tenure of property uncertain; so that, after the lapse of twenty years, the Europeans settled in the Mofussil or interior of India are not more numerous than they were when the door was opened to their admission! 'A new era has been inaugurated.' The country craves such improvement as will enable it to enrich England, and enhance her importance and strength. The voice of the soil cries out for the labour that shall render every acre fruitful; the people are athirst for that elevation in the social scale which can only be wrought by European contact; and these demands will be complied with. The House of Commons, alive to its duty, has elicited, through the medium of a committee of its own members, a number of facts which, operating as the train communicating with a mine, have exploded and blown to atoms the fallacies which constituted the intrenchments and chevaux de frise of the old government. The native of Great Britain now should know that there are 'fresh fields and pastures new open to his spirit of industry; and it behoves the press to direct his attention to a source of wealth so much more certain to yield good results than the richest mines of New Caledonia, although it may possibly demand a more patient effort. It will hardly be credited, but it is nevertheless an established fact, that in many parts of India the climate is perfectly European, and the land of wonderful fertility. In one part, the climate is infinitely superior to anything we have in England.'

We admit the general insalubrity of the plains of India; we grant there is no available arable land, even in the mountainous districts of Kumaon, the Punjaub, the Deccan or Chota Nagpoor, the Cossyah and the Jynteah Hills; we do not refuse to believe that the valleys of the Punjaub, the Eastern Dhoon, and Pegu, are injurious to the European constitution; we concede that in the Meerut division of the Northwest Provinces, in Mysore, and in Lower Bengal, Europeans cannot safely labour in the open air. We assent to all these propositions, on the faith of the representations of employés of the East India Company; and yet, after this magnanimous string of concessions, we are prepared to shew that myriads of acres of excellent land, in salubrious localities, invite the European to India.

regions. A system of terracing is, however, resorted to, and the cultivation will admit of being greatly extended. At the lower part of the mountains, easily accessible from Calcutta, Dr Hooker reports that there are very great capabilities indeed' for the growth of tea. He describes the climate as 'exceedingly healthy' for Europeans, and is of opinion that their presence would tend to the creation of an immense trade between Tibet and India. Dr J. R. Martin, a man of great renown for his treatment of tropical diseases, is also much prepossessed in favour of the climate of the Himalaya, at an elevation of 4000 or 5000 feet above the level of the sea, and especially if the mountains be isolated. At the base of the Himalaya, and in plains of easy access to the mountains, there is wide scope for farms and settlements, over which Europeans could exercise control for several months in the year, betaking themselves to the hills during the very hot weather, when active operations are suspended. Major-general Tremenheere of the Bengal army is equally favourable to the climate, and speaks very confidently of the wonderful field presented in many parts of India for mining operations; and in this respect he is earnestly supported by Captain Ouchterlony. The country yields iron, tin, copper, coal, gold, and diamonds; but as yet it has been very little worked. In addition to the hilly districts above named, we may instance Nepaul, Myneput, the Pulneys, Shevarroys, and Coorg all presenting openings for capital.

In the plains of Hindostan, as well as the mountains, there appears to be a fine avenue for enterprise. The growth of cotton and sugar, coffee, hemp, wheat, and fifty other commodities, may be largely promoted by the aid of European capital applied to the introduction of a better system of agriculture. The application of science to agriculture has made such progress in Europe during the last half-century, that the extraordinary results produced are,' says General Tremenheere, 'a standing rebuke to all authorities connected with India, where not even a first move has been made in that direction.' The personal appearance of the indigo-planter is quite sufficient to estab lish the healthiness of an out-of-door life even in Lower Bengal, where hundreds of Englishmen might be employed as overseers and agriculturists.

But it is not only as capitalists that Europeans will now find an ample field in India. The perfidy and incompetency of the natives of India have become so glaring, that the government, from a sense of duty to itself, as well as to the country, will henceforth readily accept the services of respectable natives of Great Britain. Their employment in the courts of law, and the superintending of the police all over the country, will go a great way towards improvement in the administration of justice; and the interests of native and European will become the more thoroughly identified by a large infusion of the latter wholesome agency in the direction of an extended system of internal communication. There is no denying that, rich as the soil of India may be, and cordially as it may invite the enterprising European to devote his time, his money, and his talent to the development of its resources, a great increase in the number of roads and railways must forthwith take place. Nor in roads only; canals are needed, and a system of irrigation upon an enlarged scale. In many wide districts, irrigation is necessary to the

