tion; instead of Charlemagne, Louis Napoleon; and in place of St. Paul, Mr. Spurgeon.

The series of works which is now passing through the press under the auspices of the Record Commission ought to add largely to the popular appreciation of the Middle Ages. Messrs. Brewer, Shirley, Riley, and Stevenson have enhanced the value of their publications by prefaces, which deserve on many accounts to be collected and published separately. Failing this, it is to be hoped that Mr. Brewer and Mr. Shirley at least will attempt more original work; a history of the schoolmen from the former, or of Wycliffe and his times from the latter, would be sterling additions to literature. Mr. Luard has contented himself with the comparatively unambitious task of constructing a sound critical text, and has succeeded to admiration. Perhaps it was unavoidable that some failures should occur in a large series. In one instance the Master of the Rolls selected an editor of great and deserved reputation, who from age or neglect has produced a most slovenly work; in another case the gentleman chosen was compelled to learn his work as he went on, and unluckily published his first volume before he had mastered the rudiments of the subject. Again, why the Saxon Chronicle, which has mostly appeared in the Monumenta Britannica, should have been prepared for a second publication, when it is known that the Oxford press will soon issue it, for the third time in thirty years, from the hand of the most competent Oxford scholar, is a question which ought to receive an official answer. In matters where few are interested, and fewer still in a position to criticise, it is only right that public opinion should be satisfied on all questionable points.

There is yet another subject of some importance. Sir John Romilly is understood to have laid it down as a rule, that no work already in print shall be published in the Rolls Series till the manuscripts in the public archives are exhausted. This latter event is not likely to occur during the present century. Now it is not too much to say that the works of Ockham, the Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, and the writings of Grosteste, or of Wycliffe, are much more important for the student of history than the Chronicles of Capgrave or John of Oxenedes. They are also for practical purposes inaccessible; either not to be bought at all, or only to be bought by rich men; and the black-letter text of the old editions is a great drawback to study. The four writers whom we have mentioned were more or less under church censure, and do not therefore find a place in the series of the Abbé Migne. It is disgraceful to England that the greatest productions of Oxford men in the Middle Ages have never found a publisher in their own country. It

will be doubly discreditable if the preference of fact over thought, and a mere official rule, prevail to perpetuate our neglect; and if the meanest monk who can be called a chronicler obtains an immortality of broad type and fair margins which is denied to the founder of physical science and to the precursor of Locke.

ART. VI. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CEYLON.

Ceylon: an Account of the Island, physical, historical, and topographical, with Notices of its Natural History, Antiquities, and Productions. By Sir James Emerson Tennent, K.C.S., LL.D., &c. In two vols. London: Longmans.

No poem was ever produced without some classical allusion until Mr. Moore received his celebrated order which resulted in Lalla Rookh; and no book of Eastern travel will, we suppose, ever be produced without the fata morgana and the banyantree, until a similar order be given from the Row or Albemarle Street. The book that heads our Article is by a traveller in the East, and so, of course, we have the fata morgana and the banyan-tree. But, excepting these points of likeness, we must confess that the work which Sir Emerson Tennent has produced is unlike the common books of travels, and displays no ordinary amount of patient research, careful observation, and various erudition. It is an elaborate and admirable essay on the physical geography, the natural history, the political history, and the antiquities of Ceylon, in which the writer, not content with the superficial results of travel and official residence, has called to his assistance, in all the various departments of his work, the aid of those who have heretofore written, and of many living authorities of eminence. The preface contains acknowledgments not only to many gentlemen of local knowledge and authority, but to Sir Roderick I. Murchison, Professors Faraday and Owen, Dr. Hooker, and other scientific gentlemen at home.

Sir Emerson Tennent has not only endeavoured to give us some sketch of what is known with regard to Ceylon, but, imitating in his narrower field of study the method of one whose range was over all knowledge, he has indicated the deficiencies of our information, and pointed out the gaps which remain to be filled up by future observation and research. The natural history of this curious island still offers ample room and verge enough for the most aspiring students; for the variety of soil and situation presented by this comparatively small surface vastly enhances its interest to the naturalist. There are the sand

reaches along the level shores, where a succession of plants is redeeming the land from the sea; there are the vast, and in parts unexplored, forests of the interior; there is the mountain district round Kandy, rising to a height of upwards of 8000 feet above the sea; and each, it is needless to say, presenting a most interesting diversity both of plants and animals.

One of the greatest deficiencies which our author has pointed out as hitherto existing in our scientific knowledge with regard to this island, is the absence of any complete work on its botany; so that "information regarding the vegetation of the island is scarcely obtainable without extreme trouble, and reference to papers scattered through innumerable periodicals."* When it is remembered that a botanic garden has been established in Ceylon since 1799, this may, at first sight, seem strange. But the multitudinous and heterogeneous duties imposed on the person holding the curatorship of these gardens have, until lately, formed an impediment to the completion of any such work. We are, however, glad to learn, from a postscript to one of our author's notes, that Mr. Thwaites, the present curator of these gardens, has announced the early publication of a new work on the plants of Ceylon, with observations on their habits and uses, in which he is to be assisted by Dr. Hooker.

The first botanic garden in Ceylon was established by Mr. North, in 1799, at Colombo; thence it was in succession transferred to two or three localities, until the present Royal Botanic Garden was formed, about thirty years ago, at Paradenia, a few miles from Kandy. Thus it is situated in the mountain tract of country, which finds its most celebrated elevation in Adam's Peak, and is on the banks of the Mahawelli-Ganga, the greatest of all the many streams which, rising in this mountain region, flow on all sides through the lower lands to the sea.

