a county in North Wales, is divided by the Conway from Denbighshire; from part of Merionethshire by a rivulet; from Anglesea by the straits of Menai: the residue is bounded by the sea. In figure it is very irregular, a great peninsulated point running out from it to the south-west. From the extremity of this point, the length is 45 miles; the breadth varies extremely; its circumference is about 150 miles. It contains, from a late survey, 300,000 acres of land, of which, by one account, about 200,000, and, by another account, only 160,000 are in a state of cultivation.

This county is the most mountainous in Wales. Its central part is entirely occupied by Snowdon, and its subordinate mountains, extending from near Conway in the north-east to the shore that bounds the Perthorian road, including the Rhifel ridges. The Snowden mountains are connected with another chain of hills, which approach the sea at Aberdaron. Among these are very deep passes, forming narrow valleys, through which numerous streams, issuing from various lakes, rush in some places with great violence. The highest region of the mountainous district is covered with snow, during the greatest part of the year; the middle region affords fuel and pasturage, though the woods which once clothed it are nearly exhausted. The bases of the mountains and the valleys are in general temperate and fertile. The vale of Conway is the most extensive in the county; it is a long and narrow tract, equally romantic and beautiful, through which the river of the same name runs. At first it is very narrow, but it gradually widens to the breadth of a mile. Its extent is about twenty miles, terminating at the town of Conway. It affords rich pasturage, especially near Llanwost, where it is formed into the finest meadows, corn-fields, and groves,—and exhibits a striking and pleasing contrast to the bleak regions of Snowden frowning above it.

The general escarpment of the mountains, which rise from the sea towards the centre of this county, fronts the sea. But the particular escarpment of the detached groups, depends upon the course of the streams. The mountain of Snowden is composed of various cliffs of different heights; the altitude of the highest point of the mountain is about 3600 feet from the high-water mark on Caernarvon quay. Snow lies all the year in the hollows near the top of Snowden, the temperature here being very low, even in the middle of summer. On the morning of the 5th of July 1795, just after sunrise, Mr Aikin observed the thermometer at 34, whereas in the vale of Beddgelest, at seven in the morning, it was at 62; at one in the afternoon it had reached only 48 on the top of Snowden.

The principal rivers in Caernarvonshire are the Rivers Conway and the Seiont. The first rises from a lake on the confines of Denbigh, Merioneth, and Caernarvon. Its course is nearly in a northerly direction, along the east side of the county, for about twenty-four miles, when it empties itself into the sea, at the town of the same name; it is half a mile wide at the Tash at high-water; and not above fifty yards at low, the remaining space being sand-banks, which, at high-water, are covered twelve feet. These sands still abound in the pearl muscle, as they did in the time of the Romans, but they have been long neglected. The Conway is navigable for about twelve miles. The Seiont rises from a lake near Snowden; its course is westward, and it discharges itself into the Menai Straits at Caernarvon. The bar admits vessels of about 300 tons into the haven.

The sea coast of this county presents many objects worthy of notice. Traeth Bach, and Traeth Mawr, are two inlets of the sea having one entrance, and each receiving a little river; the greatest part of them are dry at low-water, and become quicksands. They lie between Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire, but as they seem more properly to belong to the latter county, the attempts of Mr Maddocks to embark the sands of Traeth Mawr, will more properly be noticed under Merionethshire. Passing from this county into Caernarvonshire, the first seaport is Pwllheli, on an inlet which receives three or four rivulets. It has a considerable coasting trade in small vessels. St Tudwell's bay is sheltered by two small islands. To it succeeds the bay named Hell's Mouth, from the height and form of the shores, which cause the wind to blow continually into it, while there is also a constant in-draught of the current. The promontory of Lyn extends to the west of the mass of mountains, that occupy the space between the west entrance of the Menai, and Traeth Mawr. At the extremity of this promontory lies the Isle of Bardsey, two miles long, and one mile broad; the tides run with great rapidity between this island and the promontory. The gulf between the peninsulated hundred of Lyn and Anglesea is called the bay of Caernarvon. It is lined by the high ridge of Snowden. The only port on this coast is Porthyn Lyn, formed by a long point of land jutting into the sea, and sheltering a cove on the west. Port Penryhn, on a small rivulet, has been recently enlarged into a haven for vessels of 300 or 400 tons; from it are exported immense quantities of slate, from Lord Penryhn's estate in this county, to the amount of 500 tons a-week when the demand is great. About seven miles to the west-south-west of Conway, on the road from that town to Bangor, is the stupendous precipice of Pen-mawr, the last of the long Caernarvon chain. It is 1400 feet perpendicular from its base, and, according to Mr Caswell, who was employed by Mr Plamstead the astronomer to measure it, 1545 feet above the beach at low-water. In 1772, application was made to Parliament to improve and secure the road across this precipice, which was accordingly done; and there is now a good road, on a ledge of the rock, defended by a wall five feet high. The county of Caernarvon is terminated by the lofty round promontory, called Llandudno, or the Great Orme's Head, on the east of the Conway river. It is a fine sheepwalk, ending in a steep precipice over the sea, which is hollowed into various inaccessible caverns.

