they are created, and which has occasionally been a subject of discussion.

In consequence of the immense pieces of ice which occasionally break off these glaciers, it is very dangerous for a boat to approach them. On two occasions we witnessed avalanches on the most magnificent scale. The first was occasioned by the discharge of a musket at about half a mile distance from the glacier. Immediately after the report of the gun, a noise resembling thunder was heard in the direction of the iceberg, and in a few seconds more an immense piece broke away and fell headlong into the sea. The crew of the launch, supposing themselves beyond the reach of its influence, quietly looked upon the scene, when presently a sea rose and rolled towards the shore with such rapidity, that the crew had not time to take any precautions, and the boat was in consequence washed upon the beach, and completely filled by the succeeding wave. As soon as their astonishment had subsided, they examined the boat, and found her so badly stove that it became necessary to repair her in order to return to the ship. They had also the curiosity to measure the distance the boat had been carried by the wave, and found it ninety-six feet.

• On another occasion we were viewing the same glacier, and had approached tolerably near when a similar avalanche occurred; but fortunately we were not near the shore, and, by attending to the direction of the boat's head, we rode over the wave it occasioned without any accident.

This occurred on a remarkably fine day, when the quietness of the bay was first interrupted by the noise of the falling body. Lieutenant Franklin and myself had approached one of these stupendous walls of ice, and were endeavouring to search into the innermost recess of a deep cavern that was near the foot of the glacier, when we heard a report as if of a cannon, and, turning to the quarter whence it proceeded, we perceived an immense piece of the front of the berg sliding down from a height of two hundred feet at least into the sea, and dispersing the water in every direction, accompanied by a loud grinding noise, and followed by a quantity of water, which, being previously lodged in the fissures, now made its escape in numberless small cataracts over the front of the glacier. We kept the boat's head in the direction of the sea, and thus escaped the disaster which had befallen the other boat; for the disturbance occasioned by the plunge of this enormous fragment caused a succession of rollers which swept over the surface of the bay, making its shores resound as it travelled along it, and at a distance of four miles was so considerable that it became necessary to aright the Dorothea, which was then careening, by immediately releasing the tackles which confined her.

The piece that had been disengaged at first wholly disappeared under water, and nothing was seen but a violent boiling of the sea, and a shooting up of clouds of spray, like that which occurs at the foot of a great cataract. After a short time it reappeared, raising its head full a hundred feet above the surface, with water pouring down from all parts of it; and then, labouring as if doubtful which way it should fall, it rolled over, and, after rocking about some minutes, at length became settled.

We now approached it, and found it nearly a quarter of a mile in circumference, and sixty feet out of the water. Knowing its specific gravity, and making a fair allowance for its inequalities, we computed its weight at 421,660 tons. A stream of salt water was still pouring down its sides, and there was a continual cracking noise, as loud as that of a cart-whip, occasioned, I suppose, by the escape of fixed air.'

This fully explains how the earth and stones which are frequently seen on these floating icebergs, and have puzzled many, happen to be so placed. They may either carry with them detached earth and gravel from the side of the mountain, or bring up a portion of pebbles from the bottom of the sea. Captain Beechey mentions four glaciers near Magdalena bay. The writer of this article, when very young, happened to be there, 'tis sixty years since,' when there were seven, known to Dutch whalers by the name of the zeven ysbergen'—can three of them have wholly disappeared?

But as we have compared, or contrasted, the frozen Arctie regions with the frozen Antarctic regions, or rather the great island of Spitzbergen with the great island (if it be one) of Victoria, we may add, that the glaciers of the former, or even those of the Alps, dwindle into insignificance when compared with the latter. This land is fronted towards the north by a perpendicular wall of ice, along which Ross navigated three hundred miles the first voyage, and an additional one hundred and thirty miles in the second; the depth of the sea into which it plunged being from two to three hundred fathoms. The height of this wall or glacier in its 'perpendicular face (for what was beyond could not be seen) was above two hundred feet, decreasing towards the east to one hundred and fifty, and where the course of the ships was discontinued, from the lateness of the season, to little more than one hundred feet: here and there were projecting points from this long line, rising from seventy to ninety feet in height above the sea. We may safely set down this Antarctic glacier as far superior in magnitude to all others which our earth affords.

Captain Beechey gives an abstract of the several voyages that have been undertaken, at various times, for the discovery of a north-west, north-east, and Polar passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific; and, in his concluding remarks, offers an opinion of the advantage that might be afforded in navigating among the ice, by the adoption of steam vessels propelled by the Archimedean screw. There appear to us insuperable objections to this measure-first, from the impossibility of stowing fuel for a sufficient length of time; and, secondly, from the damage to which the screw would be liable on account of concealed offsets of ice below the surface, called calves, if we rightly recollect, and the

impossibility of repairing it. Boats too, like those of Parry, are objectionable, as with them, success even, in our opinion, would be fatal; for it is not merely the getting to the Pole that is required, but the getting back again, when the season may probably be expired and the provisions consumed. It is but justice to Franklin and Beechey to notice, that, on their return from the voyage we are now speaking of, they volunteered their services to proceed over the ice to the Pole; and submitted a plan to the Admiralty, proposing the employment of Esquimaux dogs and skin boats the Baydars of these people-as best adapted for that purpose.

Our author also adds an Appendix, containing an abstract of the several voyages made into the Arctic regions, with a view to discover a north-west or north-east passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the time of Cabot and Sir Hugh Willoughby, to that of the Honourable Captain Phipps. But we must close our remarks on his volume, which, we repeat, is written in good taste, and with a degree of good feeling towards the animal part of the creation which cannot be too highly extolled.

