The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-10 00:00:00

for his work than the one now straggling down his
titlepage. As it is, the book, if once opened, will
be rifled of its contents : for it is as full of records
of extraordinary incident and of remarkable adven-
ture as a ripe pomegranate is full of seeds.

A Vacation Tour at the Antipodes. By B. A.
Heywood, M.A. pp. 251. Longman and Co.
If every one employed his holiday time to as much
purpose as Mr. Heywood, of Trinity College, Cam-
bridge, the world would be a little the wiser. Falling
ill, probably from over study, he was recommended
it seems in 1861 to have a thorough change of air
and scene during the Long Vacation. As if he
were a wag merely, and not in addition to that an
inquiring scholar and a more than usually keen-
eyed observer of men and things, Mr. Heywood
takes the recommendation of his medical
adviser literally. He enters upon a decidedly
Long Vacation. He resolves upon having a
change of air and scene that shall indeed be
thorough. He makes a voyage "there and back
again "—there, in this instance, meaning the Anti-
podes. Quite at his leisure, when he gets "there.'
coolly sauntering on in quest of healtha of amuse-
ment, and (as the event proves, as, in his case, it
manifestly could not help proving) of information, he
passes (note-book in hand) through Victoria, Tas-
mania, New South Wales, Queensland, and New
L-aland. He consumes, in this way, the later part
of 1861, and the earlier part 611862. Valitudinarian
though he still is, when he finds himself, on landing
at the opposite side of the globe, among the natives
and settlers there in Australia, Mr. Heywood—if the
record of his travels do but reach them as it ought—
will be now discovered by our fellow subjects there to
have been all the while a "chiel " who was " taking
notes" and faith ! he will be allowed' by all his
readers, whether at the antipodes or at home, to
have done well in thus eventually printing them.
Several little lithograph Sketches will be met with
scattered here and there among the letter-press—
an excellent folding map of the whole archipelago
traversed, will be found inserted in a calico pocket
in the binding—there is a lesser folding chart oppo-
site the very first page of the traveller's narrative.--
there are some valuable and curious statistics well
compacted together by way of an appendix. In
effect the book is well arranged and well brought
out, and deserves commendation even in that parti-
cular for its completeness. In regard to the author's
account of his " Vacation Tour at the Antipodes,"
we frankly admit at once, that to ourselves the most
interesting portion of it all, is the preliminary part, or
in plain terms the " Introductory Historical Sketch,"
by which he prepares the reader for his own graphic
description of our southern colonies far away there
under the soles of our feet. Reminding us that 350
years ago nothing whatever was known about the
existence of any land at all at our antipodes, IVlr.Hey-
wood refers to the reported (only, it should be ob-
served, the reported) discovery of a part of Australia
by the Spanish navigator, Capt. Pedro Fernandez
de Quiros, by whom, say other vague historic hints
dating back for their origin to the close of the six-
teenth century, the land was called, in the reverent
spirit of those times, La Australia del Espiritu
Santo ! " Whether," says our writer, when speak-
ing of Captain de Quiros' claim to be regarded as
the first discoverer of Australia, " the palm of dis-
covery of the new world is to be awarded to him or
no, or to the Portuguese, who were in the South
Seas between 1511 and 1529, it is quite certain that
in the seventeenth century the north, west, and
south coasts were visited by several Dutch
voyagers, as well as by the English." The
earliest of these navigators he then enumerates
—Leu win in 1622, Peter de Nuyts in 1627, General
Carpenter and De Witts in 1628, Captain Pelsart
1629, and so on, to the most famous voyager of
them all in those far-off seas, the renowned Captain
Cook--the greatest among all the discoverers of
Australasia! Rapidly, thereupon, we traverse the
annals of that great southern island, or, rather, it
should always be said, continent, dubbed in an
immortal Scotch Bull by Sir Archibald Alison, at
page 9 of Vol. I. of his continuation of his "History
of Europe," the " fifth hemisphere!" Regarding
New South Wales with especial interest, as Engliah-
nen cannot fail to do by reason of its being the
very first of all the Australian colonies that has
been established by the Imperial Government, it
occurs to us that it will probably be welcome
to our readers if we here epitomise in a brief cata-
logue the salient facts commented upon in Mr.
Heywood's narrative; compiling here, at least, that
is to say, a—