In consequence of the elevated surface of the greatest part of the county, and its cold, piercing, and damp atmosphere, there is little corn grown in it. Near the sea, however, and in some of the vales, barley of fine quality is grown; and in some of the higher districts, oats are cultivated. The vales yield a little meadow grass for hay, which is got in without the aid of wheel-carriges, the uneven surface of the ground not admitting their use. Sheep and black cattle, however, constitute the principal agricultural stock of the Caernarvonshire farmers. The former are pastured on the mountains, which, in general, are commons; and the latter on the lower grounds. A considerable quantity of cheese, made from the mixed milk of ewes and cows, is made. From the peninsula hundred of Lyn, which is in general flat, oats, barley, cheese, and black-cattle, are exported; of the last, about 3000 annually. The numerous herds of goats, which used to frequent the rocky districts of this county, are now nearly extinct. There are some profitable orchards in the vales, but in general the climate is very unfavourable to fruit-trees.

Caernarvonshire is an interesting county to the Mineralogist; but we can only very briefly notice the principal features of its mineralogy. The highest and interior regions of the Snowdon mountains are composed of granite, porphyry, whin, and other primitive aggregate rocks, inclosing considerable blocks of quartz. The western side of Snowdon itself consists of ironstone, on which are placed basaltic columns, of different lengths, and about four feet in diameter. On each side of the primitive rocks, there are mountainous banks of slate, the coarsest on the eastern, and the finest invariably on the western side of the central ridge. At Nant-francon are the slate quarries of Lord Penryhn, who has constructed admirable railways from them to Port Penryhn. The banks of slate, growing finer as they descend, occupy the country between Snowdon and the Menai, usually terminating within a few hundred yards of its banks. The channel of the Shast, as well as its banks, consists of limestone; breccia, or the fragments of the Snowdon mountains, in a calcareous cement, and hard marl, inclosing shells. The general dip of the strata, in the promontory of Lyn, is to the south-west; on the north coast is chlorite slate and coarse serpentine.

On the former rest beds of primitive argillaceous schistus. The argillaceous schistus in some places is largely mixed with carbon, forming a kind of hard drawing slate; and in others it is penetrated by carbon and pyrites, forming alum slate. No mines have been opened in this district. A hard stone, used instead of brass, for supporting the pivots of light machinery, and another stone, something resembling the French burr, have been found in this county. There are some lead mines near Gwydir; but the most important and valuable metal found in this county is copper. The richest mines of it are in the vicinity of Llanberis; it is also found in various parts of the Snowdon mountains; and the green carbonate of copper lies between the limestone strata, in the promontory of Orme's Head. There are mines of calamine on the Caernarvon side of the river Conway.

Many rare vegetables, met with only on the most elevated spots, grow in this county. Some of the steepest crags of the Great Orme's Head are inhabited by the peregrine falcon. Considerable quantities of fish, particularly herrings, are caught on the shores of this county; and lobsters and oysters are found in great abundance. In some of the lakes are found the char, and the gwyniad, another alpine fish. Foxes are the chief wild animals.

