6. How far do the American residents, not in the service of benevolent societies, identify themselves with the country and its inprovement,- or is the accumulation of ploperty and return home, the general object?

7. Do philanthropic actions attract the favorable or unfavorable notice of the people and government?

8. Is the diffusion of Christianity prohibited or restricted, and if 80, on what grounds are these regulations issued, and are they obeyed, evaded, or resisted?

9.

What general results may be expected from the increase of missionaries, and from larger appropriations and more open devotion to the service of benevolence and Christianity?

4th. Miscellaneous queries.

1. Has your port ever been visited by Americans for other than political, commercial and benevolent ends; i. e. for scientific, tasteful, and the like, purposes?

2. Does your district afford a fine field for the gratification of intelligent curiosity, fresh and open to our countrymen ?

3. At what cost of time can it be visited, i. e. how frequent are the average communications between you and the United States as well as the neighboring ports, how long the passages, and what is the rate of traveling on tours in the interior?

4. At what corresponding cost of money, may the ends of the traveler be gained, i. e. what are the common charges, rates, expenses, &c.?

5. What danger to health do such visits involve, i. e. what is the amount of unavoidable risk and exposure to the American in your climate, as a resident, or a traveler?

6. What contributions have been made by Americans to a better acquaintance with your district-its languages, productions, statistics, &c.,- by researches, travels, expeditions of discovery, &c.?

7. What are the probabilities that your district will soon be brought into easier communication with our citizens, especially by the introduction of steam power, and what may we hope from a niore frequent resort of enlightened American visitors?

"

Note Our Correspondent not having intimated the way in which he would have his fellow-citizens" give the public the results of their inquiries, we will here state, we shall always be ready to publish both his and then communications, And papers showing the results of British. Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and French, influence in the east, will also be equally acceptable.

ART. V. Notices of Natural History: the kelin, or unicorn of Chinese. Selected from native authors.

CHINESE naturalists make five grand divisions of animated nature, the feathered, hairy, naked, shelly, and scaly, animals; and at the head of each division place a type, which, in their phraseology, is said to be the most chang or venerable of all the species found under that division. At the head of the feathered races they place the fung hwang, or phoenix; among hairy animals, the kelin, or unicorn, stands preeminent; man is the most venerable of all naked animals, several sorts of half-animal half-fairy creatures being classed with him; and the tortoise and dragon stand respectively at the head of the shelly and scaly tribes. This classification is not that of recent writers, who have investigated the works of nature rather more scientifically than the ancients; but it is the popular division which has been handed down so long that its origin is past finding out, and from its venerable antiquity it is by no means to be disputed. A further classification, is made by our author as follows. “The unicorn, the phœnix, dragon, and tortoise, are called the four (ling) spirituals; the dog, hog, and hen, are termed the three (wuh) things." In the Trimetical Classic, these three things are increased to six, by adding the cow, horse, and sheep, which are said to be the six animals that men domesticate. "The unicorn is the most venerable among hairy animals," says the same writer," but the tiger is the king among wild beasts."

The unicorn being thus placed, by Chinese writers, at head of quadrupeds, is supposed to combine and possess all the good qualities which are to be found among all hairy animals: it is invested with a skin of the gayest colors, endowed with a disposition of the kindest feelings; and a discriminating mind, that enables it to know when benevolent kings or wise sages are to appear in the world, is attributed to it. "The male is called ke, and female lin; it resembles a large stag in its general form; but combines the body of the musk deer, with the tail of an ox, the forehead of a wolf, and the hoofs of a horse. Its skin is of five colors, red, yellow, blue, white, and black; and it is yellow under the belly; it is twelve cubits high. the sound of bells and other musical instruments. ceeding out of the forehead, the tip of which is fleshy, and this peculiarity pointed it out as an animal unfit for war.

Its voice is like It has a horn pro

The male has a

horn, but the female is without thie defense. It carefully avoids treading upon any living insect, or destroying the grass with its feet, and its gait is regulated according to propriety. It never eats contrary to right, (meaning that is does not eat carrion or what other animals have left,) nor will it drink muddy water; and so well known is its disposition that other animals are not afraid to see its footsteps. It is always seen solitary, and appears to mankind only when a king of the highest benevolence sits upon the throne, or when a sage is about to be born. The unicorn envelopes itself with benevolence, and crowns itself with rectitude. Chinese writers say that it appeared in the halcyon days of Yaou and Shun, and was seen too about the time that Confucius was born; but so degenerate have mankind since become, that it has never once shown itself. Some of them go so far as to affirm that the mother of Confucius became pregnant of him by stepping into the footsteps of a unicorn, when she went to the hills to worship. This representation of the kelin combines most of the external characteristics, as described by the Chinese; it is sometimes drawn surrounded with fire, and other times with clouds.

