ance. stay, except what is to be obtained by floating on one's back; this being the condition of our performI continued my course on to Santa Chiara, comprising the whole of the Grand Canal (besides the distance from the Lido), and got out where the Laguna once more opens to Fusina. I had been in the water, by my watch, with out help or rest, and never touching ground or boat, four hours and twenty minutes. To this match, and during the greater part of its performance, Mr. Hoppner, the Consul General, was witness, and it is well known to many others. Mr. Turner can easily verify the fact, if he thinks it worth while, by referring to Mr. Hoppner. The distance we could not accurately ascertain; but it was, of course, considerable. "I crossed the Hellespont in one hour and ten minutes only. I am now ten years older in time, and twenty in constitution, than I was when I passed the Dardanelles, and yet two years ago I was capable of swimming four hours and twenty minutes; and I am sure that I could have continued two hours longer, though I had on a pair of trowsers-an accoutrement which by no means assists the performance. My two companions were also four hours in the water. Mingaldo might be about thirty years of age, Scott about six-andtwenty. With this experience in swimming at different periods of age, not only on the spot, but else where, of various persons, what is there to make me doubt that Leander's exploit was perfectly practicable? If three individuals did more than passing the Hellespont, why should he have done less? But Mr. Turner failed, and naturally seeking a plausible ex cuse for his failure, lays the blame on the Asiatic side of the Straitto me the cause is evident. He tried to swim directly across, instead of going higher to take the vantage. He might as well have tried to fly over Mount Athos. "That a young Greek of the heroic times, in love, and with his limbs in full vigour, might have succeeded in such an attempt is neither wonderful nor doubtful. Whether he attempted it or not is another question, because he might have had a small boat to save him the trouble. I am yours, very truly, BYRON. "P.S. Mr. Turner says, that the swimming from Europe to Asia was the easiest part of the task." I doubt whether Leander found it so, as it was the return; however, he had several hours between the intervals. The argument of Mr. T. that higher up or lower down the Strait widens so considerably, that he would save little labour by his starting,' is only good for indifferent swimmers. A man of any practice or skill will always consider the distance less than the strength of the stream. If Lieute-` nant Ebenhead and myself had thought of crossing at the narrowest point, instead of going up to the Cape above it, we should have been swept down to Tenedos. The Strait is not, however, extraordinarily wide, even where it broadens above and below the forts; as the frigate was stationed some time in the Dardanelles, waiting for the Firman, I bathed often in the Strait subsequently to our traject, and generally on the Asiatic side, without perceiving the greater strength of the opposing stream, by which Mr. Turner palliates his own failure. Our amusement in the small bay which opens immediately be low the Asiatic fort, was to dive for the land tortoises, which we flung in on purpose, as they amphibiously crawled along the bottom; this does not argue any greater violence of current than on the European shore. With regard to the modest insinuation, that we chose the European side as easier,' I appeal to Mr. Hobhouse and Admiral Bathurst, if it be true or no (poor Ebenhead being simce dead). Had we been aware of any such difference of current as is asserted, we would at least have proved it, and were not likely to have given it up in the twenty-five minutes of Mr. Turner's own experiment." For the Sporting Magazine. ANECDOTE OF DR. ROCK. THE following anecdote of that life taken great pains to advance myself in my profession, can barely obtain butter to my bread, or a coat to my back? It will be an instance of friendship in you to resolve me this.' Rock assured his brother the regular, that he had no objection; and that if the physician would breakfast with him on the following morning, the difficulty should be at once solved. In the morning the physician was introduced into a room next the street, to attend until Dr. Rock should have dismissed several patients, with whom he was then engaged. Afterwards, and during breakfast, they came to the business in hand. As a preliminary, Rock demanded of his guest, the number of persons he had seen passing the front window, whilst he was waiting. To this strange question, the other could give no answer. Well, how many do you think there might be?' Indeed,' the reply was, I cannot tell.' . an hundred ?' 'Probably there might.' 