for the admission of air, in closing, produces a snap: this ring has a contractile power. On the under side of the larva are bands of tough dots, or points, the better to enable them to crawl, and perhaps serving the purpose also of exciting a degree of inflammation, causing a secretion of lymph, or pus, for their sustenance. The tentaculars are used as fixed points to draw the body towards them: these, with the bands of tough dots, are best seen with the help of a glass. I have generally found them in the cavities supporting the horns, and in the frontal sinuses; yet the membrane lining these parts is very little inflamed, when the maxillary sinuses are extensively so: the probability is that they crawl into the former after the death of the animal. When at maturity, they fall from the nostril and form the pupa, and in about six or eight weeks the parent fly bursts its prison. The first care of the fly is to retreat to some place of security till strength is acquired, and when the female has been impregnated, and the eggs sufficiently matured, she seeks her object. Description of the fly. Antenna with three articulations, the last globular, with a bristle in front, deeply sunk in the head; three globular black dots, placed triangularly, on the upper part of the head: the mouth a simple aperture without a trunk: the palpi are two, with two articulations, the last of which is rounded, situated in a depression on each side of the mouth: the wings are transparent, minutely spotted near the base: the thorar is granulated, having the upper margin tinged with pale red; abdomen white and black, thickly set with hair; legs six in number, and slightly tinged with yelJow. The specific effects produced by the Estrus ovis on the sheep are at present a matter of speculative science. That sheep are subject to vertigo is well known, as also the cause thereof. How far the constant irritation excited by the larva of Estrus ovis may have a tendency to remove that disease, must be left to future inquiry. The mode pursued by the parent fly, in depositing her eggs, I think is not difficult to be understood. Men who visit the country in the summer season know the peculiar manner in which sheep collect together in solid masses, with their noses pointed to the ground, and how on a sudden they take flight to a distant part of the field. The cause of all this in the sheep is obviously to escape from their enemy, Estrus; not that I believe that, in depositing its eggs the insect inflicts pain by puncturing the pituitary membrane; but titillation is excited, the nostrils become highly inflamed and sore from the constant rubbing of the nose against the ground, and when crowded in mass with the nose pointed to the earth, pure respiration is impeded and foreign matter drawn into the nostrils, which greatly increases the irritation. Thus in dry, hot weather, in the middle of the day, sheep seek a retreat in gravel pits, gullies, &c. to escape from the fly, and at such times observations on this subject are best made. There is a degree of wildness in sheep about to receive the attack, violently shaking the head, striking the fore feet on the ground, and retreating to a distant part of the field. From these causes it is almost impossible to come at the eggs when deposited, though they cannot be numerous, for the greatest number of larva that I have ever found has not exceeded six, in one subject. Yours, &c. JAMES CLEMENTS. To the Editors of the American Monthly Magazine. In answer to the inquiry of “Bibliophilus," in your last number, respecting the "Literary Fairs" attempted to be established in this country by the Booksellers, in 1802, I am able to state the following facts. Some of the principal Booksellers in the United States agreed to have an annual meeting either in New-York or Philadelphia, (on the plan of the Literary Fairs at Leipsic in Germany,) to make exchanges of publications for the mutual benefit of the trade. At first sight, a project of this nature appeared so highly advantageous, that it recommended itself at once to public attention, and for five years was persevered in to the manifest injury of the trade, and the detriment of literature. It has long since died a natural death, and the particulars of its downfall, with its causes and consequences, may be useful as a lesson to prevent future attempts of the same kind. The system of exchanging books as it is called, and which was practised during the continuance of the literary fairs in this country to an extent unprecedented either before or since, tended to produce, and did in fact produce an artificial business, which having no cash consideration as a standard of real value, induced the publication of more books than could possibly be sold in the regular course of trade. Every one put all his publications at the most exorbitant rate, which fixed the standard price of books at much too dear a rate, (an evil by the bye not yet perfectly eradicated, though competition in reprinting is beginning to have a beneficial effect,) and at the same time, deluged the shelves of the booksellers with a mass of miserable trash that is far from being perfectly destroyed yet, and has served to degrade and depreciate the bookselling business in the United States below that scale which it is destined to assume under better management. Judicious persons soon became disgusted with this unsound and impolitic mode of conducting business, and gradually withheld themselves from the annual resort, until it was at length left entirely deserted, and all those persons that were in any way connected or acquainted with these literary transactions, or who have even felt the evils resulting from them, will be