"The entrance to the Paradenia garden" (says our author) "is through a noble avenue of india-rubber trees (Ficus elastica); and the first object that arrests the admiration of a stranger on entering is a group of palms, which is, I apprehend, unsurpassed both in variety and grandeur. It includes nearly all those indigenous in the island: the towering talpat, the palmyra, the slender areca, and the kitool, with its formidable thorny congener the Caryota horrida, and numerous others less remarkable. The garden, covering an area of nearly 150 acres, overlooks the noble river that encircles it on three sides; and, surrounding the cultivated parterres, the tall natural woods afford a favourable opportunity for exhibiting some of the wonders of the Ceylon flora-orchidiæ, festoons of flowering creepers (Ipomeas and Bignonias), the guilandina bonduc, with its silicious seeds, the powerful jungle-rope (Bacchinia scandens), and the extra

Vol. i. p. 85. The references in this Article are taken from the first edition.

CC

ordinary climber, whose strong stays, resembling in form and dimensions the chain-cable of a man-of-war, lash together the tall trees of the forest.

The nurseries, the spice-ground, the orchards, and experimental garden are all in high vigour; and, since the formation of this admirable institution about thirty years ago, the benefits which it has conferred on the colony have more than realised the anticipations of its founders. European and other exotic plants have been largely introduced; the valuable products of the Eastern Archipelago-cloves, nutmegs, vanilla, and other spices-have been acclimatised; foreign fruits without number-mangoes, durians, lichees, loquats, granadillas, and the Avocado pear have been propagated, and their cultivation extended throughout the island; and the tea-shrub, the chocolate, arrow-root, tapioca, West-Indian ginger, and many others, have been domesticated."*

Sir Emerson Tennent bears his testimony to the ability and accomplishments of Mr. Thwaites, the present director of these gardens; and those who, like ourselves, had the pleasure of enjoying his acquaintance before he left this country, some twelve years ago, will easily appreciate how valuable his services must be to the colony, and how much botanical science may expect from his forthcoming work on the botany of the island. He has already added several remarkable species to the flora of Ceylon, more especially from the districts south and east of Adam's Peak; and his collections of insects, made in the neighbourhood of Kandy, are a very important contribution to the almost infinite entomology of the island. The richness of the flora will be appreciated when we state, on the authority of a recent report of Mr. Thwaites, that the indigenous phænogamic plants discovered up to August 1856 were 2670, besides 247 ferns and lycopods; a number nearly double that of the flora of England, and little under one-thirtieth of the entire number of known plants.†

The general character of this flora, notwithstanding the presence of some species and a few genera not found on the continent of India, is similar to that of the southern regions of the peninsula and the Dekkan, with a tendency, however, to approach more nearly to the flora of Malacca and of the Eastern Archipelago than the rest of India. But the great diversity of situation, elevation, and general character, in the different regions of Ceylon, as already remarked, gives rise to a great diversity in the flora of its different parts; and the eastern and the western coasts, like those of the great peninsula, are diversified by the different winds to which they are respectively exposed. The western, exposed to the humid and Vol. i. pp. 208, 209. + Ibid. p. 83 n.

temperate south-west wind, exhibits its effects in its luxuriant vegetation; whilst the eastern, under the influence of the hot winds, which blow for half the year, exhibits a comparatively dry and arid aspect.*

On the very shore itself the mangroves grow densely, the ripple of the sea washing under their overarching roots. A little landward the sandy plains are covered with a thorny jungle, and every where, around the habitations of man, rise groves of the coco-nut palm, a tree which has been greatly encouraged under the English rule. Further inland we come on the magnificent forests of the island; and the hill country, again, has its own peculiar vegetation, varying at each succeeding height; at one elevation characterised by the banyan and a variety of figs, at another by the tree-ferns that rise from the damp hollows, and highest of all, by the rhododendrons which cover the loftiest heights,-not like the low Alpenrosen of the Alps, but as timber-trees fifty to seventy feet in height, and covered on every branch with a blaze of crimson flowers.

We are so well aware in this country of the value of the bent-grass that abounds on the sand-hills and dunes of our coast, and which by binding the sand assists in protecting the land from the incursions of the sea, that it has been protected from injury by act of parliament, the only instance, so far as we recollect, of the Legislature interfering for the protection of a wild plant; and the newspapers have recently mentioned the success which has attended Lord Palmerston's cultivation of this plant on his Sligo estates, which the incursions of the seasand threatened to turn into a rabbit-warren. Still more curious is the account which Sir Emerson Tennent gives us of the way in which a succession of plants forms the vanguard of the land against the sea, along the low coasts of Ceylon, and reclaims from the barren ocean these sandy reaches, which the mangrove and the invaluable coco-nut palm will soon occupy. The margin of the land nearest the water is first possessed by plants whose penetrating roots form a breakwater, and thus protect the creeping plants which occupy the drier sand immediately behind, and in their turn shelter a third and erect class of plants. Amongst these creeping plants there is an ipomea which sends down roots from every joint, and two beans endowed with a peculiar facility for reproduction. But perhaps the most remarkable of the plants which assist in fertilising these arid sands is the Spinifer squarrosus, of which the seeds are contained in a circular head composed of a star of radiating and elastic spines. When the seeds are mature, the heads separate from the stalks, "and are carried by the wind with great *Vol. i. pr. 84, 5.