Take, for instance, the Neilgherries, or Blue Mountains, north of the presidency of Madras. According to the testimony of a most experienced and conscientious officer, Captain John Ouchterlony, of the Madras Engineers, the climate, which is the first consideration, is 'infinitely superior to anything we have in England.' Its quality was tested by a Highland regiment -the 74th-which passed many months in the hills, the men being always engaged in the open air, assisting to build barracks, cultivating gardens, and brewing their own beer. Sickness was quite unknown among them. There are 200,000 acres of land in the Neilgherries available for farms or residences, and the soil is adapted to the growth of almost any European and every Asiatic kind of produce. Cotton, coffee, and tea may be grown in great quantities. There is a deficiency of wood-fuel; but peat is generally distributed over the entire range of the hill tract. It was discovered by an Irishman, who had an eye to the bogs. He reaped no reward for his discovery, but to the inhabitants it is a great benefit and blessing. A cart-load of nearly half a ton may be bought for a shilling. Of European productions, the most abund-cultivation of cotton, and cotton, to England, is, we ant are precisely those which are most needed, and their cultivation may be immensely extended. Potatoes, wheat, barley-for malting-hops, grasses for hay, and dairy produce for thousands of settlers, constitute the staples of the hills.

Next to the Neilgherries are the Himalaya. There is not much level ground in any part of those lofty

know, everything. With these improvements, all of which demand European labour, and some amendment in the administration of justice, India will soon offer to the intending emigrant of the middle class an almost boundless field of enterprise. He has only to arm himself with a resolution to lead a temperate life, avoiding spiritous liquors as much as possible,

By and by, the country-people, as the villagers call them, come dropping in; young blooming women with showy ribbons, and flowers round their faces of a hue which cast even the carnation of their cheeks into the shade; sobered-down matrons, whose dressy days are over, with chubby tanned children keeping close behind them: these enter the church, and take their seats; while their fathers, husbands, and brothers stand about outside, talking, till they see the minister go in. One or two carriages, several gigs, and two or three carts-the last with cushions improvised by stuffing sacks with straw-drive into the village, and Mr Boyd went on again: 'It's ten years sin' he's send their occupants to join the stream slowly flowing been at hame, Mrs Armour-glancing at her black churchward. From corners of the village creep forth dress-an' it's just ten years sin' I didna ken how the aged poor-always more conspicuous in a country tae tell ye that your gudeman had left ye; an' now' church than in a town one-the men with lyart-he motioned his hand towards the chaise. haffets and staff, and the coats which have gone in and out of the chest and the fashion for so many long years; and the little bent round-shouldered old women, with big black bonnets-affectingly decentof a long-gone-by date, worsted shawls, and bunchy umbrellas. From below thick white borders, the little face of age peeps, seamed and withered.

a father; if she wished to go out, she need not punish them by sending them to look after him, he could get M'Coll when he wanted company. M'Coll knew what a man wanted; he did not come in with a face as long as the steeple;' and so on.

But to do him, or perhaps rather his disease, justice, an outbreak of this kind was only occasional; for the most part, he was quiet and passive.

The greater his debility became, M'Coll's attentions grew the more constant, till at last he was a daily visitor, and even, when it became necessary, insisted on relieving Mrs Armour by taking turns of sitting up at night with him. Jeanie did not much like M'Coll, but she had no choice, and so far as fatigue was concerned, the relief was most welcome. Although, how this man should tie himself, hour by hour, to the sick-bed of a weak, querulous man, evidently dying, who had not even the claim of relationship on him, was more than she could account for; certainly, she thought, he must be a kind-hearted man in reality, although she could not like him, and would have preferred another sort of companion for her husband's last days.

It was not long, however, before the riddle was read to her very plainly and rather unexpectedly.

One day, George seemed to be more excited than usual, and told his wife that he expected M'Coll in the evening, and that she might go to bed as early as she liked, for he would not want anything, and she would be the better for a sound sleep.

It is amazing how faint a breath will blow into life the embers of dying affection. These latter words of George Armour's fell upon the weary, crushed spirit of his wife like dew upon the withered grass. Her love for her husband was just about expiring of sheer starvation, and she grasped at these words as if her ingenuity could make a meal of them. Poor creature, so little was she accustomed to any consideration from this quarter, that these few words, which anybody might have said from mere humanity, actually brightened her eye, and made her step lighter. It was a brief flutter of hope-that night she sounded the depths of her husband's heartlessness. True to his appointment, M'Coll came, and Jeanie observed in him that slight, and, on the part of the individual, unconscious difference of manner which distinguishes the person having business in view, from the same person with thoughts wholly free. Jeanie was not what is called a sharp, clever woman, far less a jealous, suspicious one, yet she could not help thinking there was something more than usual to take place between these two men.