the last ever to seek for a recurrence of them. The present system of bookselling, that of buying and selling for cash, or a limited term of credit, is the only secure and proper mode of doing business; by checking all attempts at overtrading and overstocking the market with a species of merchandise, which of all others is most liable to accumulate, and become dead stock, and to encumber the warehouse for many years. As the business is now conducted, it is believed to be much more serviceable to the interests of science and literature generally than it has ever been, and is known to be much more lucrative to those engaged in it. While on this subject it may not be amiss to suggest that a removal of the duty on all books imported would be a salutary measure for the country, inasmuch as it would induce the importation of many rare and valuable works, which it will not answer to reprint in this country, and also have a tendency, without superseding the re-publication of popular works, to reduce the price of books to its proper level. MESSES. EDITORS, BIBLIOPOLA. Though you have judiciously disclaimed all concern with local and party politics, you do not I presume mean to exclude from your pages the temperate discussion of important questions of national policy. There are many subjects at this moment under the consideration of Congress, on which I should be glad to have your opinion, and which I should like to see argumentatively treated by some of AMICUS.. Our correspondent has done us justice in supposing that we did not intend by our interdiction of party controversy to reject dispassionate essays on subjects of general policy-but we know not how far it might be prudent to invite them. We are ready to receive communications on any theme, and will insert such as we shall approve. Trash, from whatever quarter it may come, we shall disregard-but it is our earnest desire to excite talent and to reward its exertions in our behalf, as far as our ability extends. That ability will increase with the circulation of our work-which valuable contribubutions will eminently tend to promote. In regard to the expression of our own opinion on public affairs, which our correspondent politely requests, much weight would not be attached to it-and if there were, we should not consider it fair to convert to any political purpose the influence we had acquired by the diffusion of a work professedly literary. We speak, it is true, rather in reference to a future, than to the present state of politics in our country-for though there are many points on which the public mind is unsettled, there are few on which it is absolutely divided; and at this moment scarcely the semblance of an organized party exists. All, for example, agree that it is desirable that Congress should possess the power of making appropriations for internal improvements-we are among those who think that it already belongs to them. All feel a disposition to encourage domestic manufactures-we would not carry that encouragement to the length of destroying foreign competition. All concur in wishing the emancipation of the Spanish provinces; but there is a doubt in ma ny whether it would be expedient or proper for this country to take a part in the contest. The sympathies of our countrymen yearn towards the patriots. -To the generous eye, Distress is virtue; and though self-betray'd, A people struggling with their fate must rouse The hero's throb. Our government has already, in our apprehension, adopted the wisest course in respect to them. It has despatched commissioners to ascertain, by their own observation, the actual condition of those provinces, to learn the views, and to estimate the capabilities of the people. From their report we shall be enabled to decide discreetly on ulterior measures. MESSRS. EDITORS, It is now that season of the year when the industrious and frugal are usually called upon to provide for the idle and profuse. The subject of public charities has undergone considerable discussion of late, and their pernicious effect is generally admitted. Still humanity will not suffer us to see our fellow-creatures in misery without endeavouring to alleviate their distress; and the abolition of eleemosynary institutions would have only the effect of turning the needy and importunate upon the benevolent and credulous. If it is impossible to inspire the labouring poor with any forethought, when their earnings exceed their indispensible expenses, it may perhaps be practicable to teach them some lessons of economy when their means fail to supply their ordinary necessities. The consumption of food in this country among every class of the community is unnecessarily great. I believe that a greater quantity of food is necessary here than in Europe to support animal life, from the more stimulating qualities of our atmosphere; but the culinary art is so little understood and practised amongst us, that a large proportion of the nutriment that is nominally consumed, is absolutely wasted. Nothing for instance can be more wasteful than the common way of boiling meat and vegetables,and throwing away the pot liquor which is saturated with the most savoury and nutritious juices of both. The addition of peas or beans to this liquor, boiled down to a proper consistency, would render it excellent soup. Again, plain boiling of carrots, parsnips, turnips, cabbages, &c. &c. is not only wasteful, but it is injurious to the flavour of the food; every one of these vegetables is much pleasanter and much more nourishing when fried or stewed with the meat. Potatoes should either be roasted or fried, or boiled very dry. These remarks are worthy the attention of the rich as well as the poor. There