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occupy the attention of a Highland farmer, who is bent on improvement. We extract the conclusion, which contains the particulars of the plan, as well as the arguments by which Mr. Singers enforces his advice:

The true economy of the soil in the Highlands of Scotland embraces these four capital objects,-sheep, cattle, inclosures for crops, and plantations for trees. All these branches are mutually subservient to each other; all of them are adapted, each on its own scale, to the climate and soil of the country; and they all contribute to the solid comforts and prosperity of the people in all stations; the proprietors, the farmers, and the public at large. The Highlands are laid out for pasturage by the hand of nature, and sheep are the true staple; but the country is also naturally laid out for every part of mixed husbandry; all the necessary materials abounding; and every part, like the links of a golden chain, being connected with and depending on one another. Cattle, alone, are not, and cannot be a safe stock; sheep reared exclusively, turn all into a waste. The trees, if suffered to overspread the country, would convert it into a wilderness; and cropping on a large scale is more than hazardous, it is impracticable. The system which has been here recommended, is not theoretical; it is well known and fully approved in kindred soils, climates, and surfaces. This system would introduce the profits and comforts of each branch, without allowing either to go to an extreme. The sheep would occupy those mountains which nature herself has assigned to them; and the hand of industry would furnish them with shelter, medicine, and the means of preservation, in great emergencies; the black cattle would not only be preserved from extermination, but reared with such comforts as they have not generally known; in return for which, they would furnish much comfort and ample profits to the kind owners; the inclosures would produce sweet grass, hay, and green food for sheep and cattle; and grain and roots enough, I am persuaded, to subsist an increased population, and enrich the industrious tenant. In the mean time, the woods, clothed with beauty, rise to protect and ornament the country, and to furnish to its people the means of innumerable comforts and advantages, and to the proprietors a certain source of increasing wealth.'

We cannot close these volumes without observing, with surprise, that the opinions of Scottish naturalists and fishermen differ so much respecting the natural history of the salmon and the herring, as they are seen to do in these pages. It will not be expected that we should decide when these doctors and men of experience disagree: but we must express a wish that the subjects may not be abandoned till some of the most important points are fully ascertained.

The science displayed in these communications is honourable to the authors; and they are indicative of a general spirit of research and exertion from which much good must ultimately result.

ART.

ART. VI. An Elementary Course of the Sciences and Philosophy: contained in a Series of Lectures delivered by the Author to his own Pupils, upon the principal Branches of Elementary Mathematics,. Mechanics, Astronomy, and Cosmography. By J. B. FlorianJolly, A.M. 8vo. 2 Vols. 11. 4s. Boards. Stockdale. IF the author of these volumes purposes to extend his search into the depths of pure science and of physics, many of his pupils will grow grey before his lectures are concluded:—that is, if he preserves his present rate of advancement; for in the two octavo volumes before us, containing between six and seven hundred pages, he has discussed only addition, multiplication, vulgar fractions, decimals, the rule of three, extraction of roots, proportions, plain and solid geometry, and rectilinear trigonometry. If, indeed, he can spin out the thread of his existence as he spins out the staple of his matter, he may in time teach how corpuscules attract, and how the planets revolve in their orbs: but we must expect to be low in the earth before Mr. Florian-Jolly has thus reached the skies.-Yet he himself by no means thinks that the age of Nestor will be necessary, either to write or to understand his lectures. He imagines that, as to the contents of the present volume, with the whole of antient geography and history, a boy or girl of twelve or thirteen years old might be expected to know them: then three years more would take them through mechanics, astronomy, physics, modern history, and geopraphy; and, when arrived at the age of sixteen, they would still have two years at least to devote to the philosophy of nature, morality, &c. We have many things yet to learn; and, if age shall not be said to have destroyed the docility of our nature, we would willingly go again to school, under Mr. Florian-Jolly, for surely nobody teaches so many important things so quickly!

Mr. F. J. lays much stress on his Introduction; and he intreats the reader to reflect profoundly on it, that he may not be discouraged by the seeming immensity of the system. Perhaps the author will hence be able to assign the cause which prevents us from being enamoured with his plan and labours, since we must confess that we have not reflected profoundly on the matter of the Introduction. Indeed, we think that it might have been altogether omitted; and of what use, when the multiplication of fractions and the extraction of roots were to be taught, is his map of man under various relations? Can any real knowlege be gained by a student exorcising his genius to answer the three questions, "Where am I?" "Who am I?" "What am I here for?" These inquiries have no concern with rules of interest, or the properties of triangles. The prolixity of the work, however, is not a pure and unmixed evil;

and

and it is proper for us to acknowlege that, in his long explanations, Mr. F. J. frequently illustrates things very clearly and satisfactorily but the lengths of verbal explanation ought not to have been continued throughout his volumes: they should have been restrained to the beginnings of his subjects, or only occasionally admitted.-They should, indeed, have been used to make symbolical operations and processes plain and distinct; for, even in several simple cases, these latter are more satisfactory and distinct than the same operations expressed and expanded in 'words. In confirmation of this opinion, we would adduce the multiplication of decimals of the present volumes, in which the author has in many words stated the reason of the rule, which, by the aid of symbols, would in one fourth of the space have been much more distinctly explained.

.

