marked gaping towards the middle of the beak. Only two species have been noticed, viz. one from Pondicherry and one from Coromandel. Mr. S. has added nothing to the few particulars already known of Scopus umbretta, Cancroma cochlearia, and the Platalea, or Spoon-bills. Platalea pygmæa, first noticed by Bancroft, and since somewhat carelessly adopted by systematical writers, seems rather to belong to the genus Todus.

From the preceding retrospect, it will be sufficiently manifest that, in conducting this portion of his editorial labours, Mr. S. has bestowed much more attention on the recent alterations introduced into the nomenclature, than on the dispositions and habitudes of the several species; that he has evinced more solicitude to subdivide than to euphonize his catalogue; and that he has occasionally overlooked some important facts. The plates, which are fifty-two in number, are executed with the same care and fidelity as heretofore; and the general tone of the style is perspicuous and dignified, though not immaculate with respect to purity and accuracy. In the course of our perusal, we have particularly noted the frequent recurrence of the whole for all, as, the whole of the parts are: but a more glaring trespass is a change of pronoun or concord in the same sentence, as, many attempts have been made to domesticate it by hatching THEIR eggs. The males are polygamous, and fight desperately with each other for the females; about April the latter DEPOSITES HER eggs. It is stated to be abundant at Hudson's Bay, &c. ARE good eating the external row of feathers ARE not each feather being marked at THEIR tips.— Moreover, we cannot applaud such inelegant suppressions of the preposition or pronoun as, worthy the industry countries they inhabit. The young run about immediately they are excluded, &c. Pugnaceous, referrible, vermillion, anneleides, Hillaire, and a few other French misnomers, are instances of unscholar-like orthography. Yet we cannot close our remarks without reminding our readers that the task, which Mr. Stephens has undertaken, is of no ordinary extent or difficulty; that different ornithologists will view this portion of its execution with different eyes; and that, whatever may be its imperfections or blemishes, it is the result of careful study, and will not derogate from his former reputation.

the

ART.

ART. III. A Second Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor to Constantinople, between the Years 1810 and 1816. With a Journal of the Voyage by the Brazils and Bombay to the Persian Gulf. Together with an Account of the Proceed ings of His Majesty's Embassy under his Excellency Sir Gore Ousely, Bart. K.L.S. By James Morier, Esq. late His Majesty's Secretary of Embassy, and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Persia. With Two Maps, and Engravings. 4to. pp. 435. 31. 13s. 6d. Boards. Longman and Co.

THE

HE former journey of Mr. Morier into Persia was noticed by us with applause in vol. lxxiii. p. 1., and was received by the country with that warmth of approbation to which it had so many titles. Persia was then new ground to the living race of travellers; and to have described its surface with the brush of the painter and the chain of the land-surveyor, — to have explored its manners with the access of rank and the intimacy of humanity, to have investigated its monuments with the learning of an antiquary, and to have reviewed its literature with the selection of taste, all this was not likely to be the lot of one man. Mr. Morier, however, has high claims to excellence in each of these departments; and if this second journey has not all the novelty, the grace, the freshness, the originality, and the stimulancy of the preceding, yet it furnishes abundant materials of investigation to the antiquary, of exposition to the Scripture-critic, of record to the historian, of instruction to the traveller, of apposition to the geographer, and of amusement to the lounger. The numerous drawings and maps also condense and enliven the descriptions of the text, which especially dwells on the local scenery and manners of Persia.

The entire work is divided into twenty-five chapters, of which the first two may be passed over as only preliminary : they describe a round-about voyage to Rio di Janeiro and Bombay; and at length they land the author, and his companions of the Persian embassy, at Bushire. In the third, the author departs from Bushire, 27th March, 1810, and, following the route travelled by Sir Harford Jones, proceeds onward by short journies toward Shiraz. The Mamacenni, a tribe already known to Quintus Curtius, are described; and various inferences are drawn which are creditable to the authority of that historian. Sculptures in front of the caves of Shapour are delineated: but the colossal statue within was to be reserved for the subsequent detection of LieutenantColonel Johnson. (See our last Number, p. 39.)

Chapter iv. is consecrated to Shiraz; and a drawing occurs of the bower or rather summer-house of Mosellay, and

of the tomb of the poet Saadi. The warm baths are visited ; and the shock given to Persian feelings of delicacy is noticed, when the indifference was observed with which many of the English gentlemen had stripped to bathe: absolute nudity being with the Persians an object of horror, and supposed to indicate insanity or profligacy.

The ruins of Persepolis are revisited in the next chapter, and some important excavations are described; especially the discovery of the commencement of that inscription in arrowhead characters, of which Le Brun had copied the termin-ation: but of this no engraving is given. The arrow-head letters, if the investigations of Hager and Lichtenstein may be trusted, are but variations of the Hebrew alphabet; in which language the Persepolitan inscriptions are likely to have been composed: for the province of Elam, or Elymais, in which Persepolis stands, was altogether colonized by a Jewish clan, of which, in the time of Darius, Arioch was the chieftain; and the Persepolitan structures were erected by one of the Jewish sovereigns of Persia, Cyrus, or Darius, or Artaxerxes. Sir William Ouseley, (Jehan-Ara, p. 21.) we apprehend, is somewhat rash in pronouncing Ardeshir, or Artaxerxes, to be the Ahasuerus of Scripture; and Bishop Usher advances a more probable hypothesis in considering Ahasuerus to be Darius Hystaspes, making Vashti the Atossa and Esther the Artistona of Herodotus. Jemshid is perhaps the oriental name of Cambyses, the father of Cyrus; who is not unlikely to have superintended these Persepolitan structures, while his son was engaged in the conduct of armies.

