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elsewhere in the neighbourhood of Canton. As is well known, the owners and their families inhabit the upper part of these vessels, while their innumerable flocks of feathered creatures are accommodated in the hold. Mr. Bennett was fortunate enough to inspect some of them just after the rice harvest had been gathered, which is the season of joy for the broad-bills, as they are then at liberty to fatten upon the rich gleanings of the paddy-fields.

'On the arrival of the boat at the spot considered proper for feeding the quacking tribe, a signal of a whistle causes the flock to waddle in regular order from their domicile across the board placed for their accommodation. When it is considered that they have gorged sufficiently, another signal is made: immediately upon hearing it, they congregate and re-enter the boat. The first duck that enters is rewarded with some paddy, the last is whipped; so that it is ludicrous to see the last birds (knowing by sad experience the fate that awaits them) making efforts en masse to fly over the back of the others, to escape the chastisement inflicted upon the ultimate duck.'-vol. ii. p. 115.

Mr. Bennett had the good luck to sail, in his return from Canton to Macao, in company with Mr. Davis, the accomplished orientalist, then chief superintendent of the Honourable East India Company's establishment; and he appears to have owed much valuable information to that enlightened gentleman's conversation. But we have perhaps given as much space to this book as the nature of its contents may seem to justify-so we must now close our extracts with the surgeon's account of the mode in which the Chinese and Japanese produce those dwarf trees, which we mentioned in our last number when reviewing Messrs. Fischer and Meylan :

The Chinese procure the dwarf orange trees, laden with fruit, by selecting a branch of a larger tree upon which there may be a good supply of fruit: the cuticle being detached from one part of the branch, is plastered over with a mixture of clay and straw, until roots are given out, when the branch is cut off, planted in a pot, and thus forms a dwarf tree laden with fruit. Other means are adopted to give the trunk and bark an appearance of age; and these, with the dwarf bamboos and other trees, must certainly be regarded as the principal Chinese vegetable curiosities.'

In Mr. Bennett's volumes, if our reader has been at all amused with what we have exhibited in this article, he may depend on finding a great deal more of at least as interesting matter: he will, in particular, be well entertained with the author's history of a favourite Ungka ape, which partook his cabin with him during his last voyage from Sincapore to London. This creature seems to have been about the most intelligent and amiable specimen of the turpissima bestia hitherto recorded: he regularly dined with

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the doctor's mess, and was on intimate terms with most of the passengers but more especially-which, indeed, will surprise none who have observed the manners of animals-with a child on board, whom it attended almost like a nurse. Ungka liked every thing in the way of eating and drinking that passes current among men-except only wine; but if he had any relish for tobacco, Mr. Bennett does not mention it. Some few years ago, however, a captain in the Company's naval service brought to this city an animal of (we believe) the very same species, who not only took snuff habitually, but indulged himself with a pipe or two every day after dinner, filling the bowl for himself, and even lighting it very knowingly. This little gentleman, too, was quite free from the Mahometan prejudice against the juice of the grape. A friend of ours visiting him the first week after his arrival in Cheapside, found him in the act of finishing his mutton chop and potatoes, and about to begin his usual pipe, with the accompaniment of some Madeira negus. He was sold for the high price of 500l., but died very soon afterwards.

There are two or three monkeys now in the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park, whose passion for snuff affords much amusement to the visiters. They seem to rub it zealously into their eyes and ears, as well as their nostrils, and, after some minutes of triumphant sneezing and snorting, to enjoy the narcotic influence of the Nicotian weed, with the calm contentment of an old-fashioned philosopher.

ART. II.-Correspondance de Victor Jacquemont, avec sa Famille et plusieurs de ses Amis, pendant son Voyage dans l'Inde, 1828-1832. 2 vols. Paris. 1833.

The same translated. 2 vols. London. 1834.

M. JACQUEMONT was, we understand, the son (born in 1801) of an apothecary in Paris, who, having shown considerable aptitude for what is called natural knowledge, was, on the recommendation of Baron Cuvier, appointed by the administration of the French Jardin des Plantes to travel into Central India for the purpose of investigating its natural history and collecting specimens of zoology, botany, mineralogy, &c. During this mission, which extended from August, 1828, when he sailed from Brest, to September, 1829, when he landed at Calcutta, and thence to December 1832, when he died at Bombay, he wrote a series of letters to his family and friends, which they have rather indiscreetly published, and which have been, we are informed, received with more approbation than we can think them—in any respect-entitled to.

It is singular enough that about the time when Mr. Burnes was employed in his travels in Central Asia, of which we gave an account in our last Number, M. Jacquemont should be traversing parts of the same region, and that the results of their respective labours should be produced almost simultaneously. It is impossible, however, to imagine a stronger contrast than these works exhibit; and we can boldly and conscientiously pronounce that, in every respect but one, the comparison is in favour of our countryman. Jacquemont is, we admit, a livelier writer than Mr. Burnes: the epistolary form-the variety of persons to whom his letters are addressed-and a very loose versatility of topics, are naturally more amusing than the orderly and accurate style of narrative employed by Mr. Burnes; but in all other respects-in all the solid and valuable qualities which inspire esteem for the man or confidence in the traveller-he is infinitely superior to his French competitor.

