lion's mouth. But within was an iron spike, which severely lacerated his hand; and a mortification ensuing, he died in conse

quence.

The following melancholy narrative was related by Mrs. P. to her friend. It is fully calculated to bear out the inference which she promptly drew from it, namely, that dreadful as was the penalty inflicted upon the father, still the calamity recorded ought to be considered as a just penance for a disregard of that sound principle which ought never to be obstinate in what is obviously not an affair of moment:

A prelate of the Church of England, much admired for his fine understanding, talents, and political liberality, was one day proceeding to take an airing with his wife in their carriage. Just at their setting out, their eldest son, a highly educated and most promising young man, rode up, and desired to be of the party inside. This the bishop peremptorily refused to allow, directing his son by all means to remain on horseback, and ride at the side of the carriage. The youth for a moment remonstrated, but his father insisted, and was cheerfully obeyed. The bishop's lady then begged his lordship to tell her why he so resolutely adhered to his deter mination of not admitting his son to a seat with them; adding, that in a matter of so much indifference she wished he had yielded. But the father replied that he had not acted without a reason; for that he had been tormented by a dream the night before, when he imagined that he saw his son suddenly thrown from his horse and killed; and that through fear of thinking himself superstitious for the rest of his days, he had persevered in rejecting his son's request. The bishop had scarcely spoken the words, when the horse on which his much-loved son was riding, threw the young man to the ground, and he was killed on the spot. The unhappy parents, the father especially, grieved incessantly for their loss; and Mrs. Piozzi remarked, that, dreadful as was the penalty suffered by the unfortunate father, it was a just infliction on a person who had disregarded one of the grand laws in the code of common sense, which prescribes to us never to be obstinate in what is apparently not an affair of moment.-pp. 227, 228.

The chief aim of the writer of this work was to exhibit a faithful and favourable resemblance of one who behaved to him, as he declares, with great condescension and kindness; and whose equal, in most respects, he confesses, he might well despair of meeting again were his life prolonged.

We do not, for our parts, hesitate to congratulate the lovers of literature on the accession to the common stock, of a work, which, though small and unpretending, is highly calculated to elevate the moral character of authors in general.

ART. VIII.-The Botanical Miscellany; containing Figures and Descriptions of such Plants as recommend themselves by their novelty, rarity, or history, or by the uses to which they are applied in the Arts, in Medicine, and in Domestic Economy; together with occasional Botanical Notices and Information. Part IX. Continued Quarterly. By W. J. HOOKER, L. D. F.R.A. and L.S. and Regius, Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow. London: Murray. 1833.

How little in the way of moral improvement has the connexion of this excathedra Christian country produced amongst the barbarously superstitous tribes which compose the almost indefinite population of the East Indian Peninsula! Let us at once be understood not by any means as willing to forget the difficulty of imparting cultivation to a people. We know and are always prepared to maintain, that a people such as those, which you may pitch upon in any province of the East Indies, are not to be drubbed into civilization, nor, in many respects, would it be policy to attempt any change, even by conciliation.

Savages have a right to their liberties; they may eat raw flesh till the day of judgment, if they choose it; nay, they may have each man ten wives, and do ten thousand things at variance with our English customs; and yet, even though we make laws for the barbarous creatures (forcing them to pay toll, by the way, for our trouble), we have no right to interfere with their tastes, their humours even, and their prejudices. This is the general rule, the strength of which is derived from the existence of some exceptions, amongst which may be mentioned one in particular.

We do not think it quite consistent with the character of this country that she should have immediately under her protection, a tribe of people who habitually violate every law, which one would think that instinct itself had dictated. We humbly submit, that the Indians who exist beneath the shadow of the British sceptre, should have something better taught them than a religion whose sacrifices consist of murders-whose code of morality is a profligate confusion of that social classification, without which, the haunts of men become jungles, or habitals of wild beasts. Give what you will, in the name of religious freedom, to every human being, with a black or a white skin, that vegetates from the Caspian Sea to the coast of Coromondel; but let nobody within the reach of thy mighty arm, all-conquering England, commit murder and incest, and crime of every dye, under the conviction that he is doing the duty for which his Creator has sent him into this world.

These were the reflections which struck us on reading the account contained in the above miscellany, of a strange race inhabiting a province called Emerina, in the Island of Madagascar. The

state of society and customs in this large population may be judged of from the following account :

On certain days, which are universally regarded as the King's lucky days, a horrid superstition takes place. If a woman bears a child on one of these days, she is obliged to murder it by drowning, so that a great loss of infants every year must be counted on.

Polygamy, in its ordinary acceptation, does not generally exist in Emerina; but the practice substituted for it is ten times more revolting. A man may marry at the same time several sisters, or a widow and all her daughters, and this they do without the slightest consciousness that they commit a crime. Before marriage the parties usually live together for a specified term.

But the most revolting practice of all, is the administration of a certain poison call tanghen. This used to take place frequently before the reign of Radama the late king; but he being somewhat enlightened by allowing intercourse with Europeans, stopped these enormities. His Queen, however, who succeeded him, revived the horrible practice, and in the beginning of 1830 issued an order for the exhibition of the poison. Her Majesty declared that she had been bewitched-had been inoculcated with some disease by a malignant sorcerer, and was persuaded that it was essential to her relief that the said sorcerer should be put to death. The ground on which this custom has been instituted was, that it constitutes a good test of the guilt or innocence of the party accused of any crime. The test of the tanghen, therefore, might be ordered at any period by the government, as a means of determining the loyalty of any subject called upon by royal authority. In compliance with the above order, in 1830 an administration of tanghen took place. The number of accused amounted to thirty, and these included members of the highest rank in the country. The whole of the nobility escaped, whilst the poor plebeians, who also took the poison, perished. In the following month, about thirty ladies of Madagascar submitted to the ordeal; amongst them were the late king's wives, his sisters, and other females of the royal family; the wives of the chief officers, and daughters of judges. There were amongst them also a few men, one of whom was a judge. A third experiment of a similar kind was ordered for the succeeding month, when the persons themselves who had administered the tanghen were obliged to go through the ordeal. Lastly, the skids, or diviners, took their turn, and many perished. At this period the practice was general throughout the province. It is noted by the Rev. Mr. Baker, who makes the communication, that it is common for the judges, when a case is difficult to decide, to administer the poison to both parties as a test, and in this way numbers are cut off. It is judged essential in the public administration of the tanghen, that some should perish, and this leads us to the point whether or not it can be so administered as to be effective or innocent. It is usually the case that great and rich persons escape, whilst the