As we have already observed, the author, after having written two volumes, makes no great inroads into science. In the 300dth page of Vol. II. he treats of oblique triangles; and, in speaking of the case in trigonometry in which two sides and the included angle are given, he says, this proposition is the most complicate, but at the same time the highest conception in rectilinear trigonometry!' This needs no comment.-At the end of every chapter, he subjoins queries relative to preceding matter: some of which are useful, but others are rather calculated to excite a smile than to extort ingenious answers: e. g. What triangles must necessarily fall under consideration in rectilinear trigonometry? What do you remark on a line to which another is perpendicular? &c. These questions remind us of certain interrogatories, no doubt the invention of sportive malice, said to have been proposed by a. learned University on instituting public examinations:-"What are the three angles of a triangle equal to?"" What is the exterior angle of a triangle greater than ?"-Some of the author's mathematical questions have a moral tendency; and he solves two cases in progression, as a salutary caution to young men. against indulging without reflection in a taste for gaming and taking bets.

It would be unjust to dwell longer on those parts which may deserve censure, or excite a smile; because, as we have already stated, specimens are not wanting of lucid and exact explanation. For instance, speaking of algebra :

This method is infinitely more favourable to reasoning than arith metic; because you distinguish cach quantity by one of the letters of the alphabet, as was done for the indeterminate number of men in the last instance, and consequently you never lose sight of the given quantities through the whole operation, which cannot be done in arithmetic; for, as soon as you have combined two or three numbers, you

can no longer discern in the sum which were the original numbers, and by what combination this sum was produced: 12, for instance, may as well be produced by the addition of 4 and 8, of 7, 2 and 3, &c., as by the multiplication of 3 by 4, or of 6 by 2.'

The object of algebraical calculation is, as you see, to lead you finally to determine by what operation of arithmetic the result will be obtained; and this conclusion is derived from a series of observations and reasoning: but as the same reasoning would apply to all similar cases, it is unnecessary to go again over the whole of it for every problem; and the principles being once established and understood, general methods have been formed to disengage the unknown quantity, so as to present it alone in one member of the equation, and place in the other member, to which that unknown quantity is equal, all the known quantities, with the signs indicating the changes they are to undergo.'

Mr. Florian-Jolly has formerly been at our tribunal more than once; and we are sorry that, on the present occasion, we do not find ourselves warranted in bestowing the commendation which in those instances we freely offered.

ART. VII. Practical Observations on Urinary Gravel and Stone; on Diseases of the Bladder and prostate Gland; and on Strictures of the Urethra. By Henry Johnston, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Crown 8vo. PP. 223. 5s. boards. Hill, Edinburgh; Murray, London.

IT is certainly with justice that Mr. Johnston characterizes the subjects on which he treats as of the first importance. 'Few diseases,' he remarks, are more common than those of the urinary organs, more troublesome in their management, or, in general, more difficult of cure. The slightest disorders of these parts seldom fail to occasion both anxiety and inconvenience; whilst there are others of a more serious nature, which give rise to very great and long continued misery, often terminating fatally; hence their alleviation and cure have ever been objects of much solicitude.'

The affections of the urinary organs he divides into four classes: gravel in its different stages, from the urine loaded with sandy matter, to confirmed stone; contractions, thickenings, schirrhosities, and ulcerations of the bladder; affections of the prostate gland; to which certainly may be added, strictures of the urethra.'

Mr. J. commences his consideration of the urinary calculus, by some remarks on its chemical composition, and points out the important elucidation which the subject has received from the researches of modern chemists. Scheele, as is wellknown, was the first experimentalist who led to proper views

respect

respecting it, and whose discoveries may be regarded as the basis of all the knowlege which we at present possess; and the track which was opened by this distinguished chemist has since been successfully pursued by others, both in our own island and on the continent. In France, MM. Fourcroy and Vauquelin have particularly attended to the composition. of urinary calculi; and several very important discoveries concerning them have been made in this country by Dr. Wollas ton. The united labors of these experimentalists have proved the general accuracy of Scheele's observations: but they have also shewn that a greater variety existed in the chemical constitution of calculi than was suspected by him. Disregarding the more minute shades of difference, we may arrange them under three principal species; those which consist of uric acid, or of this acid united to ammoniac; those which consist of the phosphoric salts; and those that are formed of the oxalate of lime. The first of these are of the most frequent occurrence, and the last are most rare.

After having given an account of the means by which these different kinds of calculi may be discriminated from each other, the author proceeds to detail the symptoms that indicate their presence, according to the situation which they occupy, first in the kidney, and afterward when they arrive at the bladder. The diagnosis is laid down, by which the affections depending on calculus are distinguished from other diseases of the same parts; a diagnosis which is, in some cases, attended with a considerable degree of difficulty. The disease most apt to be confounded with calculus of the kidney is the rheumatic affection of the muscles of the loins, called lumbago; while strictures in the urethra, or a thickened state of the bladder, are not unfrequently mistaken for a stone in this cavity.

With regard to the cure of calculous complaints, the most important part of the inquiry respects the efficacy of alkalies; for alkalies, under some form, have been the basis of all the medicines that have, from time to time, acquired a reputation for relieving these affections. That this class of bodies has a considerable effect cannot be doubted, and yet it is not easy to account for their mode of operation. It does not appear to be decided whether any medicine taken by the mouth can dissolve a calculus when once formed: but it is certain that all the painful symptoms may be in a great measure mitigated, or even entirely removed. Mr. Johnston inclines to the opinion that the alkalies ought to be employed in their caustic state: but we suspect that he is, in this instance, led to judge rather from theory than from experience. The alkaline carbonates, in their operation as palliatives, seem to possess every

power

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