long, long past. Conspicuous among them is Longaford Tor, with its sharp conical crown, and in the foreground Crockern Tor, once a place of renown.

On this bleak and desolate mountain, in the midst of these hoary stones, with only the sky for a canopy, be it clear or cloudy, bright sun or driving rain, soft zephyr or howling storm, met the ancient Stannary Parliament. Each of the four Stannary towns, Chagford, Ashburton, Plympton, and Tavistock, sent twenty-four burgesses to this assembly, when summoned by the Lord Warden of the Stannaries. They enacted laws, which, when ratified by the Lord Warden, were in full force in all matters between the tinners, "lyfe and lym excepted." Probability and tradition, however, assign a far higher sanctity to this spot, as the seat of Druid legislature. The Stannary Court was but a form, comparatively modern, of an assembly which had been wont to meet there from earliest times. Polwhele says that in his time there were the president's chair, seats for the jurors, a high corner-stone for the crier of the court, and a table-all rudely hewn out of the granite of the Tor, together with a cavern, which may have served as a dungeon for the condemned. A moorland patriarch who had known the spot for threescore years, told Mr. Rowe, in 1835, that he perfectly remembered the stone chair, which was ascended by four or five steps, and that overhead it was protected by a large thin slab of stone. There seems to be little doubt that this chair now stands in Dinnabridge Pound.

A strange feeling pervades the mind as one stands thus amid the memorials of a hoary and dim antiquity, and calls up the gathering assembly, with its stoled priest and its sucking lamb, and perhaps other sacrifices, from which imagination hides her face, dripping blood on these huge stones-perhaps at the very time that Samuel was judging Israel in the circle of Gilgal, and obtesting at the stone of Eben-ezer. The nakedness and utter desolation of the region still and solemnize the mind, notwithstanding the cheerful sun and the swift chequering clouds. In the shadows of evening it must be an awful place, when fancy would people it with the shadowy ghosts of four thousand years, and every stone would take form and life.

Again we descend to the river at a place called Two Bridges. There is, indeed, but one bridge that I could see or hear of, and the only way I can account for the name is by supposing that there existed, coevally with this modern structure, one of those very ancient ones, usually described as "Cyclopean,' made by upright monoliths for piers, and enormous slabs of granite made to rest on these horizontally, the stability of the whole depending on the immense weight of the blocks. Several of these interesting bridges yet remain to attest the

solidity of their construction, particularly one over the East Dart, near Post Bridge.

Close to the river, at Two Bridges, a country inn of more than usual pretensions, surrounded by its offices, gives animation to the scene. The sign, once doubtless a fine example of high art, representing a robed and bearded personage, life size, now, from the painting having never been varnished, and the colours having fled, presents an appearance ludicrously ghastly. An antique ostler, curiously in keeping with the associations of the place, appearing, we inquired our way to the wood, the object of our search, while the driver dived into the recesses of the bar, to get "summat." The man of horses, with a ready civility, and a free use of "yir 'annor," which suggested a Milesian education, pointed up the valley of the Dart to the slope full in sight, at what appeared to be only a few hundred yards distant, where a very circumscribed thicket of scrubby furze (so it looked) was growing. "An' that," said he, "is Wistman's Wood; an' it's a mile and a half's walkin'."

My little son and I tramped away up the valley, the scrub still in sight every step of the way, which ever grew wilder and wilder. Through a dreary farm-yard we post, and the world is behind us. Our course is parallel to the Dart, which purls and rustles below, under the shadow, for some half mile or so from the bridge, of magnificent dark beeches. The utter absence of recognizable objects makes distances strangely deceptive. Still wilder and wilder grows the moor; here and there we suddenly find our feet press a shaking bog. No sign of animal life, but a pretty little butterfly,* which is numerous. Yes; in that little pool in the rocky stream, a trout leaps into the air; another, and another; though the dimensions of the pool are such as you might stride across, and its depth seemingly fathomable with your hand.

The furze begins to take form, and to look like dwarf trees, and far above frowns the blue peak of Row Tor, around which dark clouds are gathering. Now the granite blocks become thicker and more numerous, till we find ourselves crossing a wilderness of boulders, where we can proceed only by scrambling from one to another, there being literally no way between, the narrow interstices being choked with brake and moss, and the stone-crop. I never before saw a place which gave me such an idea of utter desolation. At length we reach a single solitary oak, the outpost of the wood, and after a little more difficult and dangerous scrambling over the blocks, we enter the weird forest itself.

I despair of conveying an idea of the strange scene by

Hipparchia pamphilus; a variety much paler than the ordinary condition.

words. The granite boulders continue as close as before, with the stunted and moss-gnarled trees springing out of the interstices. It is said that these narrow passages go down, down, to an unknown depth, and some have thought that we see only the summits of the trees, the trunks, of ordinary height, being rooted in the earth far below. I did not think of probing the treacherous crevices, which are reputed to swarm with adders; but there is that in the aspect of the trees which at once confutes this hypothesis; not to speak of the absurdity of supposing that the granite boulders have gradually accumulated since the existence of the trees.

That these oaks and rowans are enormously old I do not doubt. Those which I saw might have trunks a foot in diameter on the average, and their height is from twelve to fifteen feet. The branches are wonderfully twisted and knotted; the heads are scanty, flattened, and wide-spread; and both trunks and boughs are so thickly encrusted with dense moss, that ferns grow profusely upon them.* The foliage is not unhealthy; and I observed numbers of those globular galls, like a boy's marbles, which have lately attracted notice in South Devon. I saw no young trees, no suckers, no acorns. Individual immortality seemed to be conferred on these remnants of bygone times, but nothing that indicated transmission of life to another generation.

