The group extends about 800 miles in length from north to south; but the breadth is comparatively small, and very varying, owing to deeply-indented shores. This is specially characteristic of the northern island, which has a width amounting at the most to 200 miles, but diminishing to less than five miles. The coastline probably exceeds 3,000 miles, marked with many large and well-protected harbours. Situated near the antipodes, everything in nature is, of course, as to times and seasons, discordant to what it is with us, while various phenomena occur under reverse circumstances. Midnight reigns there at our noonday. June is midwinter, January midsummer. The compass-needle points to the south. The north is the warmest, and the south the coldest point. The luminosity, which we designate, from its general position in the heavens, the aurora borealis, occurs there as the aurora australis. The surface rises in grand mountains, some of which are capped with perpetual snow, forests clothing their slopes, and innumerable rills pouring down their declivities, forming considerable streams in the great valleys. Mount Edgecombe, the highest point, on the eastern shore of the northern island, attains the height of 9,630 feet; but Mount Egmont, on the western coast, is the most beautiful and imposing mass,a volcanic cone, quite extinct, rising 8,840 feet, or about 1,600 feet above the snow line, in complete isolation from a perfectly level plain, a thick belt of woods adorning its base. There are evidences of the islands having been the scenes of extensive combustion in ancient times, while the present intensity of subterranean heat is proclaimed by warm lakes, ponds, and springs in a state of ebullition, and the mountain of Tongariri, with other active volcanic vents. Shocks of earthquakes, occasionally very sensible, are frequent in certain districts, and have excited great alarm among the European colonists; but it does not appear that the natives themselves have any tradition of formidable catastrophes of the kind having occurred. The climate is universally spoken of in terms of no common eulogy, as remarkably salubrious and agreeable, more equable than our own and more mild, the winters being warmer, while cool and refreshing sea-breezes prevent oppressive heat and sultriness in the summer months. The soil, though variable in quality, is in many parts extremely rich, densely clothed in its natural state with a wild indigenous vegetation of valuable timber-trces, ornamental and dye-woods,

majestic ferns, and the native flax (Phormium tenax), remarkable for the strength of its fibre. European grain of all kinds, fruits, and vegetables, grow luxuriantly on the cleared surface; and admirable pastures for cattle are produced by the sowing of the English grasses. There are no predatory animals, or venomous reptiles, and no indigenous quadrupeds; but all the introduced domesticated races thrive well. Coal has been found in various districts, and used in steamers with success; while minerals of other descriptions appear to be abundant. The aborigines, a vigorous race of Malayo-Polynesians, are supposed not to exceed 110,000, and are principally found in the northern island. Great efforts have been made to establish amicable relations with them on the part of the British colonists; and not without success have missionaries, of various Christian denominations, laboured to extend to them the blessings of civilization and true religion. The colonists may probably number 20,000, in course of steady annual augmentation from emigrants. They are mostly persons of the middle and even higher ranks of life, who, attracted by the climate and natural fertility of the islands, with their adaptation for all purposes of maritime and commercial enterprise, have sold their home estates, chartered ships, and gone out in companies, with suitable preparation, to lay the foundation of a prosperous nation in the Southern Seas. To those who may desire to leave their native land, and who are healthy, temperate, industrious, and persevering, there is perhaps no part of the earth offering greater advantages as a land of settlement. Individuals of different habits may possibly succeed, but have no right to anticipate success, whether at home or abroad.-MILNER'S Universal Geography.'

ONE of the most special appointments of the Creator as to birds, and which nothing but His chosen design and corresponding ordainment can explain, is the law that so many kinds shall migrate from one country to another, and most commonly at vast

distances from each other. They might have been all framed to breed, be born, live and die in the same region, as occur to some, and as quadrupeds and insects do. But He has chosen to make them travel from one climate to another with unerring precision, from an irresistible instinct, with a wonderful courage, with an untiring mobility,' and in a right and never-failing direction. For this purpose they cross oceans without fear, and with a persevering exertion that makes our most exhausting labours a comparative ainusement. Philosophy in vain endeavours to account for the extraordinary phenomenon. It cannot discover any adequate physical reason. Warmer temperatures are not essentially necessary to incubation, nor always the object of the emigration; for the snow-bunting, though a bird of song, goes into the frozen region to breed and nurture its young. The snow-bird has the same taste or constitution for the chilling weather which the majority recedes from. We can only resolve all these astonishing journeys into the appointment of the Creator, who has assigned to every bird the habits as well as the forin, which it was His good pleasure to imagine and to attach to it. The watchful naturalist may hear, if not see, several migrations of those which frequent2 our island, both to and fro, as spring advances and as autumn declines; but as they take place chiefly at night or at early dawn, and in the higher regions of the atmosphere, they are much oftener audible than visible to us on the surface of the earth.-FIELD'S 'Scrap Book.'

