato subramoso (Picris lyrata, Del.)

4. S. coronopifolia.-Scapo simplici, foliis radicalibus breviore (Leontodon coronopifolium, Desf.! Fidelia ?, Schulz, 1834).

GEOLOGY.

ON THE HEAD OF A FOSSIL CAMEL FOUND IN THE FREESTONE IN HE HIMALAYAS.-Up to this time, says M. de Blainville, those who have been most occupied in collecting all that has been done and published on the fossil remains of mammifera have never described any which have been ascertained to belong to the Quadrumana, or to the Camels in the ruminating order, animals, in fact, which seem to be confined within well-marked limits. It is true that Bojanus, having purchased of a merchant three molar teeth of a ruminating animal, which he was assured had been found in Siberia, with the teeth of a Mastodon, thought they belonged to a species of the Camel family, and formed accordingly, on account of some slight differences, a genus under the name of Merycotherium. It is also known that M. Marcel de Serres forwarded, some years ago, to Cuvier, the drawing of a portion of a femur, which he imagined to be that of a Camel; but, even supposing the other bones to have belonged to a Camel, it is not certain that they were really fossil. At present, it may be considered very doubtful whether they were fossil bones of a Camel. It is no longer the case that, when a skull is discovered nearly entire, it is impossible to refer it to the Dromedary or Camel with one hump, as is proved by the drawing M. de Blainville placed before the Académie des Sciences Naturelles, and by the extract from a letter of Mr. Henry Durand, an officer in the service of the East India Company, addressed, on the 14th of April last, to his brother, and which was transmitted to me by the latter. This skull was found in a very hard freestone, or sandstone, obtained, doubtless, like the building stone of India, along the lower Himalayas.

The Academy will perceive, continues M. de Blainville, by the lecture I shall have the honour of delivering, that in the same places has been discovered the head of a mammiferous animal intermediate between the genera Anoplotherium and Palæotherium, of the vicinity of Paris, but of which Mr. Henry Durand has, unfortunately, not sent the drawing; and, lastly, a tooth of a species of Mastodon, which closely resembles Mastodon angustidens, and which, if this resemblance were perfect, would be found in three divisions of the world, Europe, Asia, and America.—Annales des Sciences Naturelles, November, 1836.

MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS.

ON THE RISE AND DECLINE OF ART.-In A. W. Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Literature occurs the following passage:- "Perfection in art and poetry may be compared to the summit of a steep mountain, where a weight that has been rolled up cannot long maintain itself, but immediately rushes down the other side, without stopping until it has reached the bottom. In

its downward course, following the law of gravity, it proceeds quickly and easily, and, inasmuch as it follows its natural inclination, is a pleasing, whilst the laborious ascent is, in some measure, an unpleasing, object. Thus it is that paintings produced at a time when the art was on the decline afford far greater pleasure to the ignorant than those which preceded the period of its perfection." Here the comparison of the rise, height, and decline of an art, to the laborious rolling up of a weight, its short stay at the sum mit, and its easy and rapid descent, is, unfortunately, but too just; the reason, however, assigned for the greater pleasure derived by the ignorant from works of art in decline than from those produced when it is on the road to perfection, appears less so. The following will, perhaps, be found to be nearer the truth :-From the very circumstance of an art not having yet reached perfection, it follows that those engaged in its cultivation are striving after and actually obtaining an upward step in the ascent towards the summit of Parnassus towards the attainment, in other words, of the most successful expression of ideal beauty and superhuman grandeur. In this pursuit all the minor accessories, such as minuteness of detail, excessive polish, and ornament for its own sake, are entirely overlooked, perhaps even estimated below their real value. But these are precisely the qualities which most easily captivate the eyes, ears, and understandings of the ignorant, and are those also which indicate the decline of that art in which they are discovered. After the highest imaginable sublimity and beauty bas been reached, since it is impossible to stand still, we must descend from our laboriously-attained eminence; not, however, in the same direction as we came, for we now rush headlong down the opposite side of the hill; and the nearer we approach the bottom-that is, the more we cultivate the lesser excellencies above mentioned, to the neglect of those which are alone worthy of cultivation in the higher departments of the art so much the more shall we come within the sympathies and capabilities of the vulgar and unenlightened. For multitudes stand gaping with stupid admiration at the bottom of the hill, but few only can appreciate the solitary grandeur which clothes its summit.-T.