I should much like to see a section of one of these old trunks; to count the concentric circles, and thus obtain a clue to their actual age. At the Norman Conquest the wood is said to have presented the same appearance as it now does; and I should think it by no means an unreasonable conjecture that these identical trees have witnessed Druidical rites. The explanation of the name, "Wistman's Wood," as wiseman's wood, has been ridiculed; but, considering the ancient form of "wist," (from the Saxon pistan,) to know, it is highly suggestive: q. d., the Wood, or Sacred Grove, where the Knowing-man performed his incantations.

By this time the heavens were gathering blackness, and from several points of the horizon those dark, ragged clouds were rising and hanging in tattered shreds, that tell of heavy rain. Mutterings of thunder, too, were audible; and notwithstanding that a thunder-storm in such a place as Wistman's Wood would have greatly augmented its melodramatic interest, yet neither on my own nor my sick child's account did I exactly wish to brave its results. We, therefore, hastened back to Two Bridges, casting many a wistful glance on the strange scene we had left, the like of which we might probably never

* Polypodium vulgare, and Lastræa dilatata and recurva profusely.

see again. It took a peculiar aspect under the glowering sky; and the distant peak of Row Tor above, lighted up by a momentary gleam of sunshine, came out wonderfully fine against the black storm-cloud.

Some points of interest occurred on the homeward route. Several hut-circles were seen close by the road-side at Haxary, where the West Dart gleamed beautifully in a romantic dell. Then we reached Compstone Tor, crowned with a fine assemblage of granite rocks of that peculiar form known as the Cheesewring; enormous slab-like masses of varying diameters, piled one on another horizontally: I say "piled," for such is the appearance; though doubtless the phenomenon is the result of elemental decomposition on the horizontally stratified granite. This arrangement has a very magnificent effect.

Benjay Tor, a lofty hill, which presents a precipitous face of broken stone to the bed of the turbulent Dart, was a striking object, the river forming two deep and dark pools beneath, which are called Hell Pool and Bell Pool. But, I think, as interesting as anything that I had seen, not excepting even the architectural remains and the old wood, were the traces of the ancient Tin-works. From Compstone onward to Holne, an elevated, heathy region, there occurred, at brief intervals, large tracts of ground which had been excavated to a shallow extent, and which have a very peculiar and easily recognizable appearance. They are of course covered with common vegetation, but the removal of the surface earth producing a depression of the level has an effect so unique, that the beholder, after he has had one or two of these "golfs," as they are termed, pointed out to him, readily detects one as he approaches it, and at once discriminates between these and any other irregularities in the country. These "golfs" are the spots where, in remote ages, the people searched for tin; the metal was found very near the surface, and was separated from the soil by the action of running water. A running stream (and this region abounds with such) was chosen, and so enclosed and directed as that its force should fall upon the metalliferous soil, when the lighter earth was washed away, and the heavier ore remained. This process was called streaming; and it is believed that the ancient tinners were acquainted with no other mode of obtaining the metal.

Near Ringershots, the driver pointed out to us an ancient tin-stream, and it was with curious interest that I examined it. It is a romantic little gully, or glen, close by the road-side, all overhung and concealed by mountain-ashes, where a tiny thread of water now trickles with a metallic tinkle down the black, boggy soil. It has probably been unused for ages, but tradition has preserved the record of its former use, though

the water which once made it available has long been drawn into other channels.

Thoughts of the old Phoenician rovers came up before my mind as the shadows of evening gradually shut out the scenery; and in imagination I followed the white metalscarcely less precious than silver-across the stormy Bay of Biscay, through the Pillars of Hercules, and up the Mediterranean, till I saw it spread out in the market of Tyre; and, amidst the concourse of traffickers, heard the voices of the eager merchant-princes, crying, as they strode in front of their stalls, "Bedil from Tarshish! Bedil! Pure Bedil! Bright Bedil! Buy, buy, buy!" And then there came a twinkling of blue, and purple, and fine linen; and a chaffering and charming of many voices; and a Babel-hum of confused sounds. But the familiar voice of the driver said, "Here we are at Holne Bridge;" and the vision vanished. Yet I was glad that such was the last impression I had of Dartmoor.

SPECTRUM ANALYSIS APPLIED TO THE STARS;

OR,

THE STARS, WHAT ARE THEY?

BY WILLIAM HUGGINS, F.R.A.S.

"YE are a beauty and a mystery," sang the poet as he saw the stars mirrored in the crystal face of Geneva's lake. A beauty theirs, which time affects not, and which glows with undiminished lustre upon successive generations of men. But the coils of the mystery are loosening. One coil was unwound, when more delicate methods of observation showed that twin stars, in their close companionship, move about each other in accordance with the same laws of gravity by which our solar system is knit together and upheld. Another coil is now loosening, as by the continual watching of numerous observers, are being traced out the periodic curves of increase and diminution in brilliancy of those stars whose light is variable. Yet they remained a mystery still as to their substance. What are the stars? Matter, certainly, and matter analogous to that of which the sun and planets are built up, since it exhibits similar laws of attraction. But is this matter composed of terrestrial elements? Could our chemical notation be adopted by physicists in Capella, and Arcturus, and Sirius? This seemed a tightly-bound coil of mystery which human fingers could