Her husband, for the sake of thorough ventilation, occupied the largest room in the house-not very large after all-she herself slept in what was little more than a hole in the wall opening from this apartment, and was in the habit of leaving her door half open, that she might hear readily, and be instantly on the alert if wanted.

As had been proposed, she had gone early to bed; but owing to her thoughts wandering over many things, it was long before she slept; however, sleep at last she did. She was a light sleeper at any time, and now it was not long before she suddenly awoke, owing to the glare of a candle being shed over her face; it was just at the moment, however, that it was being withdrawn, and she saw M'Coll in the act of moving away with it in his hand. He crossed the room to George's bedside, and she heard him say: She's as sound as a top.' Her curiosity was excited, and raising herself gently on her elbow, she listened, the door being turned round on its hinges, she could see through the interstice. George was sitting up in bed with an inexplicable expression on his thin wasted face. Jeanie gazed at him with a feeling of profound and unutterable pity. Many times, as she had sat

watching him, her heart had sprung to her lips, and her feelings nearly burst forth; but knowing the stinging repulse she was likely to meet, she kept them to herself. But the afternoon's gleam of kindnessperhaps it might be the beginning of a change. M'Coll, too, came within the range of her vision as she watched. She saw him steady a small stool on the edge of the bed, spread a sheet of paper on it, set ink close by, and move the candle nearer.

Then George asked: 'Have you got witnesses?' 'All right,' replied M'Coll; when we are ready for them, I can have them in, and get their names down in a second.'

'Begin, then,' said Armour.

And M'Coll, taking the pen, began to write, to George's dictation, what Jeanie instantly discovered to be his will. She listened to the end, and heard him bequeath all that he had to his loving and faithful friend, Simon M'Coll, as if neither she nor her children had been in existence. This, then, was his kindness, his consideration! She saw M'Coll assist him up into a position to sign the document, and give him the pen for that purpose, when, for her children's sake, although neither grasping nor very courageous, she rose, and, in her long white night-dress, glided across the floor. The men were so occupied, that neither of them observed her till she laid her hand on her husband's arm, and said: 'George, if you have no regard for me, think of the children, your own flesh and blood. Will you go direct to the other world with a piece of iniquity like that to answer for?' and she pointed to the paper his hand hung over. Then, turning to the other, she said: 'M'Coll, you want witnesses. I am here to witness that you mean to rob the widow and the orphan.' The pen dropped from George's hand, and M'Coll grew pale. Her appearance was so unexpected and so ghost-like, and her voice so soft and solemn, that these men, hardened though they were, cowered before her. A few moments passed, and M'Coll, lifting the useless paper, said: 'I suppose, Armour, I may as well go?'

'Yes, go now,' replied George; and come back to-morrow night, and we'll see what's to be done -I'll think over it.'

M'Coll slunk away; he had still enough of manhood left in him to be ashamed. When he returned the following evening, Mrs Armour led him to her husband's bedside; and there he saw those handsome features fixed and ghastly in death. He turned quickly away-he did not like to look in dead men's faces. George Armour had been quite in his usual state of health till four o'clock that afternoon, when he fell asleep, and never woke again.

Now, my story is really done, except that I may say that Jeanie found that what her husband had left would make her independent in a moderate way; and that her children grew up to be a comfort and an honour to her.

THE WORM-WORLD.

UNTIL a period comparatively recent, the freshest tyro in zoology would have experienced little difficulty in defining the difference between an animal and a plant. Either the distinction of Linnæus, which, while admitting organisation and vitality to the vegetable world, reserved voluntary motion and sensation as the peculiar endowment of animals, might have been adopted; or the more practical distinction of the greatest of all comparative anatomists, John Hunter, which assigned a mouth and stomach as invariable characteristics of animal life. But as the study of microscopic anatomy revealed an unexpected degree of organisation extending throughout the most minute

divisions of both the animal and vegetable kingdoms, these distinctions were gradually abandoned. Plants, it was found, possessed, in their absorbent pores and cells, organs analogous to the mouth and stomach of animals; while not only did a greater number of the latter appear destitute of the power of locomotion, but several species of plants possessed it to a considerable degree. The question was then attempted to be resolved by a chemical distinction. Animals were said to exhale carbonic acid, and plants oxygen; but this test, although correct as regards the more highly developed representatives of either kingdom, completely breaks down when applied to their inferior species. There are plants that eliminate nothing but carbonic acid, while certain animals exhale only oxygen. This unexpected complexity led to a more careful investigation of the subject, and the result has been the conclusion, that, to use the words of Professor Owen, animals and plants are not two natural divisions, but are specialised members of one and the same group of organised beings.'