is hardly an eatinghouse in this city, where there is a sufficient variety of vegetables, or where the vegetables used are skilfully cooked and judiciously assorted. If you hear persons finding fault with their fare at boardinghouses and ordinaries, you do not hear them complain of a want of meats, fish, and poultry; of these there is generally a surfeit-it is the want of vegetables, of puddings, and pastry, that is universally complained of. I know very few tables which I frequent that would not be very much improved by retrenching some dish of animal food in favour of an equivalent in vegetables. Among the evils which the poor have to contend with, is the enormous retail profits which they have to pay on the articles which they buy from day to day. It costs one who lives from hand to mouth twice as much for his living as it does one who is able to lay in supplies for the week at once. A man who buys pote toes by the half peck, pays a dollar for a bushel, whilst he who buys by the bushel can get them for half the money. In fact the extortions practiced in the markets in this city are outrageous. The corporation ought to compel the venders of all meats to sell by the pound, and to prohibit the charging of a higher price on smaller quantities of vegetables; a half peck should be had at the rate of the price by the bushel. The assize of bread is regulated upon this principle. Another thing, the grand jurors should visit the markets continually, and present all offenders. Forestalling should be put a stop to, and fraud effectually restrained. When such measures shall be carried into effect, a reduction of at least one third of the price of every article exposed for sale in our market will be experienced. It is really worth while to inquire why one should be compelled to pay 18 or 20 cents per pound for beef at the Fly-market, New-York, when the same pieces and of equal quality can be bought in Fanueil-Hall-market, Boston, for 10 or 12 cents per pound; as I am assured by indubitable authority is the fact. If any of these desultory hints shall awaken attention to the subjects to which they relate, I shall be encouraged hereafter to offer further suggestions for the public good. VIGI New-York, Jan. 5, 1818. MESSRS. EDITORS, Conformably to my promise I have inclosed to you an extract from Gen. Burgoyne's State of the Expedition to Canada,' as exhibited by him, in his defence before a committee of the House of Commons. He had been reproached with a want of cordiality towards Gen. Fraser. He feelingly adverts to this imputation. "The defence of military conduct is an interesting point of professional honour; but to vindicate the heart, is a duty to God, and to society at large. "Few conjunctures in the campaign I have been describing, few perhaps upon military record, can be found so distinguished by exigencies, or productive of such critical and anxious calls upon public character and private affection as that which now took place. "In the first place, the position of the army was untenable, and yet an immediate retreat was impossible; not only from the fatigue of the troops, but from the necessity of delivering fresh ammunition and provisions. "The losses in the action were uncommonly severe. Sir Francis Clarke, my aidde-camp, had originally recommended himself to my attention by his talents and diligence; as service and intimacy opened his character more, he became endeared to me by every quality that can create esteem. lost in him an useful assistant, an amiable companion, an attached friend: the state was deprived by his death of one of the fairest promises of an able general. sured by a succession of immediate cares, increasing doubts, and melancholy objects. The enemy were formed in two lines. Every part of their disposition, as well as the repeated attacks upon Lord Balcarras's corps, and the cannonade from the plain, kept the troops in momentary expectation of a general action. During this suspense wounded officers, some upon crutches, and others even carried upon hand-barrows by their servants, were occasionally ascending the hill from the hospital tents to take their share in the action, or follow the march of the army. The generals were employed in exhorting the troops. "About sun-set the corpse of Gen. Fraser was brought up the hill, attended only by the officers who had lived in his family. To arrive at the redoubt it passed within view of the greatest part of both armies. General Phillips, General Reidesel, and myself, who were standing together, were struck with the humility of the procession: They who were ignorant that privacy had been requested might construe it neglect. We could neither endure that reflection, nor indeed restrain our natural propensity to pay our last attention to his remains. The circumstances that ensued cannot be better described than they have been by different witnesses. The incessant cannonade during the solemnity; the steady attitude and unaltered voice with which the chaplain officiated, though frequently coverIed with dust, which the shot threw upon all sides of him; the mute but expressive mixture of sensibility and indignation upon every countenance; these objects will remain to the last of life upon the mind of every man who was present. The growing duskiness added to the scenery, and the whole marked a character of that juncture that would make one of the finest subjects for the pencil of a master that the field ever exhibited. To the canvass, and to the faithful page of a more important historian, gallant friend! I consign thy memory. There may thy talents, thy manly virtues, their progress and their period find due distinction; and long may they survive;-long after the