the form of narrow ridgelike beaches,
from twenty to thirty feet high. Mud and vegetable matter
gradually fill up the pieces of water thus secluded; a willow
swamp is formed; and when the ground is somewhat consolidated,
the willows are replaced by aspens."

The volumes have all the value of an official survey, and they are the
most important contributions to our knowledge of the _Terra Incognita_
of the Lower Mackenzie, that have been published. The occupants of this
region are the Loucheux Indians. Fine grown men of considerable stature,
and well-knit frames, they have evidently followed the course of the
Mackenzie River, from south to north. These are the Indians of whom from
the scantiness of our previous data, information is most valuable. They
are reasonably considered to belong to the same family as the Dog-rib,
Beaver, Hare, Copper, Carrier, and other Indians, a family which some
call Chepewyan, others Athabascan, but which the present work designates
as _Tinne_. The Esquimo and Crees, though as fully described, are better
known. The chapters, illustrative of the other branches of the natural
history of North America, are equally valuable.

WITS ABOUT THE THRONE OF LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH.

We copy the following paragraphs from Sir James Stephens's Lectures on
the History of France. The illustrious men referred to are of course
well known by educated men, but to the masses their names are familiar
chiefly from their appearance in the brilliant romances of Dumas.

"The constellation of genius, wit, and learning, in the midst
of which Louis shone thus pre-eminently, was too brilliant to
be obscured by any clouds of royal disfavor; nor would any man
have shrunken with greater abhorrence than himself, from any
attempt to extinguish or to eclipse their splendor. He wisely
felt, and frankly acknowledged, that, their glory was essential
to his own; and he invited to a seat at his table, Moliere the
roturier, to whom the lowest of his nobles would have appointed
a place among his menial servants. As Francis, and Charles, and
Leo, and Julius, and Lorenzo had assigned science, and poetry,
and painting, and architecture, and sculpture, as their
appropriate provinces, to those great master spirits of Italy,
to whom they forbade the culture of political philosophy, so
Louis, when he interdicted to the gigantic intellects of his