lower orders universally perish under the influence of the poison. Tanghen, it should be remembered, is the fruit of a native tree, and those who have had the opportunity of seeing it administered, believe that the very great difference in the effect, is to be explained by the opinion that two sorts exist, or that the poisonous quality of the fruit, supposing there to be no second species, depends upon the degree of maturity which it has at the time of its being administered. The mode of exhibiting the poison is as follows:

The accused person having eaten as much boiled rice as possible, swallows, without mastication, three pieces of the skin of a fowl, each about the size of a dollar. He is then required to drink the test, a small quantity scraped of the Tanghena nut, mixed with the juice of Bananas. The "Panozondoha" (denouncer of the curse or imprecation) then, placing his hand on the head of the accused, pronounces the formula of imprecation, invoking all direful curses on him if guilty. Soon after this, large quantities of rice-water are administered. The contents of the stomach are consequently ejected;-and if, on examination, the three pieces of skin are found, all is well, the party is pronounced "Madio," clean-legally and morally innocent of the charge, but if otherwise, guilt has fixed its stain, that stain is indelible, and the disgrace incurred is irreparable.

Sometimes the corrosive nature of the poison acts with so great rapidity, that life is destroyed during the ordeal. Should the test have proved the guilt of the party, and yet the Tanghena itself not have produced immediate death, he is generally killed by the bystanders-a large club, spear, or the rice-pestle, being used as the murderous weapon, and the brains of the unhappy victim are dashed out on the spot. Strangling is sometimes used, as in an instance just communicated to me by an eye-witness, in which the miserable sufferer was hurried away, or dragged to a sort of burial before life was quite extinct! In some instances, the guilty are left to perish amidst their excruciating agonies-deserted by every one,-family, friends, and all! Slaves, on conviction, are more generally sent to a distance, and sold where no suspicion of their guilty character is supposed to exist. But slaves belonging to any member of the royal family are put to death. pp. 276, 277.

The fact of a great deal of wealth being accumulated in the hands of persons engaged in administering the poison, gives countenance to the notion that they possess the means of giving an inert or an efficient dose at their pleasure. A dollar and sixty-three cents is paid as a fee by the party who recovers, and who is obliged invariably to add a considerable amount to this in the way of presents. One individual can administer the tanghen to eight persons in one day, and when the accused dies, the officiating divine receives a twenty-fourth part of the whole property not bequeathed before the accusation.

Utter ruthlessness is the distinguishing character of the whole transaction. There can be no doubt that many of the sufferers are buried alive; at all events, it is the custom for the people waiting the issue in such cases, to strangle the accused, or suffocate him,

and then rush from the house in order not to come in contact with the spirit as it departs from the body. The condition of such victims, however, is comparatively easy as contrasted with those devoted beings, who, after taking the tanghen with impunity, are left to the rapacity of wild dogs.

Another barbarous superstition marks the customs of the people of Emerina-we allude to the practice of sorcery. The wretched people have supreme confidence in sorcery, as a malignant power to which they owe all their misfortunes. The sorcerers of Madagascar are deemed to be misanthropists; they delight in human sufferings, and go out at night to wander among the rocks and tombs, and to associate with owls and wild cats, as they pretend, in order to acquire the power which contact with these animals gives. Their only aim is to produce disease and calamity to their fellow-creatures, led on by some irresistible impulse. They cast a spell over every thing, with the exception of sorrow and death. A common act of those beings is to poison the water in the pitcher which is used for the family, and thus, at one fell blow, destroy numbers. So deeply rooted in the minds of the Madagascar people, from the king to the peasant, is the belief in witchcraft, that the whole nation seems bound down in one bond of fascination as it were, from which at present there are very slight hopes of redeeming them. The following extract shows how far this superstitious tendency carries the poor benighted creatures:—

When they sneeze, they have the same custom of saluting one another as all the ancient nations, Romans and Jews, as well as many modern people. A prayer is then said, of which the following is a nearly literal translation: Now is evil gone and good come: it cannot stop my way before me, nor overtake me behind, nor approach me between two lands: on the earth it cannot crush me, nor descend upon me from on high; it shall glide away like mud, and be rejected like dirt, because it has done evil: a great rock, from which it cannot rise, shall fall upon it, for evil is departed, and good is come. It shall war with me no longer, and I shall overcome : I shall be like a dziriri (a symbol of the swan) on the water; the fire shall not burn me, and I shall come unhurt from the furnace. Fifty plants of Banana, and a hundred spikes of sugar-cane, though dead when I transplant them, shall bud anew; and though dried up, shall bloom again."-p. 258.

The manner in which the people perform funerals is likewise an object of interest :

As soon as a person expires, the corpse is laid on a bed and washed, the hair is unbraided, and the body is rolled in three or four different cloths, while the hands and feet are adorned with jewellery, and the neck enriched with strings of coral, and other Arabian stones. Here it remains, till all the family, with dishevelled locks, and wrapped in old pagnes, have assembled around, to weep and to convey it to the place of interment: during