the hollows of the surrounding country, whereby, as the
projector states, we should get a new navigable route towards India.
He omits to say whether the Arabs would want compensation for loss of
territory.

The French consul at Mosul has been making further researches in the
Ninevitish ruins, and has discovered, among other curiosities, the
wine-cellar of the Assyrian kings, with large jars, in which the royal
beverage was once contained, ranged along the sides. They are now
filled with dust and rubbish, but on emptying them, a dried purple
deposit was found at the bottom of each, thus testifying to their
former use. If this deposit is in sufficient quantity to be submitted
to chemical analysis, we might learn something respecting the nature
of really old wine. Apropos of this matter, Dr Buist says, that while
we are digging up antiquities in Mesopotamia, we are neglecting those,
not less valuable, which we have at home, particularly the Runic
stones found in Scotland. Two hundred of these are known to exist
between Edinburgh and Caithness, but some have been used as gate-posts
to a church-yard, or, as near Glammis, rubbing-posts for cattle.
Sueno's pillar, in Morayshire, is the finest. The remarkable fact
concerning these stones, is the similarity, in numerous instances
complete, of the sculptures graven on them to those at Nineveh, as
though the hyperborean and the Oriental had a common origin. 'Surely,'
adds Dr Buist, 'coincidences such as these can neither be fanciful nor
accidental; they carry us far back beyond the ages of those we call
the aborigines of Britain, as the pyramids and sculptured stones of
Yucatan precede the days of the Red Men whom Cortes found peopling
America.'

The Dutch Society of Sciences at Haarlem have published their
prize-list, in which they offer 2000 florins for the most important
discovery in natural science which shall be made between the present
year and 1856; and they propose sixty-one questions, the successful
replies to obtain a gold medal worth 150 florins, and money to the
same amount. Among them are:--The best geological description of the
principal hot springs of Europe, their position, course, and quality,
so as to show if they have any relation in common, and what relation
exists between their changes and the changes caused by earthquakes,
volcanoes, &c.--Whether, in any part of the old continents, there are
dunes or sandbanks formed, at early geological periods, in the sam