PECULIAR ORGANIZATION OF THE GREY CUCKOO (Cuculus canorus, LINN.)-Mr. Levison informs us that he considers the extraordinary habits of the Cuckoo, as regards propagation, to result rather from a deficiency in the organ of Constructiveness than in the portion of the brain assigned to Philoprogenitiveness, which latter propensity he states to be amply developed in the head of this interesting bird. The habits of the species certainly tend to confirm this view of the matter; for it has been observed by Mr. John E. Gray, and others, that the Cuckoo frequently returns to the nest after having deposited its egg there, and the anxiety of the bird to obtain a proper receptacle for the egg is decidedly considerable; while, on the other hand, that the Cuckoo has never even made the remotest attempt at building a nest, is an incontrovertible fact. Mr. Levison's observations on the development of the Cuckoo's head were first alluded to by that gentleman in a conversation with his friend Dr. Spurzheim, and were communicated to us during a recent visit to Mr. L.-ED.

CHURCH MUSIC.-It has been said, that the lower classes have, in general, no taste for harmony; and the little inaccuracies and blunders of selftaught musicians have been the subject of ill-timed merriment. But we

have not the slightest doubt but it is the want of support and patronage of the better informed, and not from incapability on the part of the performers, that prevents their attaining greater excellence than is at present the case. We can conceive no more efficient mode of raising church music-the highest style to its proper eminence in England, than the judicious education of singers in country churches, either by professed musicians or amateurs. In every church there should be a good organ, and the salary of the organist should never be lower than £100., though at present we fear that few even of our cathedral organists are allowed more than this. There would then be some competition amongst real musicians to obtain so honourable a situation. But, of course, if the organist is to have a good salary, he must not expect to find his situation a sinecure. He ought to be required to instruct the choir at least three times a week, in singing psalm-tunes, anthems, &c. These ought to be selected from the sterling works of the old masters, as Purcell Handel, Gibbons, Croft, and other true church composers. The ears of the initiated would not then, as at present, be tormented by hearing men with cracked voices singing through their noses, and, as a matter of course, out of tune. As long as there is an organ all goes on tolerably well, but without the assistance of this sublime instrument, each performer plays and sings according to his own fancy, ad libitum! If every country gentleman and clergyman were imbued with even a respectable taste for church music, and were willing to instruct those whom they deem their inferiors, this state of things would not long exist.-EDS.

THE EVILS OF FASHION IN MUSIC.-The two following extracts satirize admirably the absurd custom so prevalent among the amateurs of this country of buying any thing and every thing which they hear performed in public. The first is from an article by Dr. Hodges, in the Musical World: "It is related of the far-famed Farinelli, that, on his first appearance in this country, in the year 1724, the effects which his surprising talents had upon the audience were ecstasy, rapture, enchantment! The first note he sang was taken with such delicacy, swelled by degrees to such an amazing volume, and afterwards diminished to a mere point, that it was applauded for full five minutes. There was, doubtless, in this case, a strong predisposition to be pleased: yet there must have been something extraordinarily fascinating in the performance of this single note to have called forth such unprecedented applause. Neither the composer nor the poet could by possibility have claimed much of it. It is, indeed, almost to be regretted that a singer has such power; for it has not invariably been exerted in a beneficial direction. Hence it has many times happened that, after an enraptured metropolitan assembly has been fascinated by the tasteful performance of some trashy composition, the whole country has been deluged with copies of a production only to be rendered tolerable by the exquisite performer with whom it originated. The detrimental effect upon the interests of science and taste may be presumed, in such instances, to be inversely as the pecuniary benefit of the singer and the music-seller."-The next is an extract from a letter by an accomplished German musician, now in London :-"The compositions of Thalberg are of a lofty character, and bear eminent tokens of severe study: such, moreover, is their difficulty, that many public players would be incapable of getting through the notes, far more of executing them in the inimitable style of the composer. I must, therefore, confess that the present de