M. Jacquemont is, indeed, the personification, the beau ideal, of a literary coxcomb of the modern French school. Clever, having some acquaintance (we, as yet, possess no means of judging how much) with the inferior sciences, and a loose smattering of popular literature, his letters are in general lively and entertaining enough, but disfigured by such frequent vanity, vulgarity, and impiety, as would, in our opinion, counterbalance all their literary merit, were that ten times greater than in fact it is. For much, however, of what is blameable in the work we must not too severely censure Jacquemont personally; he wrote in confidence to his nearest relatives, and perhaps did not intend that his letters should ever be made public-at least he is not responsible for their publication; but we confess that it adds considerably to the regret and alarm which we already felt as to the state of moral feeling in France, to find that a family, which seems otherwise amiable and respectable, should, for the sake of either notoriety or profit, have betrayed to the public the confidential letters, in which this giddy young man not only takes unwarrantable liberties with the characters of gentlemen-and, what is infinitely worse, of ladies-into whose society he was admitted, but exhibits himself as having lived a professed atheist and died with no more sense or hope of an immortal soul than one of the baboons of his own zoological collection.

We dare say that, if the truth could be known, it would turn out that this profession of atheism was mere swagger. We have always doubted whether there could be such a thing as a sane atheist; but a naturalist-atheist would assuredly be a monster. If there be any one study more than another which teaches that 'Arguit, in fabro, non in se, machina mentem,'

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it is that of the mechanism of nature; and Jacquemont's atheism was probably, like his incredulity on several other topics, either utter thoughtlessness, or (which is more likely) the silly affectation of passing for an esprit fort. For this reason, and for more serious considerations suggested by his early death, we shall say no more on this part of the character which he has drawn of himself, and which his family have had the lamentable indiscretion to publish. We shall have but too much room for censure on less offensive topics; but before we arrive at them we have two or three observations to make on the preliminary part of the work.

It appears from the preface to the translation, (for the original edition does not condescend to give us one syllable of explanation relative either to Jacquemont or his mission,) that in June, 1828, Jacquemont came to London to make some preparatory arrangements for his expedition. The translator taxes the French editor with something like ingratitude for not having acknowledged the civilities and assistance which Jacquemont received on this occasion from some individuals in London; but we are not quite sure that the French editor has not, in this single instance, acted with discretion. The chief assistance that Jacquemont received in London was a packet of letters of recommendation to sundry persons of consideration in India, and seeing (as our readers will by-and-by) how very unpleasant-even to those of whom he means to speak most civilly-must be Jacquemont's indelicate revelations of their social and domestic life, the French editor may have thought that he conferred a favour on the givers of those letters in not making them publicly responsible for their result. We honestly confess we never should have forgiven ourselves if we had had the misfortune to have introduced Jacquemont to any one of the ladies of whose names he makes such familiar, and we think indelicate use.

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The translator next reproaches the Court of Directors-the 'Merchant-Kings' as he sneeringly-the‘Vieilles Perruques,' as Jacquemont insolently calls them, of Leadenhall-street-with some illiberal reluctance-some fastidious delays'-to give M. Jacquemont the necessary permission to travel in their territories. Now, when we recollect some former French missions, which, as is now avowed, cloaked aggressive projects against our Indian empire, under scientific and diplomatic pretenceswhen it is notorious that the most powerful of the native princes, Runjeet Sing, has actually French officers in his service who have disciplined his troops in European tactics, even to the degree of receiving the word of command in French-we should have thought the Court of Directors highly blameable if they had, without some previous inquiry, opened India to this new

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mission. The delay, however, so far from being vexatious, or even 'fastidious,' must have been wonderfully short, for Jacquemont's whole stay in England was less than three weeks. His special patrons first announced his mission to the Asiatic Society on the 19th June; the permission of the Directors is dated the 25th June; and the recommendation of Jacquemont, as a member of the Asiatic Society, (by one of whom this complaint seems to be made,) did not take place till the 28th June;-so that the tardy consent of the 'Vieilles Perruques' was granted within a week after the first steps, and three days before the next steps taken by his zealous friends in the Asiatic Society. We shall see, by-andby, that Jacquemont abused the indulgence thus, we will say, too readily afforded him; and the Court of Directors, instead of being the objects of reproach, might, with more reason, complain of those (whoever these were-for that does not appear) who so inconsiderately recommended a person of whom they seem to have known nothing, and whose indiscretion-if he tells the truthmight, on more than one occasion, have produced very deplorable consequences.

Before we arrive with M. Jacquemont at Calcutta, we must notice a curious incident that took place on his passage out. Soon after they had left the Cape of Good Hope, the French brig-ofwar, the Zélée, in which he was a passenger, fell in with an English merchant-ship, into which-after the stranger had hailed them in English, which was heard and known to be English-(she must therefore have been so close that every seaman must have seen she was a merchantman)—into which vessel, we say, the captain of the French man-of-war, in a paroxysm of terror, fired his whole broadside of round and grape, and so near were the ships, that Jacquemont says the broadside was fired at the moment that they thought the stranger was about to board them*.

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This seems to us one of the most wanton and unjustifiable attempts at wholesale murder that we ever read of: but our readers will be anxious to know what damage was done-how many innocent lives were lost by this atrocious discharge of round and grape' at so short a distance. We are happy to inform them that only one spar and one sail were so much as touched; and but one man was wounded:-a wonderful escape-but more wonderful still, when it is added that the one sufferer was a French

Such is Jacquemont's own story. But we are assured, as this sheet is passing through the press, by a gentleman recently arrived from India, that the blame of this affair rested not indeed solely, but chiefly, with Jacquemont himself, who volunteered to act as interpreter, but unluckily misunderstood and misreported the answer of the English captain: but this, if true, would be no justification of the French commandant, who should rather have believed his own eyes than Jacquemont's ears.

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