preferred. To the fruit or mast of this tree we have already alluded. When roasted, it has been substituted for coffee, but the principal use now made of it is as food for wild hogs and other cattle.

"The beech mast fattens the forest boar."

Large tracts of beech in the New Forest are enclosed during the pawnage season, as it is called, and numerous herds of swine fattened upon their mast. It is, however, said that the fat of these animals is more oily and less likely to keep than that of those fattened on acorns. On the continent, beech nuts are appropriated to another purpose; an excellent substitute for lamp or olive oil being expressed from them. When prepared with care, this oil is preferred to the latter for frying fish, as it has no disagreeable smell. The nuts, after the oil has been extracted, are given to poultry, although in Silesia the poor convert them into bread, and use the oil as butter. The quantity of oleaginous matter procured from these nuts, very much depends upon the temperature of the climate in which they grow. Linnæus found they possessed scarcely any in Sweden. In France the supply is abundant; in the year 1779, the forests of Compeigne yielded sufficient, it is said, to supply the inhabitants of the district with oil for half a century. Fielding, a well-known author who lived in the beginning of the last century, speculated largely in the manufacture of beechen oil; and a plan was proposed about the same time by one Aaron Hill for paying off the national debt by the profits to be derived from butter made from these nuts. Evelyn says of the leaves, that "if gathered about the fall, and before they are much frost-bitten, they afford the best and easiest mattresses in the world." A modern writer corroborates this statement, and from his own experience describes the beds made of beech leaves to be no whit behind the luxurious and refreshing mattresses used in Italy, which are filled with the elastic spathe of the Indian corn, "while the fragrant smell of green tea which the leaves retain is most gratifying." The catkins are sometimes dried and used for stuffing pillows, or for packing fruit to send to a distance. "The stagnant water in the hollow trees will cure the most obstinate scurfs, scabs, etc. if fomented with it; the leaves chewed, are wholesome for the gums and teeth,

and the very buds as they harden make good tooth pickers."

The bark or rind of this tree is of light olive or silvery hue, and peculiarly smooth, soft, and susceptible of impressions. Hence in all ages it has afforded a favourite tablet for the rural lover, not the less so on account of a superstitious notion that as the words increased in size with the growth of the tree, their hopes would increase in proportion. Virgil, as well as the poets of many other European nations, has alluded to this supposition.

"The rind of every plant her name shall know, And as the rind extends, the love shall grow." VIRGIL. "On the smooth beechen rind, the pensive dame, Carved in a thousand forms her Tancred's name." HOOLE'S TASSO.

Nor let the moralist disdain or the cynic censure, though they may venture to doubt the correctness of the idea in which this simple custom originated. To this universal practice of carving words and sentences on the soft bark of the beech, we owe the first successful attempts to obtain all those vast and yet incalculable benefits which have resulted and may yet accrue to mankind from the printing press. Here is the rudiment to which we may trace the revival of learning, the extension of useful knowledge, and the diffusion of science, nay, more, our moral and political freedom, and emancipation from the tyrannical and soul-prostrating thraldom of the church of Rome. The invention of printing was the effective weapon of the Reformation, and the liberty of the press has in every country proved the most effectual bulwark of civil and religious liberty. Laurentius Coster, a native of Haerlem, as some have considered, "walking in a wood near his native city, began at first to cut some letters upon the rind of a beech tree, which for fancy's sake being impressed on paper, he printed one or two lines, as a specimen for his grandchildren to follow. This having happily succeeded, he meditated greater things, and first of all with his son-inlaw invented a more glutinous writing ink, because he found the common ink sunk and spread; and then formed whole pages of wood, with letters cut upon them, of which sort I have seen some essays, printed only on one side, in which it is remarkable that in the infancy of printing (as nothing is complete in its first invention) the back sides of the pages

dog who detected "a truffle of uncommon size which weighed twelve ounces and a half, at the distance of a hundred yards." On the continent they are sought by individuals who stir up with a peculiar sort of spud, the places where they imagine they are concealed, and soon become so experienced as rarely to be deceived in their search. An account is related by a Dutch author, of a poor crippled boy who could detect truffles with a certainty superior to the best dogs, and so earned a livelihood. They fetch a high price during the season, varying from ten to fifteen shillings a pound; many are imported from the continent, though they soon lose their flavour after being gathered. They are seldom found in England, excepting in beech woods; and it is said that they have been discovered in places where they were not previously known, after plantations of this tree have been made. They have been propagated, though at a great expense of time and trouble, by removing the earth from the places where they are usually found, into a garden, and covering it with decaying beech leaves.