TILL lately the country gentlemen of England knew nothing of their estates save the rent which they yielded, and the animals that were hunted as vermin or as game; and the consequence was that they did not want the people, except as administrators to the furnishing of food, clothing, and the trappings of state. The result has been that ever since the breaking up of

appear, are distinguished at once by their grandeur and their variety. India is, as it were, an epitome of the whole world. It has regions that bask beneath the brightest rays of a tropical sun; and others, than which the most awful depths of the polar world are not more dreary. The varying degrees of elevation produce here the same changes that arise elsewhere, from the greatest difference of position on the earth's surface. Its vast plains present the double harvests, the luxuriant foliage, and even the burning deserts of the torrid zone; the lower heights are enriched by the fruits and grains of the temperate climates; the other steeps are clothed with the vast pine-forests of the north; while the highest pinnacles are buried beneath the perpetual snows of the arctic zone. We do not here, as in Africa and the polar regions, see nature under one uniform aspect; on the contrary, we have to trace gradual yet complete transitions between the most opposite extremes that can exist on the surface of the same planet.

The main body, as it were, of India, the chief scene of her matchless fertility, and the seat of her great empires, is composed of a plain extending along the entire breadth, from east to west, between the Brahmapoutra and the Indus; and reaching, in point of latitude, from the great chain of mountains to the high table-land of the southern peninsula. It may thus possess a length of 1,500 miles, with an average breadth of from 300 to 400. The line of direction is generally from south-east to northwest, following that of the vast mountain-range which bounds it on the north, and from whose copious streams its fruitfulness is derived. With the exception, perhaps, of the country watered by the great river of China, it may be considered the finest and most fertile on the face of the carth. The whole of its immense superficies, if we leave out an extensive desert tract to be presently noticed, forms one continuous level of unvaried richness, and over which majestic rivers, with slow and almost insensible course, diffuse their sea-like expanse.

Of this general character of the Indian plain, the province of Bengal presents the most complete and striking example; no part of it being diversified with a single rock or even a hillock. The Ganges pours through it a continually-widening stream, which, during the rainy season, covers a great extent with its fertilizing inundation. From this deep, rich, well-watered soil, the sun, beating with direct and intense rays, awakens an almost unrivalled power of vegetation, and makes it one entire field of waving grain. Bahar, farther up the current, has the same general aspect, though its surface is varied by some slight elevations but Allahabad, higher still, is mostly, low, warm, and fruitful,

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exactly like Bengal. North of the river, the provinces of Oude and Rohilcund, sloping gradually upwards to the mountains, enjoy a more cool and salubrious climate, and display in profusion the most valuable products both of Asia and Europe. Here the valley of the Ganges terminates, and is succeeded by that of the Jumna, more elevated, and neither so well watered nor quite so fertile.

The Doab, or territory between the two rivers, requires, in many places, artificial irrigation. Its woods, however, are more luxuriant, while the moderate cold of its winter permits a crop of wheat or other European grain to be raised, and the summer is sufficient to ripen one of rice. To the south of the Jumna, and along the course of its tributary the Chumbul, the ground is broken by eminences extending from the hills of Malwah and Ajmere; while, even amidst its most level tracts, insulated rocks, with perpendicular sides and level summits, form those almost impregnable hill-forts so much celebrated in Indian history. Westward of Delhi begins the great desert, which we shall at present pass over to notice the plain of the Punjaub, where the five tributaries of the Indus, rolling their ample streams, produce a degree of fertility equal to that of the region watered by the Ganges. High cultivation, too frequently obstructed by public disorders and the ruder character of the people, is alone wanting to make it rival the finest portions of the more eastern territory.

Throughout the whole of this vast plain, the wants of the population, and the demands of commerce, have entirely superseded the original productions of nature, and substituted plants and grains better fitted for human use. Even under the most careful management, few of those exquisite shrubs are now reared which have given such celebrity to the vegetable kingdom of the east. Here are quite unknown those aromatic gales which perfume the hilly shores of Malabar and the Oriental islands. Its staples consist of solid, rich, and useful articles, produced by strong heat acting on a deep, moist, and fertile soil :--rice, the eastern staff of life; sugar, the most generally used of dietetic luxuries; opium, whose narcotic qualities have made it everywhere so highly prized; indigo, the most valuable substance used in dyeing; and in the drier tracts, cotton, which clothes the inhabitants of the east, and affords the material of the most delicate and beautiful fabrics. Such an entire subjection to the plough and the spade, joined to the want of variety in the surface, gives to this great central region a tame and monotonous aspect. Baber, its Afghan conqueror, complains, in his memoirs, of the uniform and uninteresting scenery which everywhere met

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