Mr. Morier has allotted his sixth chapter chiefly to the manners of the Persians, and notices their perpetual coincidence with those of the Jews; a circumstance not extraordinary when it is considered that the entire dynasty of Persian sovereigns, from Cyrus to the Darius whom Alexander dethroned, were of Jewish extraction and Jewish religion. The great fact cannot be too often repeated, because it has not made its due impression on Sir John Malcolm, and the other historians of primæval Persia, that the Feast of Purim was annually celebrated in the temple at Jerusalem, to commemorate that massacre of the idolatrous priesthood of Persia which Darius at the instigation of Artistona, or Esther, had commanded; and this proves that Darius was acknowleged by the priests of Jerusalem as a follower of their religion, a worshipper of Jehovah. Palestine was to the Persian empire what Tibet is to the contiguous nations, a holy land, independently governed by its priesthood, but the acknowleged

depo

depository of the true faith. Ezra, or Zoroaster, was as religiously venerated throughout Persia as in Judea. Of the present desolation of the country, a remarkable instance occurs the district of Merdasht is stated now to contain seventeen villages, whereas, according to Le Brun, it contained in his time eight hundred and eighty; and towns of a different order must surely be designated by the same name, to account for a diversity of calculation so enormous. The population of Shiraz is estimated at 19,000, on the principle of five to a house.

On the subject of climate we have this information:

'From the 28th to the 31st May, the heat was excessive, the thermometer at about two o'clock, in our different tents, varying from 98° to 103°. The Persians allowed this heat to be uncommon, but still talked of it as trifling when compared with the great heats of summer. Although it was very oppressive, yet we did not find it so relaxing as the heat of India. All our furniture had suffered extremely; mahogany boxes that had stood the climate of India, and which had crossed the equator several times unwarped, here cracked. Ivory split, our mathematical rulers curled up, and the mercury in the artificial horizons over-ran the boxes which contained it. We found the nights cool, and the mornings quite cold, the thermometer varying sometimes 30° between the greatest heat and the greatest cold. The difference was sufficiently sensible to enable us to comprehend the full force of the complaint which Jacob made unto Laban: In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night. Gen. xxxi. 40.'

Chapter vii. details a second visit to Persepolis, and contains an engraving of a charioteer driving two horses. It furnishes also supplementary observations on the ruins at Morghaub, which were described in the former tour. The black-breasted partridge, a bird which might be naturalized in this country, is praised as a table-luxury, resembling moor-game.

We are next brought to Ispahan, of which an engraved view is given, and of which the population is estimated at 60,000 persons. An excursion was undertaken to the shaking pillars at Guladown; and a much more important pilgrimage to an Atesh-gah, or place of fire, which the natives still consider as a work of the Guebres, or Hebrews. It stands at the top of a hill composed of several strata of native rock, and is approached by a path to the eastward. On the summit of the natural elevation are some old buildings composed of mud-bricks, baked in the sun, but of very large size, between which are layers of reeds without any apparent cement. style of building seems to have accompanied the Abrahamites from Babel into Midian, into Ægypt, and into Persia. An emblematic worship of fire may be traced early among them;

L 3

This

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for instance, in the fire carried before the Israelites (Exodus, xii. 21. and 22.) during their march through the wilderness, and in the fire kindled by Moses (Exodus, xxxiii. 9.) to announce the presence of God.

In the ninth chapter, Julfa is visited, and the state of the Armenian church is detailed. Generally, these Christians act in secret alliance with the Russian government, and would gladly see a Mohammedan superseded by a Trinitarian sovereign.

The author quits Ispahan in the tenth chapter. Here he mentions an utensil of which we can speak as being extremely convenient, the writer of this article having during many years possessed one, namely, the Persian lantern. Mr. M. thus describes it, and illustrates his account by an engraving :

These lanterns are worthy of notice from the singularity and convenience of their contrivance. The top and bottom are made of copper and let into each other. The former, which is generally ornamented with small figures, is pierced with holes, and has a handle; the latter contains a socket for the candle or taper. Between the two there is a serpentine wire, which when extended makes the lantern a yard long, more or less, according to its magnitude; and over this they fix a pirahaun, or shirt of white wax-cloth, which casts a considerable light when a candle is placed within.'

In Mr. Morier's drawing, the handle crosses the lid, and is perpendicular over the flame: but in the lantern which once illuminated our proceedings, and the depth of which did not much exceed twelve inches, the handle was fixed by a turning pivot to the lid, and when in use projected sideways, which secured the holder from burning his fingers; and although the pirahaun, or cylindrical piece of elastic lawn, had been moulded on a screw, and probably confined by a spiral wire in order to indent the requisite folds during the process of sizing or waxing it, yet the wire had been wholly withdrawn, The facility with which these lanterns subside into a flat candlestick, when they are placed on a table, and with which they again expand or drop into a lantern, on being lifted, renders them particularly fit to cross a court-yard, or any short distance exposed to wind. If our Birmingham or Sheffield manufacturers were to imitate these lanterns, the demand would surely be considerable.

The eleventh chapter ushers in Teheran, where the ambassador had his public audience of the king. Here the troublesome ceremonies of the Persian court are detailed, and their sacred dramas are characterized. In the next section, some attempts to introduce vaccination are recounted, and

some