'Well, and how many men of sense do you really think there might be in the hundred passing by? On that head it is totally impossible for me to conjecture.' celebrated smith, Doctor Rock, is indubitably authentic, and I believe, was first published in the General Treatise on Cattle, dedi-But do you think there might be cated to the late Lord Somerville: "That some of our quacks have been acute judges of men and things, and of their own profession most particularly, the following well-known anecdote, which I think very probable to be authen-But do you really think the huntic, may serve as a proof. The in- dred contained ten men of sense?' fallible Dr. Rock, who drove four, It is not improbable but it may indeed I have heard six horses, have been in that proportion.' I about forty years since, when he see, then,' rejoined the quack, ‘a resided on Ludgate-hill, was in the clear solution of your question, and habit of dining at an ordinary, make your advantage of it. The probably at Ashley's punch-house. ninety fools are my patients, and A regular physician was usually of the ten men of sense consult you.'' the party. This physician one day ANECDOTASTICUS. said to Rock, how is it, Doctor, that you, who never were taught the practice of medicine, can obtain from it wherewith to keep an equip age, whilst I, who am a regularly bred physician, and have through ORIGIN OF BURGER'S WILD NUMEROUS are the allusions in the popular tales and the tradition of different people in Germany as to the received opinions derived from the dark ages relative to goblins and departed spirits which have appeared at certain times, especially in the night, as if engaged in the chase. by the poets, by being bound to a wheel, turning round with amazing swiftness. All this is attended by the shouting of huntsmen, the sound of horns, and such a yelling of hounds as are seldom heard." Besides these, hares are seen running, the grunt of the wild boar, or the howling of the wolf is heard, and the mountain called the Horselberg, in Thuringia, is said to be the constant residence of all these spirits. An author of the name of Heiderus (vol. ii. Orat. 28, p. 122) gravely asserts that these nocturnal hunts frequently occur in Thuringia, but mostly between Christmas and Lent. "It is then frequent for these appearances to be seen, not only in the country and in the open fields, but also in the towns and villages, that is to say, that a great number of spirits and demons, including some persons still living, and many persons long dead, are seen passing full speed through these places: they are mostly well mounted as hunters; but the crowds that follow on foot are not inconsiderable. This I assure you is no good-fornothing fable or poetical fiction, but an undoubted and credible fact. Before this devilish rout, a very respectable man is generally seen clothed in white, with a staff in in his hand; he is called 'the real Eckhart,' and his office is to tell the spectators to keep out of the way, and keep close in their houses, lest their presumption should bring upon them some mischief. He is generally followed by about a hundred most dreadful phantoms of the most hideous shapes and countenances. Some have no heads, the faces of others are seen fixed in their breasts; some have neither hands nor arms, others go upon one leg, whilst another kind throw a leg over their shoulders, and yet seem to run with amazing swiftness; others again appear like something in the manner in which Ixion is represented From writers less credulous it appears that a persuasion in the reality of these nocturnal appearances was encouraged by the clergy before the Reformation, to impress the belief of the people in the doctrine of purgatory, the persons then appearing being represented as in a state of punishment. A certain canon is also said to have made an agreement with a friend during life, that whichever of them died first should appear to the other, to give some account of these visionary hunters. The canon lived the longest, and was told by his friend that the persons lately seen in company with devils and others, appearing as hunters, were really souls in purgatory, but having served out the time necessary for their purgation, had been succeeded by several others, some lately dead. The Horselberg is situated between Eisenach and Gotha, and used by the monks to be called the Mount of Souls, from the cries of persons said to be under punishment, and heard as it were issuing from a cave at the foot of this mountain. To give more colour to these fictions, it was related, that if the sandy entrance to this cavern was swept quite smooth on the overnight, numerous footsteps of men and horses were sure to appear there "Oh, readers, if that ye can read,” ye really may read the following inscription, in red capitals :"POISON! "Some most execrable monster living near this spot, on Sunday, the 7th of October instant, POISONED twenty-nine fowls and chickens hereabouts, the property of his peaceable and unoffending neighbours. This post is set up as a memorial of the crime, and as a daily memento to the conscience of the dastardly and hellish perpetrator, whoever he may be. "October 11, 1821." Now, the above is assuredly a most atrocious and unnatural act of revenge and barbarian spite, and the man who was