horses are probably not killed, but only stunned, They are drowned, from the impossibility of rising amid the prolonged struggle between the other horses and the eels.

We had little doubt, that the fishing would ter minate by killing successively all the animals engaged; but by degrees, the impetuosity of this unequal com bat diminished, and the wearied gymnoti dispersed. They require a long rest, and abundant nourishment, to repair what they have lost of galvanic force. The mules and horses appear less frightened, their manes are no longer bristled, and their eyes express less dread, The gymuoti approach timidly the edge of the marsh, where they are taken by means of small harpoons fastened to long cords. When the cords are very alry, the Indians feel no shock in raising the fish into the air. In a few minutes we had five large eels, the greater part of which were but slightly wounded. Some were taken by the same means toward the evening.

The temperature of the waters, in which the gymnoti habitually live, is from 26° to 27°. Their -electric force diminshes, it is said, in colder waters; and it is remarkable, that in general, as a celebrated naturalist has already observed, animals endowed with electromotive organs, the effects of which are sensible to man, are not found in the air, but in a fluid that is a conductor of electricity. The gymnotus is the largest of electrical fishes. I measured -some, that were from five feat to five feet three inches dong; and the Indians assert, that they have seen still longer. We found, that a fish of three feet ten inches long weighed twelve pounds. The transverse diameter of the body, without reckoning the anal fin, which is elongated in the form of a keel, was three inches five lines. The gymnoti of Cano de Bera axç

of a fine olive green. The under part of the head is yellow mingled with red. Two rows of small yellow spots are placed symmetrically along the back, from the head to the end of the tail. Every spot contains an excretory aperture. In consequence, the skin of the animal is constantly covered with a mucous matter, which, as Volta has proved, conducts electricity twenty or thirty times better than pure water. It is in general somewhat remarkable, that no electrical fish, yet discovered, (of which there are only seven) in the different parts of the world, is covered with scales."

What follows is a very striking picture of the scenery on the river Apure, down which the travellers went in a boat to the Oroonoko.

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"Sometimes the river is bordered by forests on each side, and forms a straight canal of a hundred and fifty toises broad. The manner in which the trees are disposed is very remarkable. We first find bushes of sauso, forming a kind of hedge four feet high; and appearing as if they had been clipped by the hand of man. A copse of cedars, brazillettoes, and lignum vitæ, rises behind this hedge. Palm trees are rare; we saw only a few scattered trunks of the thorny piritu and corozo. The large quadrupeds of those regions, the tigers, tapirs, and pecaris, have made openings in the hedge of sausos, which we have just described. Through these the wild animals pass, when they come to drink at the river. As they fear but little the approach of a boat, we had the pleasure of seeing them pace slowly along the shore, till theyi disappeared in the forest, which they entered by one of the narrow passes left here and there between the bushes. I confess that these scenes, which were often repeated, had ever for me a peculiar attraction. The pleasure they excite, is not owing solely to the in

terest which the naturalist takes in the objects of his study; it is connected with a feeling common to all men, who have been brought up in the habits of civilization. You find yourself in a new world, in the midst of untamed and savage nature. Now it is the jaguar, the beautiful panther of America, that appears upon the shore; and now the hocco with its black plumage and its tufted head, that moves slowly along the sausoes. Animals of the most different classes succeed each other. "Esse como en el Paraiso,' said our pilot, an old Indian of the mission.

"When the shore is of considerable breadth, the hedge of sanso remains at a distance from the river. In this intermediate ground, we see crocodiles, sometimes to the number of eight or ten, stretched on the sand: Motionless, the jaws opened at right angles, they repose by each other, without displaying any of those marks of affection observed in other animals that live in society. The troop separates as soon as they quit the shore. It is, however, probably composed of one malé only, and many females; for, as Mr. Descourtils, who has so much studied the crocodiles of Saint Domingo, observed, before me, the males are rare, because they kill one another in fighting during the season of their loves. These monstrous reptiles are so numerous, that throughout the whole course of the river we had almost at every instant five or six in view. Yet at this period the swelling of the Rio Apure was scarcely perceived; and consequently hundreds of crocodiles were still buried in the mud of the Savannahs. About four in the afternoon, we stopped to measure a dead crocodile, that the waters had thrown on the shore. It was only sixteen feet eight inches long; some days after Mr. Bonpland found another, a male, twentytwo feet three inches long. In every zone, in Ame

rica as in Egypt, this animal attains the same size. The species so abundant in the Apure, the Oroonoko, and the Rio de la Magdalena, is not a cayman, or alligator, but a real crocodile, with feet dentated at the external edges, analogous to that of the Nile.. When it is recollected, that the male cnters the age of puberty only at ten years, and that its length is then eight feet, we may presume, that the crocodile measured by Mr. Bonpland was at least twenty-eight, years old. The Indians told us, that at San Ferando, scarcely a year passes without two or three grown up persons, particularly women, who fetch water from the river, being drowned by these carnivorous lizards.. They related to us the history of a young girl of Uritucu, who, by singular intrepedity and presence. of mind, saved herself from the jaws of a crocodile. When she felt herself seized, she sought the eyes of the animal, and plunged her fingers into them with such violence, that the pain forced the crocodile to let her loose, after having bitten off the lower part of her left arm. The girl, notwithstanding the enor mous quantity of blood she had lost, happily reached the shore, swimming with the hand she had still left:

The movements of the crocodile of the Apure are abrupt and rapid when it attacks any object; but it moves with the slowness of a salamander, when it is not excited by rage or hunger. The animal, in running, makes a rustling noise, that seems to proceed from the rubbing of the scales of its skin against one another. In this movement it bends its back, and appears higher on its legs than when at rest.

Crocodiles are excellent swimmers; they go with facility against the most rapid current. It appeared to me, however, that in descending the river, they had some difficulty in turning quickly about. large dog, that had accompanied us in our journey.

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from Caraccas to the Rio Negro, was one day pursued in swimming, by an enormous crocodile, which had nearly reached him, when the dog escaped its enemy by turning round suddenly and swimmingagainst the current. The crocodile performed the same movement, but much more slowly than the dog, which happily gained the shore.

"The crocodiles of the Apure find abundant nourishment in the chiguires, (the thick-nosed tapir of naturalists) which live fifty or sixty together in troops on the banks of the river. These unfortunate animals, as large as our pigs, have no weapons of defence ;{ they swim somewhat better than they run; yet they become the prey of the crocodiles in the water, as of the tigers on land. It is difficult to conceive, how, persecuted by two powerful enemies, they can become so numerous; but they breed with the same rapidity as the cobayas, or little guinea-pigs, which come to us from Brazil."

History of the unhappy Lunatic.

From Contributious to the Science of Criminal Jurisprudence. By Dr. Schmid, of Jena, Counsellor of the Court of Appeal. Louisa Thicle was the daughter of a man healthy in mind and body, and of a mother sometimes subject to hysterics, and who, particularly during her preg nancy with this infant, could not divest herself of a continual melancholy. Louisa was, when a child, rather weakly, but soon showed symptoms of understanding and comprehension, which gave her parents great pleasure. She was sent to school in her seventh year, and cultivated with great eagerness every branch of instruction; religion in particular had the greatest charms for her; an inclination which her master, perhaps too much cherished in one of so tender an