may be considered as their metropolitan. There are many Armenian Christians in the country, and as it becomes tranquil, their number is increasing by emigration from the Turkish provinces.

The money revenue of this country has always been very inconsiderable. The wealth of its former sovereigns consisted in those contributions of the produce of the soil, which enabled them to feed and support their numerous retainers.

The climate of Colchos is very damp; it generally rains in each year, from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty days, while in Georgia, it scarcely rains more than thirty or forty. It is consequently very subject to fevers, and to the Russian troops who are singularly careless about their health, it has proven very fatal. M. Gamba supposes that as the forests are cleared, these evils will abate. This, however, does not accord with the experience of North-America.

The population of this country has always been a subject of vague conjecture. Gibbon remarks, (vol. vii. p. 325) that some faith is requisite to believe that the population of Mingrelia now amounts to four millions of inhabitants. Yet, he adds in a note, we must avoid the contrary extreme of Chardin, who allows no more than twenty thousand. These are wide differences, even if we should suppose that Gibbon referred to the whole country of Colchos, and Chardin alluded to the modern kingdom or district of Mingrelia.

The present population of these districts, according to the inquiries made by the Russians in 1821, may be estimated as follows:

Imerithia,
Mingrelia,
Gouriel,

90,000

40,000

30,000

160,000

scattered over this extensive and productive country. Abazie is still more depopulated-but the power of the Russians in that district is too unsettled to enable them to make any accurate estimates of its population.

In the war which is likely to occur between Russia and the Porte, it is not improbable that the borders of Colchos may become the theatre of active hostilities. If Russia should be restrained by foreign interference from extending her frontiers in Europe, besides securing the fortresses along the north-eastern coast of the Euxine, she will, probably, make exertions to acquire the province of Akhaltzikhè, which formerly belonged to Georgia, and advancing her banners to the ridges of Mount

Ararat and the banks of the Thorouk, she will gain, besides a fertile and populous district, the port of Batoum, the most secure along the eastern shore of the Euxine, she will have the sources of the Euphrates under her feet, and Western Asia will be controlled by her influence, or governed by her power.

We may take some future occasion to review the excursions of M. Gamba into Georgia and the provinces bordering on the Caspian sea.

ART. V.-Malaria: An Essay on the production and propagation of this Poison, and on the nature and localities of the places by which it is produced, &c. By JOHN MACCULLOUGH, M.D. F.R.S. London.

We make no apology for offering to our southern readers, an article upon the subject of Malaria. Indeed, we know not where we could have selected a topie of more general interest. The discussions relating to it, comprise matter of the highest importance to the well-being of every community. To ascertain the sources of disease, to point out the hidden springs from whence emanate the various modes of suffering and death, to determine the nature and influence of the several agents which shorten life or render it wretched and imperfect-these are surely objects worthy the most careful attention of the philosopher, the philanthropist and the statesman. If, as our author has stated, and' as we unhesitatingly believe, the one half, and more than one half of our race are prematurely cut off by diseases, the product of Malaria, then this should claim of right, upon the gloomy catalogue of human maladies, the most conspicuous station. To us, especially, whose birth-place is in the midst of a region notoriously subjected to the influence of this evil agent, every point in its history is of serious import, and demands to be closely investigated and thoroughly understood.

Dr. MacCullough is already known advantageously to the public as the author of a work on the Highlands of Scotland. In the Essay before us, he has endeavoured, with a degree of success beyond that of any of his predecessors, to embody the principal facts recorded concerning the locality, production, pro

pagation, nature and influence of Malaria. It is remarkable, that the most valuable treatise upon this matter, should have issued from the press in England-a country, less harassed by disorders arising from this source, than almost any other portion of the civilized world. But even England, if we may trust our author, has little reason to boast of the comparative exemption she has been considered to enjoy. "The Thames, indeed," he exclaims, "is not the Congo, nor can we parallel Ostia or Terracina;-our fevers do not slay in three days; but the disease is the same, the poison the same, and the same is the cause."

This cause of disease, the appellation of which-Malaria— we have accepted from the Italians, consists, undoubtedly, in some peculiar vitiation of the atmospheric air, by some substance of a specific nature and peculiar qualities; and, as we infer from the analogy or identity of the effects attributed to it every where, is universally analogous or identical in nature, wheresoever and howsoever produced. No test, however, has yet been discovered, by which we can know, previously to the developement of its deleterious effects, the presence of this most widely extended and most mortal of all the forms of noxious effluvia. The odoriferous particles of musk and camphor, the delicate aroma exhaled by the flowers which scent the breath of spring-nay, the etherial atoms of which light itself is composed, are not, probably, more minute than the material elaborated from the several sources of Malaria, to be mingled with the air by which we are enveloped. Neither chemical nor mechanical philosophy has attributed to these particles form, colour, bulk, weight, or any other property by which they may be made cognizable to our senses. Yet this extreme tenuity, although it places them beyond the scope of even our scientific investigations, does not, in any measure, detract from their malignant potency.

