incisors still occupying their original position in the head of a mammoth, which was discovered a few years since, in one of our western muriatic licks, or salines.

As to the form of the grinders, and the disposition of the vitrious body, or enamel, upon and through them, I grant that it is very different in the Ohio mammoth, and in the extinct as well as existing elephants of the old world. But if this difference be of sufficient importance to constitute a difference of genus between the American and Asiatic animals, then we must proceed consistently to break up several of the long established genera of mammalia, subdividing each genus into at least two distinct genera. I may mention the genus Marmot, to which belongs our ground hog, or monack, as illustrative of this idea. I shall call the Ohio mammoth, Elephas Mastodontus. It is the Elephas Americanus of Mr. Blumenbach.

I have nearly prepared, and shall shortly present to our Philosophical Society, an extensive memoir on the extinction of the pecies of mammalia. This memoir will necessarily contain much matter merely of a speculative nature; but I flatter myself that it will also contain some interesting, and hitherto unnoticed facts.

I shall be much gratified if this letter, written among the mountains of your state, at a distance from my books and papers, afford you any amusement. Of all the subjects of animal natural history, there is not one more interesting than that which relates to the characters and history of those vast organized bodies-many of them, too, endowed with an immense portion of intelligence which the God of Nature had created; and after suffering them to grow and exist through ages, unknown ages of time, has, at length, entirely removed from the earth; not merely as individuals, but as species. There is something awful in the consideration of this subject; and yet this very subject is admirably calculated to display to us the wisdom, as well as power, of him who formed all things. The harmony of nature is not, in the smallest degree, disturbed by the total destruction of what many have deemed necessary integral parts of a common whole. Nor is this business of the extinction of species at an end. That which has already taken place, with respect to species of elephant, rhinoceros, and other vast families of animals, will unquestionably take place with respect to many of the

families of animals which now cover the surface of this globe. The steps of this vast and generally unlooked for change, are rapidly preparing in different parts of the world; and in none, I think, more rapidly than in that portion of it which we inhabit. I am, dear sir, with very great respect, your obedient servant, &c. &c.

BENJAMIN SMITH BARTON.

FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

Information concerning Queens County in the state of Newyork, particularly as relates to the ministry of George Fox, and Thomas Chalkley. In a letter to friend Horatio G. Spafford, compiler of the Newyork Gazetteer, from Samuel L. Mitchell, dated Plandome, August 7, 1810.

The propriety of erecting monuments, to perpetuate our remembrance of the dead, has been questioned by many persons. The society of Friends, as we are informed by Clarkson, in his Portraiture of Quakerism, has decided against the worldly fashion of using tombstones and inscriptions. In this they differ widely from the ingenious Godwin, the apologist of sepulchres, who has proposed to erect some memorial of the illustrious dead, on the spots where their remains have been interred.

Structures of this kind may be considered in two points of view; one as manifesting respect to those who have finished their earthly career, and the other as furnishing knowledge to the present generation.

The travels of George Fox afford a remarkable example of memorials or testimonials of him, subsisting to this day, with out an express provision for them, by any human being. These, though they are natural productions, answer as fully the purpose of associating our ideas with this apostle of the quakers, as if they had been constructed by laborious and costly exertions of art. Queens county contains these remarkable objects.

I allude to the STATELY TREES, yet alive in the town of Flushing, which shaded him while he delivered his testimony

to the people, in the highway: and to the MASSY ROCK, Still to be seen at the village of Oysterbay, which supported him when he uttered the words of persuasion, to an audience in the woods.

It appears from the journal of George Fox, that he visited Long-Island in the year 1672, the year before the capture of Newyork by the Dutch, and two years prior to its final confirmation to the English. In Queens county his labours were more promising than in any part of the province. The numbers who adhere to this day, to the doctrines he taught at the before-mentioned places, have been considered as proofs of the efficacy of his ministry.

