al Societies have conferred respectively great benefits
on the cause of discovery and verification.

In the famous _Letter of Columbus_, 1493, in its various forms, the
_Mundus Novus_ and _Paesi Retrovate_ (1507) of Vespucci, and a few
other leading publications, there is a recognised interest regardless
of the countries of origin.

We owe to the entrance into the lists of sundry members of the medical
profession a temporary emergence from oblivion and respite from the
waste-basket of what the booksellers describe in their catalogues as
"Rare Early Medical." There is no doubt that among these obsolete
publications may be detected many curious points and many evidences of
former acquaintance with supposed latter-day inventions or ideas. A
prominent feature in the series is Harvey's Latin treatise on the
circulation of the blood, of which he was the (rather late British)
discoverer. But, on the whole, the group of early works dealing with
medicine and surgery is of questionable interest outside the purely
practical range as a comparative study, and those which treat of
anatomy and other cognate topics are in the last degree gruesome. They
are the antipodes to the _belles lettres_.

_Occult Literature_ is susceptible of a division into several classes
or sections: Religious Cults, Necromancy, Magic, Second Sight,
Divination, Astrology, Palmistry, of which all have their special
literatures and bibliographies. Major Irwin recently sold an extensive
series of works on these and kindred topics. Cornelius Agrippa,
Ashmole, Bulwer, Lilly, Partridge, Gadbury are among the foremost
names of older writers in the present categories. But for the faiths
and worships of antiquity which may be ranked in the first order of
importance and solid interest, we chiefly depend on modern books, such
as Payne, Knight, Inman, Davies, Forlong; and there is quite a small
library on that branch which touches on theosophy and similar
speculations--all having a common source in the grand principle of
Agnosticism. Further information will be found collected on this and
the topics which we notice below in Hazlitt's _Popular Antiquities_,
1870.

For those who are interested in Portents, Phenomena, _Lusus Naturae_,
Murders, Earthquakes, Fires, there is the catalogue of MR. NASSAU,
1824. The British Museum has in recent times grown more complete in
the same direction. The founders and earlier curators of the
institution appear to have regarded such _