ART. IV.-Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing in the Tweed; with a Short Account of the Natural History and Habits of the Salmon, Instructions to Sportsmen, Anecdotes, &c. By WILLIAM SCROPE, Esq., F.L.S. Illustrated by Lithographs and Wood Engravings, from Paintings by Sir DAVID WILKIE, E. and C. LANDSEER, and others. 8vo. London: 1843.

ALTHOUGH our days and nights of salmon fishing may em

brace objects of a less exciting character than the more arduous achievements of the chase, yet Memory draws from them a more varied tribute, and dwells upon its fading visions with a more affectionate and less painful interest. The rod is an earlier gift than the gun; and we are allowed to plunge into the crystal stream, long before we have leave to climb the mountain or to tread the heath. The hazel wand, with its line of thread and its hook of brass, commits havoc among the minnows, before the spring gun has introduced us to the more lethal tube, which is guilty of the blood of sparrows.

But even when we have been mere spectators, and had no concern in the sport, we have had frequent opportunities of witnessing, in early life, the varied feats of the salmon fisher. During the day, we watch him in the stream and at the pool; and the

adventurous youth seldom fails to obtain a glimpse of the burning of the water, whether it is accomplished by the authorized angler or effected at midnight by the daring poacher. In this manner our river sports are not only associated with our earliest recollections, but claim a high place among our amusements, long before we have been either spectators of the chase or par

takers in its toils.

But, while early associations thus give a deep interest to the recollection of our river adventures, that interest becomes more pleasing from the greater humanity of the sport itself. We cannot, indeed, affirm that ichthyological life is less painfully surrendered than that of the mammalia; but our early cruelties make us indulge in the belief, that the amount of suffering is proportional to the magnitude of the sufferer; and when we see the salmon stretched on the grass without a wound, and slain without the shedding of blood, our sympathy is immeasurably less than that which is called forth when we scan the stately Hart with its glazed eye and its quivering limb, or the comely Roe-deer perforated by the rifle or torn by the ferocious hound. Our animal associations, too, have a powerful influence over our sympathies. Ourselves a genus in the mammiferous community, we naturally associate their sufferings with our own. The shrieks of the female Orang-outang, so singularly human, are said to thrill through the very heart of her pursuer; and we would not envy the sportsman whose domestic sympathies are not awakened when he has slain the Hart in the presence of his mate, or shot the tender Hind in the act of caressing its offspring. The death of a sportive Fawn, slain by the random shot, of the deer-stalker, will call forth a deeper feeling than the demise of three thousand salmon, caught in one net by the Arctic fisher

man.

If the reader partakes in these feelings, he will be induced to follow us with more interest and docility while we endeavour to initiate him, by the help of Mr Scrope's interesting volume, into the mysteries and adventures of salmon fishing in the Tweed. Should he be a native of our Border land, he will accompany our author, as we have done, with a still higher relish through the scenes of his infancy-among the haunts of the Scottish Minstrel-over the fields of our Border heroism, and within the magic circle of the Great Wizard of the North; and if a stranger, he may pursue his pilgrimage through valleys adorned with the remains of Gothic and Norman grandeur, and may throw his line into streams which poetry and music have consecrated-under the very cave in which the Poet of the Seasons conned his

earliest lays, and beneath the cliffs within which the assertors of civil and religious liberty obtained shelter from persecution.

6

Mr Scrope's elegant volume, which we shall now proceed to analyse, is printed uniformly with his work on the Art of DeerStalking,' of which we formerly gave our readers a full account;* and is embellished with a series of thirteen beautiful lithographs and nine wood engravings, from paintings by artists of the highest eminence. The landscapes and figures, independent of their merit as compositions, exhibit the great perfection of the lithographic art; and we venture to say, that the plate representing two young salmon in the smolt and parr state, and another plate representing a young salmon in the intervening state, both of them from pictures by Mr Cooke, and engraved and coloured by hand by Mr Haghe, have never before been equalled in this department of art.

6

After a humorous description of the citizen anglers, who quit the smoke and bustle of the metropolis in search of pure air and limpid streamlets, and a slight notice of the real scientific fly-fisher,' and somewhat of an artist also,' who roves from river to lake, filling his canvass as well as his basket, Mr Scrope proceeds to describe the three species of the genus Salmo which are found in the Tweed, and which afford most sport to the angler :the common salmon, or Salmo salar; the grey or bull trout, the Salmo eriox; and the salmon trout, or the Salmo trutta. It is certainly a singular fact, that notwithstanding the great national importance of our salmon fisheries, no accurate information was possessed, either by naturalists or practical men, respecting the habits of the salmon, or the appearance of its fry; and hence the real young of this valuable fish were supposed to be a distinct species, which was not protected by law; and therefore killed in thousands in our salmon streams, not only by the general angler, but by the very individuals who, but for their ignorance, would have been most anxious to preserve them.

Several persons had the merit of contributing to the important discovery, that the parr (samlet or fingerling) are the young

* See this Journal, Vol. LXXI. p. 98.

"Account of Experimental Observations on the Development and Growth of Salmon Fry, from the Exclusion of the Ova to the Age of Two Years."-Edin. Trans., Vol. XXIV. pp. 447-567. Mr Shaw had previously published his early experiments in the Edin. New Phil. Journal, July 1836, Vol. XXI. p. 97, and January 1838, Vol. XXIV. p. 165.