It has been said, that from the close similarity of the effects produced, we infer the analogy in nature, if not the absolute identity of the agents to which we attribute their production. Peculiar forms of fever, precisely resembling each other in their modes of access, their type, their history, their various degrees of malignity under known circumstances, and the morbid changes which they occasion in the several organs of the body, are observed to be endemic in many regions or districts of the inhabited globe. Small-pox, as it occurs in the different parts of the world, is not more evidently, one and the same disease, than are the intermittents and remittents of our own continent, whether in the neighbourhood of the great lakes of the interior, VOL. II.-No. 3. 20

upon the swamps of our Atlantic coast, among the rich rice fields of the South, and those of the fens of Lincolnshire in England, of Carthagena in South-America, of Walcheren in the Netherlands, of Corunna in Spain-those of Savoy, of the fertile plains of Lombardy-of the solitary Campagna of Rome, and the Pontine Marshes.

We shall not follow our author through his geographical detail of the localities of Malaria. Suffice it to say, that this is the most universally distributed of all the external causes of disease and death. If we are to trust the reports of travellers, not even Lapland and Norway can claim an exemption here, "so little is a northern latitude a security where there are wet lands and a hot summer," however short that summer may be. And our author is only one among many who bear testimony to the sway exercised by the same foul spirit of the marsh over the vallies and fields even of Ireland and England. "In that delightful land of meadows, and parks, and woods, and ponds, and rivers, to take a pleasant evening walk by the banks of the river or the lake, to watch the trout rise from the fish-pond or the canal at the coming flies, to attend the milking of the cows in the green meadow, to saunter among wet groves till the moon rises, listening to the nightingale-these, and more of such rural amusements and delights, these," he exclaims, "are the true night-air, the Malaria and the fever." If we turn to the shores of Italy-alas! "the fairest portions of this fair land are a prey to this invisible enemy; its fragrant breezes are poison, the dews of its summer evenings are death. The banks of its refreshing streams, its rich and flowery meadows, the borders of its glassy lakes, the luxuriant plains of its overflowing agriculture, the valley where its aromatic shrubs regale the eye and perfume the air, these are the chosen seats of this plague, the throne of Malaria." In our own country, we acknowledge with pain its extended influence, its intense energy. All our alluvial soils, whether in the wide vallies of our magnificent rivers, or in the vicinity of our sea-like lakes, whether along the low plashy banks of the sluggish streams of our southern low country, or in the rich intervals between the hills which skirt the variable water-courses of our more elevated middle lands, all are under the dominion of Malaria. Our extensive forests have from the earliest time, sheltered the earth beneath them from the action of the sun, and have enriched it with their leaves, and fruits and flowers into a luxuriance pestilential to the intruder who first lifts the axe to let in air and light. Our flat Atlantic coast, from the Hudson to the Mississippi, is lined with reedy marshes, and studded over with ponds and swamps and

cane-brakes, which fill the atmosphere of summer and autumn, with deadly exhalations. Yet must we here enter our protest against the exaggerated statements which our author accepts without limitation from Volney, who affirms, that out of a space of three thousand leagues, he did not find in the United States, twenty houses free from the fevers of Malaria; and, that "every river in our country which he visited, whether rapid or stagnant, produces Malaria and fevers." Now we doubt whether a rapid river anywhere can be considered as giving out Malaria-certainly not in its passage through a rocky and elevated region; and the fact is, that our mountainous districts enjoy as fair an exemption as any other similar tracts of country in the world. Nor do we hesitate to declare our belief, that even in Charleston and its immediate vicinity, we could exhibit as many instances of such exemption among its few houses, as, upon the testimony of Armstrong and of our author, are to be found in the countless throng which form the immense city of London.

Our author, indeed, seems to look upon every thing with an eye of suspicion. Malaria is found in every gravel-pit, in every fish-pond. He neglects the bright stages of vegetable life and beauty, to dwell upon the withering of the leaf and the fading of the flower; water does not attract his notice in the rushing torrent, the limpid brook, the sparkling dew-drop, or the glowing rainbow; he regards it only in the damp fog and the misty cloud. Even "this most excellent canopy, the air-this brave, overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, appears to him no other thing than a foul congregation of pestilent vapours." The poet's visions of nature are demolished by a touch of his pen; murmuring streamlets whisper but of suffering and pain; sun-set gives notice of the approach of a gloomy night of danger and debility, and the bright harvestmoon in rising, ushers in the hour of chill and of disease-when "all the infections which the sun sucks up from bogs, fens, flats," are precipitated in the form of unwholesome dews.

Far be it from us to speak with levity of such a subject, yet we must be allowed to say, that if it be possible to exaggerate in this matter, it has been done by our author. He overlooks

entirely many other evil influences, easily proved to be of great consequence in the production of maladies, attributed by him to Malaria exclusively. Alterations of temperature, scantiness and improper quality of food, are among the chief of these. Mountain residents of every country and climate, are occasionally subject to attacks of intermittents, jaundice, &c. closely resembling those derived elsewhere from Malaria, but which we do not hesitate to attribute to the poor diet, toilsome and often un