LIST OF THE GOVERNORS OF NEW SOUTH WALES, SINCE
THE FOUNDATION OF THAT COLONY,
I. Captain Philip .................. lB
11. Captain, afterwards Admiral, John Hunter 177958
111. Captain Philip King ................. IV. Captain William Bligh .. .
1800
...............•
1806
V. Governor Lachlan Macquarie ...........
VI. Sir Thomas Brisbane ..
.1809
VII. General Darling
1822
182 5
VIII, General Bourke
IX. Sir George Gipps
1838
X. Sir Charles Fitzroy„ ........
XI. Sir William Denison 1846
................ 1855
XII. Sir John Young . ............................... 1861
His excellency, the last mentioned governor,
being still there in authority at the head of that
more than ever important colony. So that, in-
cluding Sir John Young, the present governor,
there have been only a dozen governors there in-
stalled in the Government House in Sydney since
the date of the first foundation of that Government.
A date, as it happens, immediately anterior to the
outbreak of the first Great French Revolution.
We have left ourselves but little space, within
which to allude, even in the most cursory manner,
to the amusing as well as instructive nature of the
result of Mr. Heywood's personal observation of
things as they are now at our antipodes. It is in,.
teresting (according to the usual custom nowa-
days, in reference to our blundering knowledge,
or rather belief, of all kinds), to learn (p. 90) that
Botany Bay, though popularly identified even in
name with the very idea of transportation, never at
any time had a convict settlement established there!
Happily, however, one has a spiteful satisfaction
immediately afterwards in learning, that knowledge
at our antipodes is as little trustworthy as it
apparently is upon most things ancient,
modern, here at home: Mr. Heywood (p. 96)
recording the fact that at a public sale he heard
an auctioneer declare that Notes and Queries vvere
written by Charles Dickens ! It is all pretty much
the same there, seemingly, in many respects, as it is
here amongst ourselves. At the Club in Queens-
land, our traveller finds lying on the table just as he
might find lying on his own club table at the Univer-
sity Club House in Pall-Mall, the Saturday _Review,
the Cornhill, and divers other familiar periodicals.
For the rest, however, we would confidently refer
the reader to Mr. Heywood's own pages, from the
which anyone who lists may draw at pleasure, and
certainly also, with pleasure, an abundant store of
interesting, and some of it really valuable infor-

mation.

Vie Popular Science Review. No. VII.
An excellent specimen of this very able and in-
structive scientific quarterly has just made its ap-
pearance in this early part of April. Its contents in
many respects reflect the highest credit upon the
taste and discrimination of the editor, Mr. James
Samuelson. One of the seven principal papers
making up these contents of Number Seven, he
himself has helped to contribute—namely, as the
translator of it. The original of the paper
thus referred to, being written by M. Jules
Gerard, as a matter of course iu French, and
relating (almost equally, we might say, as a mat-
ter of course) to " The African Lion in its Native
Haunts." Besides which the Review contains a
valuable article, by P. L. Simmonds, on " The Fur-
niture Woods of Commerce"—the remaining five
articlesmaking up the full seven in this seventh num-
ber, being eachof them illustrated with whole-page
engravings in lithograph. The " History of a
Beech Twig" is the theme of one paper. "Fossil•.
Birds" furnish the subject of another. "The
British Fungi" suggest a third article. " The
Human Skin" a fourth. The last paper here men-
tioned, though the first in this current number of
the Review, being a highly elaborated little trea-
tise, by the Rev. W. Houghton, on " Our Fresh
Water Polyzoa:' As the usual supplementary
close to the contents of The Popular Science Re-
view, we have, besides this, several minor criti-
cisms, " Miscellanea," and the customary Scientific
Summary from Ato Z—or, to put it otherwise, from
Astronomy to Zoology.