brought to light at different periods, and sometimes in a very incidental manner, as well as by humble agencies. The laws of gravitation were the same, and similar phenomena had been witnessed by multitudes, long before Newton, from the falling of an apple, caught the idea that there was some peculiar or occult power indicated by that apparent accident. The heart had been repeatedly examined by anatomists-its structure and functions had been carefully studied by large numbers of physicians before Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood. So, the morbid structure and functions of the lungs had been made a special study by many medical men, long before Laennec discovered, by auscultation and percussion, that the physical outward signs could give such a wonderful insight into the pathology of this organ. All great truths, when once discovered, are very simple, and the surprise to all is, that they were not generally known before.

If the theory here advanced is the true law of hu man increase or population, it is not a mere theory or an abstract general principle, but it is capable of almost endless applications, for instance, in affording us a better knowledge of the nature of man-his duties and responsibilities in relation to himself, to the family, to society, and to his Maker; in furnishing a guide, or great principle by which certain practices and fashions in society, certain modes of education, systems of morals, legislation, etc., can be tested; in showing the importance and sacredness of the laws of life and health, that they are a part of the will and government of God in this world, as much as His revealed commands.

From the application of this law (which is the key of the whole thing), in the present article, to explain certain facts in physiology respecting marriage, some

JUDICIAL EXECUTIONS FOR CAPITAL CRIMES. 297

idea may be obtained of its importance and advantages. In the discussion reference has been made to the harmony between the facts in science and the principles of Revelation. Thus, when certain discoveries were made in astronomy, they were at first thought to conflict with the Bible: the same was true in geology; but, by more thorough researches, a most surprising harmony was found to exist between the teachings of Revelation and the laws of Nature. May not the same result prove true in physiology? As far as most practical purposes are concerned, we have as yet only reached the threshold-the vestibule of this temple of the science of man-with which, in point of actual value and utility, the sublime truths of astronomy and the more wonderful revelations of geology sink into comparative insignificance.

ART. III.-Judicial Executions for Capital Crimes. By ALONZO CALKINS, M. D., of New York.

"Ad Mala patrata sunt alta Theatra parata.”—Inscription over the Prison-gate at Nuremburg.

A résumé only of the various devices contrived for inflicting torture under judicial sanctions, whether in punition of actual crime, or for the satiating of personal vengeance, or in accommodation to the clamor ous demands of a capricious populace, presents to the eye of the antiquarian a curious pictorial array, and yet more, to the philanthropic moralist, a theme for the most profound and sober meditation.

Upon the mechanism of enginery in adaptation to the purposes indicated, it would appear as if human invention had been not only subsidized, but so overtaxed

as to reproduce itself, times over. Achilles and Sesostris "heroes that living still would slay us "-are represented, the one, as trailing behind his car and around Ilion's walls Hector dead, what the other had done centuries earlier to living prisoners lashed to his war-chariot. The mythical Mars, yet flayed alive for presumptuous rivalry with the god of the lyre, was an antetype of tortures really inflicted by Perdiccas upon his prisoner Ariarathres! Dichotomy, as executed upon Agag the Amalekite, has its counterpart in the hari-kari, or self-disembowelling, of Japanese dignitaries doomed by royal mandate. The precipitation, by Amaziah and his host, of ten thousand Idumeans over a precipice in the Valley of Salt, had a fresh realiza tion at the Bohemian court in 1619, in a popular outbreak against two obnoxious ministers. Dilaniation by lions, existing under Darius, was revived twenty centuries after in the kingdom of Fez. The decapitation of the seventy sons of Ahab, by command of Jehu, that Cœur de Lion of Israel, is analogous to the office-work of the Capidji-Bachi of Stamboul upon devoted viziers. Haman, the arch-conspirator at the court of Ahasuerus (Xerxes), was hanged upon a gallows fifty cubits high, and a like fate befell Earl Ferrers at Tyburn, in 1760. Polycarp, of Smyrna, condemned to the stake in his ninetieth year by Antoninus, preluded, though by a long interval, Huss sacrificed at Constance and Rogers at Smithfield.

Religion. If Madame Roland, in anguish of spirit, was forced, on her passage to the scaffold, to cry out against a self-constituted Directory which had set up a tribunal, surmounted by the very insignia of Liberty, for the offering of victims by the hecatomb, in yet louder tones might Humanity lift her denunciative

voice against violences perpetrated under the mask of religion. No influence, indeed, has so whetted the appetite for spectacular agonies and human blood as the blind impetuosity of ecclesiastical fanaticism. As the Pontifex Maximus at Rome proscribed all such as undertook to introduce "other gods," so inquisitorial bureaus, the imperium in imperio, have been wont to "fulfil all righteousness" by commending heterodoxy to the "secular arm." Yea, verily, "Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded that all the Apos tles would have done as they did." The red-hot gridiron of Aurelian, prepared for St. Laurentius; the cal dron of boiling fat for the scrupulous Jew under the tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes; the mangling, precedent to precipitation, of Serapion, martyr at Alexandria; the seven-times heated furnace at Babylon for the reception of Daniel and his companions; the quas tio by the rack in the hey-day of papal absolutism; the image of the Virgin which clasped the victim within the folds of its robe, and pierced him to death with concealed knife-blades; the exposure of the Christians to wild beasts in the arena of the amphitheatre at Ephesus; the bed of live coals strewed with fragments of glass for Agatha the Sicilian, under the Emperor Decius; the thrice-renewed fagots around the stake to which Ridley was bound-such are exhibitions of fanatical bigots or frenzied zealots,

"Striving to merit heaven by making earth a hell."

CLASS I. Anomalous Forms.-Flaying. In 2 Mac. vii. is described the case of seven sons, " in sartagine tosti," and tradition notes

"The skin of St. Bartholomew which makes

His cowl in heaven."

A Texas settler is reported, 1868, to have been

served in like manner, and then made to run the gantlet, as he did for two hundred yards ere he fell.

Precipitatio.-Manlius Capitolinus (see Livy) was thrown from the Tarpeian, a rock fifty feet high, jutting over the Tiber. The ledge of rocks in the rear of Nazareth is forty-five feet perpendicular (Rev. Dr. Booth). Jezebel, Ahab's queen, by direction of Jehu, was tossed from a balconied window upon the pave ment below (2 K. ix.). See also in 2 Mac. vi., concerning two women thrown over the wall of Jerusa lem for having circumcised their infants. One Menelaus, a plotter against Antiochus, was cast from a tower, fifty feet in elevation, into an ash-bin. The pinnacle of the Temple was used for such purpose (Matt. iv. 5), and from this, as tradition saith, St. James was hurled down. In more recent annals is an account concerning a party of Narragansetts hemmed in by Uncas, and finally forced over a high ledge that faces the Yantic at Norwich.

Lapidatio. This practice obtained in Egypt, also in India. By the Mosaic code various crimes had this issue, particularly blasphemy, proselytism to Moloch, and harlotry. Achan the peculator, condemned by Joshua, and Zachariah, a prophet in the time of Joash, were thus slain. A memorable victim to Pharisaic intolerance was St. Stephen.

Burning Alive.-Such was the destiny of the unchaste Roman vestal, in accordance with the decree "comburenda judicetur." See the case of Tamar (Gen. xxxviii.) and of the two reputed prophets roasted at Babylon (Jer. xxiii.). Chardin, while in Persia, about 1668, saw, in the grand square at Ispahan, heated ovens, that had been erected during a famine, as cau tionary demonstrations to extortionate bakers. That