Certain practical distinctions exist, however, for our guidance, even among the confused occupants of the boundaries of either order. Where the form of organisation is merely a simple cell, requiring a strong microscopic power to reveal its presence, an animal nature is presumed, provided the object displays contractility, and maintains itself insoluble in acetic acid. The diminutive being that corresponds to this humble test is known as the gregarina, and was first observed about thirty years ago, a parasitic inhabitant of various insects. Its animal character was far from receiving immediate recognition. By some zoologists, it was held to be the egg of an insect; by others, a stray unvitalised globule; while a third party considered it purely vegetable. Its true nature was at length admitted, and although destitute of mouth and stomach, circulatory, respiratory, or nervous systems, and only nourished by absorption, its contractility and insolubility, combined with a close resemblance to animal embryos destined for a higher development, justify its elevation out of the vegetable kingdom. The gregarina is not only of interest as representing the most rudimentary example of an animal, but also from forming the lowest type of the entozoic, or, as we have familiarly called it, the wormworld.

The extensive distribution of entozoa, or parasitical animals, throughout the various divisions of the animal kingdom, has been only recently appreciated. Every animal is now believed to be infested with some variety or other. In man, no fewer than eighteen different kinds have been observed-a number not so much due to any special liability, as to better means of observation in his case.* They are met with in insects (for instance, the bee), fishes, reptiles, and birds, and in mammals both tame and in a state of nature. They are not limited to a particular locality, but push their way into such secluded and sensitive regions as the brain, lungs, liver, heart, and eyes. Their vitality is very powerful, and enables them to resist the effects of extreme cold and extreme heat beyond any other class of animals. The species which infest the Baltic herring preserved

in ice, have been made, upon the application of heat, to exhibit readily symptoms of life. The wheat parasite which produces the diseased condition of that grain well known as cockle, revives under moisture, although dried and apparently dead for a series of years.

every species are adapted to its destined locality, we From a knowledge of the law that the functions of should not have looked for a high degree of organisation among entozoa. Solely nourished by the digested food of other animals, their assimilating power is naturally simple. Excluded from air, they require no respiratory organs, and always maintaining the same position, they are quite independent of any

means of locomotion.

and hollow. The members of the latter division are They are usually divided into two classes, the solid the most numerous, the more highly developed, and the most frequent, if least troublesome, subjects of medical treatment; but instead of pursuing the subdivisions of either order, we shall select such characthat impart most interest to the species in the animal teristic examples as may best illustrate those features There are two great representatives of this family, economy. First, of the Cestoid or tape-worm order. and so, definitely do these maintain their respective distinctions, that advantage has been taken of them in a manner we should never anticipate-namely, in an ethnological relation; for the worm that prevails among the natives of Britain, Holland, and Germany, is never met among the inhabitants of either series of rings or segments varying in diameter, but Russia or Switzerland. A tape-worm consists of a whose united length not unfrequently reaches ten, twenty, and even thirty feet. The superior or most internal ring, forming the head, is the most remarkable one. Correctly speaking, the head constitutes the body, as the rest of the joints are merely temporary appendages. The anterior part of the head together with three or four suctorial ducts in their is armed with a double row of hooklets, which, immediate vicinity, serve alike to introduce food and circulatory, and nervous systems, all on an imperfect to maintain the position of the animal. The digestive, scale, are best developed in the head. It is only in the neighbourhood of the oral suckers that nervous ganglia occur. The alimentary canal consists of a double row of tubes, grooved along the successive joints, to facilitate transmission of the food. The four vessels composing of the digestive tube. The animal is not, however, the circulatory system run parallel with the divisions exclusively dependent for support upon food introduced by the mouth, for each individual segment has a power of appropriating a certain amount of nutriment through direct absorption. interesting, from its resemblance to a similar arrangeThis process is ment in the nutrition of plants. The head of the tape-worm absorbs nourishment from the animal it infests, as the roots of the vegetable from the soil. The analogy is further borne out by comparing the partial assistance afforded to the nutrition of plants through their leaf-pores, with that given to the worm by its permeable joints. Each joint is, moreover, a reproductive organ, and, like its analogue in plants, breaks off at certain seasons.

The worms of the Trematode, or the Suckers Proper, differ in many respects from those of the Cestoid type. They are short-not averaging above an inch in length; ovoid in form, and generally flat. the tape-worm, they possess no hooks at the mouth; Unlike but their sucking-tubes are more numerous and more the animal, and, with the exception of the most distinct. They are scattered over various parts of superior, which forms the mouth, serve as processes for adhesion. Each sucker is supported by a small muscular slip, beside which is a nervous ganglion.