guilty of it, would in all probability, on fair occasion, and the spirit thereto moving, either fire his neighbour's house, or ravish his own grandmother. But, after saying thus much on one side, I am compelled, both by moral and logical verity, not to forget the other, since every question has necessarily two sides. Fowls are unquestionably a great nuisance in a town, and most destructive in gardens; and those of the inhabitants, even a great majority, who do not keep fowls, think it a great intrusion on their rights and convenience, to have their gardens destroyed by their neighbours' fowls, and their doorways daily made a dunghill of by those marauders. This last case is a peculiarly hard one upon the servants, who are, perhaps, engaged in clearing away the nui sance half a dozen times in the laws of most towns a provision is course of the day. In the bye made against nuisances, among suffering pigs or poultry to range which are generally reckoned, the at large: and it must, on the other side, be allowed, that the inhabitants generally encourage and bring the nuisance on themselves, by their indolent neglect of the laws made for their own protection. This, again, will bear hard upon the poisoner, who might and ought to have had recourse to a more have heard nothing, however, yet, open and lawful remedy. We he being ignotus, of the damage he may have sustained, or the unavailing complaints he may have made. IMPARTIALIS. THE FLEXOR TENDONS. To the Editor of the Sporting Magazine. SIR, BEING out of town when your last number was published, I had not an opportunity of reading it until it was too late to send the present letter for insertion, in reply to that of VETERINARIUS, the (I presume) voluntary advocate of Mr. Dicks. I am not a little surprised to find that I am quarrelled with by such a writer as VETERINARIUS, for calling tendons inelastic: if he consider such an opinion paradoxical, I would fain throw the discredit off my own shoulders, and impose it upon theirs whose reputation stands much higher in the medical world, than either mine or Mr. Lawrence's probably ever will. Among the most justly-famed of modern authors on anatomy stands Fyfe, who describes tendon (in general) to be smaller, firmer, and stronger than flesh;-of a white glistening colour, having no contractility, and little or no sensibility in a sound state.-Vol. 1st. p. 184. Lest this solitary quotation, how ever, from a work on human anatomy, should not carry conviction with it in regard to the tendons of horses, I have subjoined another from one of the best works extant on comparative anatomy. "Tendon, like muscle, is composed of fibres: but its fibres are more compressed, firmer, and of a silvery whiteness; it possesses few vessels, and no nerves: its substance is entirely gelatinous, and it neither possesses sensibility, nor irritability; it is nothing more than a passive cord by means of which muscle moves bone. The tendons of crustaceous animals and insects, belonging to the muscles of the thighs and legs, are of a nature different from that of the tendons of red-blooded animals; they are bard, elastic, and without apparent fibres."--Cuvier's Comparative Anatomy, vol. 1st, p. 133 and 134. By the unfortunate quotation that VETERINARIUS has made from Mr. Lawrence, however, he has got himself into a scrape, from which he will not so easily extri cate himself; that writer (with whom Mr. Dicks I have no doubt concurs in opinion) says, in the paragraph above alluded to "The tendons to be capable of their muscular action must necessarily be elastic." In many other parts of this chapter on lameness from relaxed and contracted sinews,” similar heterodoxical passages may be found; indeed the very topic of it is enough to argue that the contents are unscientific. Trusting, therefore, that the inelasticity of tendon will, on more mature consideration on the part of VETERINARIUS, be received as an universally admitted truth, not however on my authority, but on the credibility of those eminent writers I have made extracts from, I shall dismiss this part of our subject; leaving Mr. L. and him to settle whether tendon be capable of musculor action or not? Now, then, let me revert to the operation of bisecting the flexon tendons. VETERINARIUS says, that I must admit the fact, or discredit the account altogether. I must confess that I am not inclined at the present moment to do either; and therefore shall evade the question here, in order to make one or two requests to Mr. Dicks. First, will he (Mr. D.) (having made some communications through the medium of your Magazine, that stagger the faith of some of his brother vets.) be good enough to furnish them in detail, with the particulars of one or two of his most successful cases; in doing which, (if I may take the liberty of dictating to him) it is of more importance that he should describe the origin, symptoms, and nature of the disease for which he operates, than the results of the operation itself. At the same time I would by no means wish him to suppress any information that he |