Many valuable and curious fungi are found on the leaves, mast, and branches, as well as bark of the tree, among them may be named agaricus adiposus, which in fine specimens resembles a pine-apple; hydnum coralloides, which is esculent and not unlike a cauliflower; and polyporus gigantèus, which spreads in large masses over the trunk, and may be compared to a large tuberous flower with four petals.

The most ancient beech now existing in England is most probably one in the neighbourhood of Sunninghill, within the limits of Windsor forest; it is supposed to have existed before the Norman conquest. At the distance of six feet from the ground, the trunk measures thirty-six feet in circumference. The Frankley beeches, on an estate belonging to lord Lyttleton, in Worcestershire, are also of great antiquity; they are mentioned in old leases as landmarks, being in a conspicuous situation on a hill. The largest now standing is seventy feet high, and fourteen feet in girth at a foot from the ground; but one blown down in 1833, was yet larger, twenty feet in circumference. At Donnington park is a beech tree one hundred years old, which measures one hundred feet in height; the diameter of the trunk is seven feet, and that of the head one hundred feet. The Eccles beech

in Dumfriesshire is eighteen feet in circumference where it begins to throw out branches, and extends its shade over a space ninety-five feet in diameter. The Ashbridge beeches are no less remarkable. One of them, called the King beech, is one hundred and fourteen feet high, and a trunk seventy-five feet high before it divides into the limbs; the trunk at two feet from the ground is nine feet in circumference. Another, which is seventy feet high, and more than eighteen feet in girth, covers a diameter of one hundred and fourteen feet. The Knowle beech measures at three feet from the ground, twenty-four feet in circumference; the stem, as is usual with this species of tree, increases upward "till it bursts into a perfect forest of limbs." It rises to the height of one hundred and five feet, its boughs extend one hundred and twenty-three feet, and it contains four hundred and ninety-eight feet of solid timber." Nor must we omit to notice two other beechen groves, which will be consecrated as the favourite resorts of two of our most distinguished poets, the immortal Pope, and the author of the well-known elegy, Gray. The latter thus describes his favourite resort, in the neighbourhood of Stoke Pogis, Bucks :-"I have at the distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar call it a common) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no human thing in it but myself. Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most other convenient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the wind. At the foot of one of these, squats me, (il penseroso,) and there grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timid hare and sportive squirrel gambol around me." Within the precincts of Windsor forest, in the neighbourhood of Binfield, the early residence of Alexander Pope, is a grove of beeches, whither he would frequently retire, and beneath one in particular, it is said, many of his early pieces were composed. Lady Gower, an admirer of the poet, to perpetuate the memory of this circumstance, caused the words, "Here Pope sang," to be cut in legible characters upon the bark of the tree. A violent storm, however, some years ago, entirely broke off the upper part of the tree, leaving only a scathed and mutilated trunk.

NEW ZEALANDERS.

WE look with interest on a group of savages, whose manners and customs are very different to our own, especially if there be among them any particular traits of character, setting forth courage or cowardice, kindness or cruelty. We judge them by our own opinions; we measure them by our own standard.

But if, in addition to the interest excited by their peculiar customs and qualities, there be a prospect of their rapidly rising in the scale of civilization and intelligence we regard them with more than ordinary attention and curiosity. Rude and ignorant, superstitious and degraded as they may be, we see in them the germ of a new order of things; the elements of an infant state, and the progenitors of a race, whose knowledge, influence, and renown, may spread abroad in the earth.

The interesting group in the engraving, is intended as a representation of the natives of New Zealand, in the neighbourhood of the Straits of Cook and Cape Palliser. The Straits of Cook separate the northern islands called Eaheinomauwe from the centre one, Tavai-Poenamoo, in the same manner as Tee's Straits divide the latter from the southern island; these three islands, altogether, form the country of New Zealand. JUNE, 1840.

