with whom we can sympathise much more than with the inhabitants
of the uncivilized portions of our own globe.

The reader will now begin to understand what is meant when the Editor
calls attention to the practical value of most of his communications,
and invites consideration of the fragments, as suggestive of much that
concerns the welfare of mankind, the question as to their source being
provisionally left open. The man of science, the poet, the
metaphysician, the philanthropist, the musician, the observer of
manners, even the general reader who merely seeks to be amused, will, it
is hoped, find something interesting in the following pages. Let all,
therefore, taste the fruit and judge of its flavour, though they do not
behold the tree; profit by the diamonds, though they know not how they
were extracted from the mine; accept what is found to be wholesome and
fortifying in the waters, though the source of the river is unknown.

Lest, in thus expatiating on the value of his communications, the Editor
should be thought to have overstepped the bounds of good taste, he would
have it perfectly understood that he is not speaking of his own
productions, and that whatever the merit of the fragments may be, that
merit does not belong to himself. He is an Editor and an Editor only;
and he therefore feels himself as much at liberty to express his opinion
of the contents of the following pages as the most impartial critic.

He will even admit that he is not blind to their defects and
shortcomings. If the fragments had been less fragmentary, and fuller
information had been offered on the various subjects which fall under
consideration, he would have been better satisfied. Nevertheless, he
reflects that it would be hardly reasonable to expect in facts made
known under exceptional circumstances, that fulness of detail which we
have a right to demand, when on our own planet we essay to make
discoveries at the cost only of labour and research. He looks upon the
fragments as "intellectual aerolites," which have dropped here,
uninfluenced by the will of man; as varied pieces detached from the mass
of facts which constitute the possessions of another planet, and rather
as thrown by nature into rugged heaps than as having been symmetrically
arranged by the hand of an artist. Want of unity under these
circumstances is surely excusable.

One observation as to a matter of mere detail. Words, in the language of
the Star, are occasionally g