frail record of my pen shall be forgotten." The fate of Colonel Ackland, taken prisoner, and then supposed to be mortally wounded, was a second source of anxietyGeneral Fraser was expiring. "In the course of the action a shot had passed through my hat, and another had torn my waistcoat. I should be sorry to be thought insensible to the protecting hand of Providence; but I evermore particularly considered (and I hope not superstitiously) a soldier's hair-breadth escapes as incentives to duty, a marked renewal of the trust of Being, for the purposes of a public station; and under that reflection to lose cur fortitude, by giving way to our affections; to be divested by any possible self-emotion from meeting a present exigency with our best faculties were at once dishonour and impiety. "Having therefore put aside for a time my private sensations, it has been shown that I effected an entire change in the position of the army before day-light. Early in the morning of the 8th General Fraser breathed his last; and with the kindest expressions of his affection, his last request was brought me, that he might be carried without parade by the soldiers of his corps to the great redoubt, and buried there. The whole day of the 8th of October was correspondent to this inauspicious beginning. The hours were mea I believe no painter has yet exercised his pencil in an attempt to fulfil the amiable wish so ardently expressed. It is never to be forgotten that the American army was utterly ignorant that the assemblage at the redoubt was engaged in the mournful office of performing the last sad duties to the dead; and to suppose for a moment that they would not, with a knowledge of the truth, have intermitted their hostilities out of respect to this act of piety to a gallant foe, implies an ignorance of the generous character of our countrymen, and is a suspicion unworthy of a noble mind. HISTORICUS. ART. 2. THE BRIDAL OF VAUMOND; A Metrical Romance, New-York, James Eastburn & Co. 18mo. pp. 186. "The Conquest of Canaan," by Dr. Dwight, was published about thirty years since. It has, we believe, never been republished. Its readers were very few when it first saw the light, and among the literati of the present day it is little read. If, however, an able and candid critic should closely scan the merits of "The Henriad" and "The Conquest of Canaan," the vast superiority of the former would not be easily discovered. De mortuis nil of the Columbiad we shall say nothing,—requiescat in pace. The "M'Fingal" of Trumbull is inferior only to Hudibras. Here and in England it has passed through many editions, but since Scott, Byron, Moore, &c. have turned the whole literary world "Up, Side down, and got themselves a-top," Dryden, Pope, Goldsmith, Cowper, Butler, Trumbull, Wolcott, &c. are almost forgotten; and Spenser and Shakspeare are quite excluded from the ladies' library, and occupy but a secondary rank in that of the gentlemen.' There are many fine passages in the works of Humphreys, which have been undeservedly depreciated and neglected. The works of R. T. Paine, Jun. have not been much read since his death. A more vigorous and expansive soul of poetry was never possessed by an American-but his taste was bewildered. He frequently mistook glass for diamond, but with all his faults his beauties are brilliant and abundant. Most of his poems were written when young, and the ill-fated poet never assumed sufficient resolution to execute the duties of a critic in the correction of his own labours. Of other American poets much might be said; but, in most instances, approbation and censure would be equally short-lived as the works on which they should be bestowed. Nothing absolutely great in poetry has yet appeared, nothing on which a judicious lover of American poesy can lay the foundation stones for lasting admiration, though there certainly are many short poetic performances, produced by Americans, not surpassed in merit by such as in England have been stamped with that deep and permanent approbation which secures their constant celebrity. The rage for eight, ten, a dozen, and twenty legged verses, violent as it may now be, cannot long continue. It is like that for the pretended Pindarics of the seventeenth century. It suddenly be came the fashion, had its day, and like the fashion for ear curls and long queues, passed, to be remembered only for its antique oddity. Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and every god and every goddess of old were formerly sleeping or capering in almost every verse, without the least regard, on the part of the poet, to their convenience. Of late their places are supplied by Marmions, Rokebys, Brides of Abydos, giaours, ghosts, apparitions, devils, saints, crosses, crescents, magic, witchery, spiritualism, infernalism, hobgoblinism, and bug-a-booism. Some twenty years ago every belleslettres blockhead was thrown into ecstacies by the puling strains of Laura Maria, and Anna Matilda. Gifford published his Baviad and Mæviad; and the whole Della Cruscan school expired in a syncope. Would that some satirist, with more dignity and severity than are possessed by the younger Colman, and gifted with all his humour, would, by merited ridicule, annihilate the too prevalent hysterical admiration of modern poetry.— By modern poetry we mean not all the poetry of modern times, but that fashionable class of fictions which appears to have been the inspiration of a tenth muse, and from which nature, truth, feeling, and reason are excluded by extravagance, falsehood, sentimentalism, and incomprehensibility. We could calculate an eclipse of the sun to happen a century hence with less labour than would be necessary fully to |