The colonization of this remote coun try will excite in us different emotions, according as we are accustomed to regard mankind. Colonies are formed is uncivilized countries with various views The statesman considers the advantage that may arise from bringing a new country under the subjection of his own. The merchant calculates on the profit that may accrue from trading with the inhabitants, and bearing away their produce to other climes. The manufacturer contemplates a new market for his goods. While the Christian looks with a single eye to the temporal and eternal welfare of the new people to whom the benefits of civilization and Christianity are about to be extended.

It is not intended, in these observations, to enter on a description of New Zealand, to set forth the progress of discoveries made in the country, or to represent the degree of civilization already partially effected. For the present purpose, it is enough to know, that the New Zealanders have been always described as ignorant, fierce, treacherous, and cruel cannibals; and that the country presents sufficient attractions for Europeans to form colonies therein.

And here, at the very threshold of our remarks, we are struck with what is calculated to produce a deep impression on the pious mind. It would astonish the

R

The colonizing of New Zealand is a subject full of interest to the Christian philanthropist; for hard must that heart be that can contemplate, without emotion, the barbarous usage of civilized people towards uncivilized tribes; the unchristian conduct of Christian nations towards the heathen! Very few, indeed, are the colonies of the world wherein the aborigines of the soil have not groaned beneath the iron yoke of those who first settled among them as friends. The man of colour has fallen before the white man, and the blood of unnumbered victims has cried out from the ground against the oppression and wanton cruelty of those who boast of the purity of their faith, and make large professions of humanity, mercy, justice, and peace.

There are Christian men who, believing in national as well as individual sins and punishments, think they recognize in the civil wars of Portugal and Spain a Divine retribution for the wantonly shed blood that has stained the thirsty soil of their distant colonies. These consider the division of Holland, the revolutions of France, and the unsettled position of Great Britain herself, as not unconnected with national and colonial transgression. It remains, then, to be seen, whether, profiting by the past, the colonizers of New Zealand will adopt a more merciful, upright, and Christian course than the annals of the past hand down to us; and whether the present inhabitants of that distant land will have to bless, or to look back with bitterness upon the hour when English colonists first set foot on their native soil.

The page of the past, on the subject of colonies, can hardly be read without a soul-sickening emotion of indignation and shame. White men have won over their darker-coloured brethren by pretended kindness; supplanted them by

liquors; embroiled them in wars; and robbed them by pretended treaties. They have defeated them by force, pursued them in their native woods with rifles, and hunted them with blood hounds. And can these things pass unheeded by the righteous Ruler of the skies? Is there no retribution in the stretched-out arm of the Holy One against oppression ! "Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways," Prov. iii. 31.

Great Britain, stretching as she does the sceptre of her command over so large a portion of the earth, and exercising control over at least a hundred and fifty millions of human beings, in distant lands, was once like New Zealand, inhabited by a barbarous people. We have little among us now resembling the savage rites of the ancient Britons, and the superstitious and cruel ceremonies of the Druids, burning alive their fellowbeings in figures of wicker work. We regard these things with indifference; and, in like manner, the New Zealander, in years to come, may regard the relations of cannibalism as a part of history alone, setting forth practices long abolished.

Even now, the savage customs of New Zealand are giving way. As yet, the inhabitants of the place may, for the most part, dwell in chimneyless huts, with walls formed of twigs, and roofsof rushes or grass. They may tattoo their bodies, and rub themselves over with grease and red ochre. They may eat fern roots, take their meals in the open air, delight in the slaughter of their enemies, and bake the bodies of their prisoners in the earth for food; but these things must rapidly disappear.

At present, New Zealanders, in the interior of their country, clothe themselves with mats and rushes, sticking feathers in their hair; use implements, whose handles are frequently formed of human bones; cut themselves with knives on the return of their chiefs from warlike expeditions ; join noses, and weep and howl, in parting with their friends; and practise a hundred other strange customs which must give way before the influence of civilization. Every year will effect new changes, and every generation destroy, for ever, usages that now form a part of the character of the people.

In future years, the New Zealanders