Curious visitors sometimes take a leaf or a twig from one of the Flushing trees under which he preached. There are but two of them surviving. They are upland white-oaks, (quercus obtusi folia, Mich.) and are probably a century and a half old. They stand on the public road, between the lands of the late amiable John Bawne and his neighbour Aspinwall. Being on the side contiguous to the land of Mr. A. he claimed the trees as his property. Mr. B. observed, some years ago, his neighbour preparing to cut them down to burn, and redeemed them by an equivalent in full, from his own stock. The bargain was concluded by a bill of sale for them, by Mr. A. to Mr. B. Under this conveyance, which saved them from the axe, they have been protected ever since. The circumstances of the transaction were told me by Mr. B. himself. They who are skilled in tracing correspondencies, might discover amusing analogies between George and the Oak.

I brought away a piece of the memorable rock on which this exhorter had stood. It is granite composed of feldspar, quartz and mica, in which the former material predominates. It is situated on the land of William Townsend, Esq. in front of his mansion and near the margin of his mill-pond. This gentleman pointed it out to me. In the progress of improvement, the upper part has been split to pieces by gunpowder; but the basis remains solid and unbroken. The spot was then forest; though it is now cleared. The mind that delights in similitudes may find pleasing comparisons between Fox and the Rock.

To people in general, information on such subjects may not be wholly uninteresting. To persons who are attached to the society which George Fox founded, or who adhere to its principles, it can scarcely fail to excite lively sensations. For my own part, I assure you, I visited both places with the sentiment I usually experience on beholding monuments of departed worth and greatness.

And as I have mentioned these things, I feel myself impelled before I conclude my letter, to notice another, and this is, that the house at Cowneck, in the town of North Hempstead, from which I now write, is the very building (though repaired and modernized) in which that devout and pious minister Thomas Chalkley, was entertained by the then proprietor, my venerable ancestor Joseph Latham, whom he visited here in 1725 and again in 1737, and distinguishes in his journal as his "good old friend and school-fellow."

I beg you to consider this as an answer in part to your note, sometime since, addressed to me, asking assistance toward your useful work: and however trifling my contribution may be, I hope that it may be well accepted.

Favour me with a continuance of your esteem, and be assured of the participation of mine.

SAMUEL L. MITCHELL.

Plandome, August 7, 1810.

OF THE LUXURY OF THE ROMANS.

LUXURY is, in fact, nothing more than superabundance, or the application of superfluitics, to unnecessary purposes: luxury, therefore, may be found in the cottage as in the palace, according to the different ideas of superfluity imparted by education, habit, or philosophy. Diogenes considered a cup as a luxury, because he could drink out of the hollow of his hand. An ancient German warrior, on the contrary, looked upon the

skull of his enemy, tipped with silver or gold, as an indispensable drinking untensil; and by an oriental debauchee, a single onyx, or a pearl hollowed out into a goblet, was not deemed a luxury.

The moralists of all ages have loudly declaimed against luxury; the politicians, on the other hand, have often defended it: the former, in general, with morose expressions, which prove nothing: and the latter with mercantile views, which are good for nothing. Both were wrong. The defenders of luxyry asserted, that it increased population; but at the time of the highest prosperity and luxury of the Roman commonwealth, Italy, according to the testimony of Livy, was scarcely half so populous as when it was parcelled out into petty republics, which were strangers to luxury.

They, moreover, maintained that it enriches the state. There was a time when Portugal was one of those states which most abounded in luxuries; and yet, notwithstanding the excellence of its soil, its favourable situation, and its colonies, it was less rich than Holland, so destitute of luxuries, with its inferior position and its simple manners.

They farther urged, that luxury promotes the circulation of money. But in France, luxury had, thirty years ago, risen to a very high pitch; and yet people complained, with reason, of the want of this circulation: money, indeed, was profusely poured from the provinces into the capital, but it did not find its way back again.

They likewise advanced, that luxury softens the manners. Examples of the contrary are daily witnessed.

They asserted, that it favours the progress of the sciences and fine arts. It might be asked, what progress had the fine arts made among the Sybarites and Lydians?

Lastly, they assumed that luxury infallibly augmented both the power of nations and the happiness of individuals: but the Persians under Cyrus were almost strangers to luxury, and subdued the opulent Assyrians. When, in the sequel, the Persians themselves had become the most luxurious of nations, they bowed their necks to the yoke of the indigent Macedonians. Savage nations, without luxury, destroyed the Roman