Such is the description which the Chinese give of the kelin, and if this was all, the whole might be justly regarded as a figment; bat the attention which has been excited at one time and another, by intimations of an animal with one horn having been seen, renders the account most interesting and worthy of regard. The notices of the unicorn which deserve most attention have been collected by Mr. Robinson, in his edition of Calmet, from whom we select those bearing

most directly upon the Chinese account. Pliny, in speaking of the wild beasts of India, says, with regard to the animal in question : "The anicorn is an exceeding fierce animal, resembling a horse as to the rest of his body, but having the head like a stag, the feet like an elephant, and the tail like a wild boar; its roaring is loud; and it has a black horn of about two cabits projecting from the middle of its forehead."* The figure of the unicorn is depicted in various attitudes on the ruins of Persepolis, and copies of some of them are given in the travels of Neibuhr and sir R. K. Porter. One horned animals are also delineated within the pyramids, which, as well as those at Persepolis, have been explained as being profile views of some bovine or cervine animal; and in corroboration of this, it is said the Egyp tian figures have only two legs. These, besides the Chinese, appear to be the most ancient notices of the unicorn; for the word in the English Bible is not found in the Hebrewt but in the Septuagint, and is by many scholars supposed to have originally meant the wild buf falo. After Pliny, the unicorn was lost sight of for inany centuries; when in 1539, Ludovico de Bartema, traveling in disguise to Mecca, says he saw there two unicorns. "The larger of the two," says he, "is built like a three year old colt, and has a horn upon the forehead about three ells long; the horn of the younger is perhaps four spans long. This ani nal has the color of a yellowisk brown horse, a head like a stag, a neck not very long, with a thin mane; the legs are small like those of a roe, and the hoofs of the forefeet are divided like those of a goat. They were sent to Mecca by the king of Ethiopia."

A Portuguese traveler in Abyssinia, don Juan Gabriel, assures us that in that country he had seen an animal of the form and size of a common horse, with a whitish horn about five spans long upon the forehead. And Father Lobo, who lived there as a missionary many years towards the close of the 17th century, corroborates this statement, adding that the unicorn is extremely shy, and escapes from observation by a speedy flight into the deserts, for which reason there is no exact description of him. However, Mr. Bruce, who did not feel very scrupulous about publishing the stories the natives told hini, makes nu mention of any aninral of this kind, but only of the hinoceros. In more recent times, we find further traces of the animal

Asperriman autem ferain monocerotem, relíquo corpore equo similem, capite Cervo, pudicas elephanti, cauda aprʊ, loughtú gravi, ufó Bóthu nigid media fronte cubitorum duûm eminente. Hist. Nat. viii. 21.

would seem

The term, which the Septuagint renders to imply that the animal was of a lofty stature, but contains no allusion to the single-borned character of its høad.

in question in southern Africa. Sparrman, the Swedish naturalist, who visited the Cape in 1772, relates several stories prevalent among the Hottentots of one-horned animals, resembling horses, drawings of which were often seen upon the rocks. They were very swift and fierce, and captured with the greatest difficulty. In 1791, a Mr. H. Cloote transmitted an account to the Zealand academy at Flushing of a horse-like animal with one horn in the forehead, having been shot by one of the Hottentots. "It resembled a horse, and was of a light gray color, with white stripes under the lower jaw it had a single sharp pointed horn directly in front as long as one's arm, and at the base about as thick, which was not attached to the bone of the forehead, but fixed only in the skin. The hoofs were round like those of a horse, but divided below like those of oxen." He mentions that several different natives testified to the existence of a similar animal with one horn, but he saw none himself; and later travelers, as Burchell and others, have also never seen one.

These appear to have been the latest accounts of the animal having been seen in Africa, when it was again suddenly brought into notice as existing in the elevated regions of Central Asia. The London Quarterly Review for October, 1820, in a notice of Frazer's Tour among the Himalaya mountains introduces a letter from major Latter, who commanded in the rájá of Sikkim's territories, where this animal is mentioned as existing in the interior of Tibet. The person who gave the major this information had repeatedly seen these animals, and eaten of their flesh; they go together in herds, are fierce and extremely wild; seldom if ever caught alive, but frequently shot. He made a drawing of one from recollection, which is thus described, "It bears some resemblance to a horse, but has cloven hoofs, long curved horn growing out of the forehead, and a boar-shaped tail, like that of the fera monoceros of Pliny." The major immediately wrote to the Lama, requesting him to procure a perfect skin of the tso'po, (as the natives call it,) with a head, horn and hoofs; and this request was complied to the extent of sending him a single horn, thus noticed in the Calcutta Gazette of August, 1821. "Major Latter has obtained the horn of a young unicorn from the Lama, which is now before us. It is twenty inches in length; at the root it is four inches and a half in circumference, and tapers to a point; it is black, rather flat at the sides, and has fifteen rings, but they are only prominent on one side; it is nearly straight." This is all that was obtained of the tso'po; and the head, hoofs and skin, for all that we know, still remain in Tibet.