a dew, which falling in Egypt about St John's day, is by the superstitious natives of the country considered as miraculous, and the peculiar gift of that saint. Its effects are indeed so beneficial, that this belief is little surprising among a people so totally ignorant of natural causes as the modern Egyptians, for it is acknowledged, by the most enlightened travellers, to stop the plague, and announce a speedy and plentiful inundation of the country. These effects are thus rationally accounted for by Mr Bruce.

"In February and March, the sun is on its approach to the zenith of one extremity of Egypt, and of course has a very considerable influence upon the other. The Nile having now fallen low, the water in certain old cisterns, which, though they still exist, are suffered to accumulate all the filth of the river, becomes putrid, and the river itself has lost all its finer and volatile parts by the continued action of a vertical fun; so that instead of being subject to evaporation, it grows daily more and more inclined to putrefaction. About St John's day it receives a plentiful mixture of the fresh and fallen rain from Ethiopia, which dilutes and refreshes the almost corrupted river, and the sun near at hand exerts its influence upon the water, which is now become light enough to be exhaled, though it has still with it a mixture of the corrupted fluid. It is in February, March, or April only, that the plague begins in Egypt." Our philosophical traveller does not believe it an endemic disease; but assigns very sufficient reasons for thinking that it comes from Constantinople with merchandise or with passengers at the very time of the year when the air, by the long absence of dews, has attained a degree of putridity proper to receive it. In this state of the atmosphere, the infection continues to rage till the period of St John's day, when it is suddenly stopped by the dews occasioned by a refreshing mixture of rain water, which is poured into the Nile at the beginning of the inundation. The first and most remarkable sign of the change effected in the air, is the sudden stopping of the plague. Every person, though shut up from society for months before, buys, sells, and communicates with his neighbour without any sort of apprehension; and as far as our author could learn upon fair inquiry, it was never known that one fell sick of the plague after the anniversary of St John. He admits that some have died of it after that period; but of them the disease had got such hold, under the most putrid influence of the air, that they could not recover. To corroborate this theory, which attributes so much to the benign influence of the falling dew, he observes, that immediately after St John's day, the clothes of the many thousands who have died during the late continuance of the plague are publicly exposed in the market place; and that all these, though consisting of furs, cotton, silk, and woollen cloths, which are the stuffs most retentive of infection, imbuing the moist air of the evening and the morning, are handled, bought, put on and worn, without any apprehension of danger, and without a single accident being known to have happened to any one possessed of this happy confidence.