Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 331, May, 1843

7

The Tartars have an invariable custom, of taking off some part of their dress and giving it to the bearer of good news.

8

Coin.

9

Shakhéeds, traders of the sect of Souni. Yakhoúnt the senior moóllah.

10

Of the two opening lines we subjoin the original—to the vivacity and spirit of which it is, perhaps, impossible to do justice in translation:—

"Ihr—Ihr dort aussen in der Welt,
Die Nasen einges pannt!"

Eberhard, Count of Wurtemberg, reigned from 1344 to 1392. Schiller was a Swabian, and this poem seems a patriotic effusion to exalt one of the heroes of his country, of whose fame (to judge by the lines we have just quoted) the rest of the Germans might be less reverentially aware.

11

Schiller lived to reverse, in the third period of his intellectual career, many of the opinions expressed in the first. The sentiment conveyed in these lines on Rousseau is natural enough to the author of "The Robbers," but certainly not to the poet of "Wallenstein" and the "Lay of the Bell." We confess we doubt the maturity of any mind that can find either a saint or a martyr in Jean Jacques.

12

"Und Empfindung soll mein Richtschwert seyn."

A line of great vigour in the original, but which, if literally translated, would seem extravagant in English.

13

Joseph, in the original.

14

"The World was sad, the garden was a wild,
And Man, the Hermit, sigh'd—till Woman smiled."

    CAMPBELL.

15

Literally, "the eye beams its sun-splendour," or, "beams like a sun." For the construction that the Translator has put upon the original (which is extremely obscure) in the preceding lines of the stanza, he is indebted to Mr Carlyle. The general meaning of the Poet is, that Love rules all things in the inanimate or animate creation; that, even in the moral world, opposite emotions or principles meet and embrace each other. The idea is pushed into an extravagance natural to the youth, and redeemed by the passion, of the Author. But the connecting links are so slender, nay, so frequently omitted, in the original, that a certain degree of paraphrase in many of the stanzas is absolutely necessary to supply them, and render the general sense and spirit of the poem intelligible to the English reader.

16

Mr Shaw's researches include some curious physiological and other details, for an exposition of which our pages are not appropriate. But we shall here give the titles of his former papers. "An account of some Experiments and Observations on the Parr, and on the Ova of the Salmon, proving the Parr to be the Young of the Salmon."—Edinburgh New Phil. Journ. vol. xxi. p. 99. "Experiments on the Development and Growth of the Fry of the Salmon, from the Exclusion of the Ovum to the Age of Six Months."—Ibid. vol. xxiv. p. 165. "Account of Experimental Observations on the Development and Growth of Salmon Fry, from the Exclusion of the Ova to the Age of Two Years."—Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xiv. part ii. (1840.) The reader will find an abstract of these discoveries in the No. of this Magazine for April 1840.

17

Mr Young has, however, likewise repeated and confirmed Mr Shaw's earlier experiments regarding the slow growth of salmon fry in fresh water, and the conversion of parr into smolts. We may add, that Sir William Jardine, a distinguished Ichthyologist and experienced angler, has also corroborated Mr Shaw's observations.

18

The existence in the rivers during spring, of grilse which have spawned, and which weigh only three or four pounds, is itself a conclusive proof of this retardation of growth in fresh water. These fish had run, as anglers say—that is, had entered the rivers about midsummer of the preceding year—and yet had made no progress. Had they remained in the sea till autumn, their size on entering the fresh waters would have been much greater; or had they spawned early in winter, and descended speedily to the sea, they might have returned again to the river in spring as small salmon, while their more sluggish brethren of the same age were still in the streams under the form of grilse. All their growth, then, seems to take place during their sojourn in the sea, usually from eight to twelve weeks. The length of time spent in the salt waters, by grilse and salmon which have spawned, corresponds nearly to the time during which smolts remain in these waters; the former two returning as clean salmon, the last-named making their first appearance in our rivers as grilse.

19

Mr Shaw, for example, states the following various periods as those which he found to elapse between the deposition of the ova and the hatching of the fry—90, 101, 108, and 131 days. In the last instance, the average temperature of the river for eight weeks, had not exceeded 33°.

20

If we are rightly informed, salmon were not in the habit of spawning in the rivulets which run into Loch Shin, till under the direction of Lord Francis Egerton some full-grown fish were carried there previous to the breeding season. These spawned; and their produce, as was to be expected, after descending to the sea, returned in due course, and, making their way through the loch, ascended their native tributaries.

21

A complete series of specimens, from the day of hatching till about the middle of the sixth year, has been deposited by Mr Shaw in the Museum of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

22

Mr Shaw informs us, moreover, that if those individuals which have assumed the silvery lustre be forcibly detained for a month or two in fresh water, they will resume the coloured coating which they formerly bore. The captive females, he adds, manifested symptoms of being in a breeding state by the beginning of the autumn of their third year. They were, in truth, at this time as old as herlings, though not of corresponding size, owing to the entire absence of marine agency.

23

Another interesting result may be noticed in connexion with this Compensation Pond. The original streamlet, like most others, was naturally stocked with small "burn-trout," which never exceeded a few ounces in weight, as their ultimate term of growth. But, in consequence of the formation above referred to, and the great increase of their productive feeding-ground, and tranquil places for repose and play, these tiny creatures have, in some instances, attained to an enormous size. We lately examined one which weighed six pounds. It was not a sea-trout, but a common fresh-water one—Salmo fario. This strongly exemplifies the conformable nature of fishes; that is, their power of adaptation to a change of external circumstances. It is as if a small Shetland pony, by being turned into a clover field, could be expanded into the gigantic dimensions of a brewer's horse.

24

The specimen is preserved in the Museum of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

25

See Exposicion de que dirige á las Cortes et Ayuntamiento Constitucional de Malaga, from which the following are extracts:—"El ayuntamiento no puede menos de indicar, que entre los infinitos renglones fabriles aclimatados ya en Espana, las sedas de Valencia, los panos de muchas provincias, los hilados de Galicia, las blondas de Cataluna, las bayetas de Antequera, los hierros de Vizcaya y los elaborados por maquinaria en las ferrerías á un lado y otro de esta ciudad, han adelantado, prosperan y compiten con los efectos extranjeros mas acreditados. ¿Y han solicitado acaso una prohibicion? Nó jamas: un derecho protector, sí; á su sombra se criaron, con la competencia se formaron y llegaron á su robustez.... Ingleterra figura en la exportacion por el mayor valor sin admitir comparacion alguna. Su gobierno piensa en reducir muy considerablemente todos los renglones de su arancil; pero se ha espresado con reserva para negar ó conceder, si lo estima conveniente, esta reduccion á las naciones que no correspondan á los beneficios que les ofrece; ninguno puede esperar que le favorezcan sin compensacion."