.But, to return from this digression: What are these, and the numerous other artificial curiosities, with which this elegant depository is enriched and adorned-and what are these, which we have been besides considering, to the splendid specimens of creative wisdom, which have

mens of mechanics, and traced their rapid improvement down to the steam-engine. He pointed out, how the influence of the sun and moon, by changing the elevation of the ocean, had been converted into a mechanical power, and by its means, vessels, with their cargoes, sunk to ocean's bed, had been raised to its surface, and restored to the use of man ;—and he exhibited a drawing of a sunken vessel, to which cables were made fast by means of the diving-bell, and fastened to empty casks on the surface of the water at ebb tide, by which means, as the tide rose, the vessel rose also, and at the flood, was floated into shallower water, and brought to shore. He said, that there was one combination of power lately arrived in this country, which was com pletely original, and wonderfully effective. It was the invention of Mr Dier, a watch-maker, in Boston (America). The patent by which he means to secure his great invention, is not yet extended to France, which makes some caution in its illustration necessary; but enough could be exhibited to show, that it was scarcely possible to imagine, that any machine could be constructed more simple or more powerful, in equal space. Mr Dier, the inventor, has applied his contrivance to his own art in clock-making, and had by its means, constructed clocks with but three wheels, which, with a very small motive power, went twelve months without winding up. The Doctor exhibited one of the clocks, and also one of the machines for raising heavy weights, which consisted of a single wheel, of six inches diameter, on a barrel, round which a chain, to which the weight was suspended, was fasten ed. The wheel had on its periphery fourteen wheels, placed obliquely, which worked in a spiral groove in a parallel arbour or spindle, which was turned by a handle, and communicating motion to the wheel, and by consequence to the barrel on which the chain was wound, raised the weight. Four pounds on the handle of the spindle, balanced five hundred pounds at the end of the chain; and eight pounds on the handle, completely raised the five hundred pounds!"

here accumulated, and are daily accumulating, from all the regions of the world? Let us, therefore, step in,

and take

A PEEP INTO THE EDINBURGH MUSEUM.

It is, indeed, all that our time and our limits will permit us to do; but, short as our stay must necessarily be, and cursory the view, we must, in consequence, take of the contents of this wonderful place, I have no doubt, that those of my readers who are pleased to accompany me in the visit, will, in the end, find it to have been an excellent preparatory step, and a further inducement to the study of nature.

THE VESTIBULE AND LOWER APARTMENT.

Upon entering the vestibule of the lower apartment, the eye of the stranger or casual visitor, will be naturally directed to the dog FIDELITY, inside the door; for so, I will allow my youthful followers, to designate that lively representation of watchful vigilance, that appears never to have once quitted his post, and whose eye-lids have never closed, so long as I have known the museum.

On advancing a little, however, into that portion of the apartment, new objects of greater interest excite the attention, and, in the farther end, we are forcibly attracted to that spot, where stretched in her glazed coffin, lie the stiffened remains of what was once, no doubt, a lively and active Egyptian lady; now, as I said before, a partly decayed mummy!-for the air, we find, has been at work, and had it not been for the wise precaution taken in glazing up the case, it is probable, that by this time, notwithstanding its covering of many folds, the whole frame would have been crumbled into dust.

Whether this lady ever walked on the streets of Thebes or Memphis whether she ever held a situation in Pharoah's household,-or was among the maidens that accompanied his daughter to the banks of the Nile, at the time she found Moses among the flags, we are not informed; but one thing is certain, that this precious relic, bears evident marks of high antiquity, and, as such, must be regarded, as an evidence of the wonderfully enduring effects of that curious process, by which the ancient Egyptians preserved their dead for such a length of time.

Not half so enduring, however, this Egyptian process, as that more simple one adopted by nature, in the preservation of those still more wonderful relics that we find here, in our immediate neighbourhood,—these Fossil remains of the Airthy Whale; and that still more splendid memorial of times that are passed away, the Fossil Elk of the Isle of Man, which we see standing. in the farther end of the room; and whose stately form, looking at this distance almost as fresh as when newly stript of its flesh, yonder geologist is so busy in contemplating: the former a monument of some striking revolution that has taken place in the estuary of the Forth;-the latter, of generations, or of a species of animals, that, to all appearance, have passed away.

In the instance of the Egyptian lady, we find, that notwithstanding all the care and attention that had been originally taken, and all the expense bestowed, in order to preserve her, it has been found necessary to take an additional precaution, in order to exclude the external air, which had already begun to make inroads a her form; but in order to protect these interesting

relics, preserved by nature's more wonderful process, no such precaution has been found necessary-the bones have actually become more hardened, and, consequently, more imperishable than when in their original form! : In casting our eyes forward into that apartment, more particularly set apart for the accommodation of the huge and gigantic specimens of Creative Wisdom, how quickly are they arrested by the two stately Camelopards, or the male and female Giraffe, which are now seen rearing their towering heads above their bulky and unwieldy fellows. Beside these lofty and towering animals, the Elephant, the largest quadruped in creation, which is seen standing on one side, with the Walrus and Rhinoceros, and other animals of the bulky kind, seem to sink in the scale of magnitude, and to belong to a more diminutive class.

But what a wondrous, a motley, an incongruous assembly-do we here find mixed together, as we advance and take our stand among them. Here, are collected under one roof, I was going to say; nay, under the roof of a single apartment, the Polar Bear and Walrus of the north—the striped Zebra, and wonderfully formed Kanguroo of the south-the Elephant, the Rhinoceros, and a beautiful skeleton of the Camel of the east, the Musk Ox, from the northern parts of the western world; while, the Lion of the Desert, roams at large, and the four-horned Sheep, stands unmolested. -Here also are to be seen, harmonizing together, the Tapir of India, with its long-pointed snout, and that remarkable animal the Gnu, which embodies in its structure, a head peculiar to itself, but adorned with the horns of the buffalo, the body and tail of a horse,

E

and the legs and feet of an antelope! while the skele ton-head of the Hippopotamus is made to unfold before us its enormous jaws ;-and the Dugong, that singular inhabitant of the watery element, which perhaps has been the means of giving rise to many of those strange tales we hear about the mermaid, has its place assigned in its immediate neighbourhood.

- Here, are also to be found, a most beautiful specimen of the globular Madrepore, from the eastern seas-a highly interesting Babylonian relic, being in a most excellent state of preservation;—and scattered about in this vast apartment, in any of the lurking holes into which they can find access, are a number of those uncouth looking figures those hideously formed, or rather deformed, Idols, which I have already so largely dwelt upon; and whose presence here, might have been well dispensed with, had it not, perhaps, been, to demonstrate by the contrast, when placed beside these wonderful contrivances of infinite wisdom, how far the mind of man may be debased and led aside by the influence of superstition, when he allows himself to be enslaved by such delusions;—and reads not, as he ought to do, for himself, the sublime pages written for his instruction by the God of Nature ;-nor regardeth aright the work of his hands.

In the upper part of this apartment, there is now set out, and displayed on a table, what may be considered an excellent treat to the Geologist, a choice and well-arranged assortment of specimens of Mountain Rocks; from the most hard and durable species of granite, down to grains of the finest sand,-from the most compact Basalt and indurated Whinstone, to the