The money raised for the poor in 1803 was Poor Rates L. 9137, being at the rate of 4s. 6½d. in the pound. In the year ending the 25th of March 1815, there was paid in parochial rates the sum of L. 15,776, 17s. 6d. In 1800, there were 8304 inhabited houses, population, and 41,521 inhabitants; 19,586 males, and 21,985 females, of whom 12,808 were employed in agriculture, and 4234 in manufactures, trade, and handicrafts. The inhabitants live in a state of the utmost simplicity, manufacturing their clothes from the wool of their own flocks, and dyeing them with lichens: a little oatmeal added to the produce of their dairies constitutes their food. In 1811, the results of the population returns were as follows:

<table> <tr> <th>Inhabited houses,</th> <td>9369</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Families inhabiting them,</th> <td>10,187</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Houses building,</th> <td>102</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Houses uninhabited,</th> <td>154</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Families employed in agriculture,</th> <td>6667</td> </tr> <tr> <th>——— in trade, and manufactures,</th> <td>2687</td> </tr> <tr> <th>——— not included in the above head,</th> <td>883</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Males,</th> <td>23,879</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Females,</th> <td>25,957</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Total in 1811,</th> <td>49,836</td> </tr> <tr> <th>—— in 1800;</th> <td>41,521</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Increase in 1811,</th> <td>7815</td> </tr> </table>

See Davie's Agriculture of North Wales.—Aikin's Tour.—Bingley's Tour.—Pennant's Tour, Vol. II.

CÆSALPINUS (ANDREW), one of those great and daring geniuses, who, contending with the mists of a dark age, elicit the most brilliant truths on the one hand, while they sometimes wander into great absurdities on the other, was born at Arezzo cesalpinus, in Tuscany in 1519. Of his family nothing is recorded, nor does he appear to have left any progeny, nor to have been ever married. Devoted to the studies of physic and natural philosophy, he attained at length the honour of being physician to Pope Clement VIII., during the chief part of whose pontificate, from 1592 till his own death in 1603, at the age of eighty-four, Cesalpinus lived at Rome, in the highest credit and celebrity; for which, as we trace the circumstances of his history, and inquire into his opinions, it seems, at first sight, difficult to account. Eminent talents have seldom proved a shield against persecution. On the contrary, by adding fear to its malice, they have generally tended to envenom its darts. How then could Cesalpinus, a professed Aristotelian, an open unbeliever of revealed religion, whose opinions nearly approached those of Spinoza, exist in the holy court of Rome, which was then beginning to persecute the immortal Galileo! This mystery will but too readily unravel itself.

Cesalpinus seems to have been furnished with two distinct philosophical intellects, which, like a good and evil genius, directed him by turns. Under the influence of the one he discovered the circulation of the blood, the sexes of plants, and the only true principles of botanical classification; under the guidance of the other, he became entangled in the metaphysics of the schools, the dreams of Aristotle, and a philosophic contempt for everything, good or bad, connected with the nonsense he was obliged publicly to respect. It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader, that however brilliant the reign of literature and taste in the golden age of Leo X. and the times which immediately succeeded, true science and experimental philosophy were as yet in the cradle. In this respect the time of Cesalpinus was "dark as Erebus," and the light he struck out was altogether his own.

We have no account of this great man, till we find him seated in the botanical chair of the University of Pisa, where also he studied, if he did not teach, anatomy and medicine. His first publication was entitled Speculum Artis Medice Hypocraticum, in which it were too much to expect he should release himself from the shackles of his venerable guide; but he has left evident proofs, in a passage often quoted, of his having a clear idea of the circulation of the blood, at least through the lungs. In botany his inquiries were conducted on a more original plan, and their result was one of the most philosophical works in that science, which came from the press at Florence in 1583, in one volume 4to. The title page runs thus: De Plantis libri XVI. Andreae Cesalpini Aretin, Medici clarissimi, doctissimique, atque Philosophi celeberrimi ac subtilissimi; yet he appears to have been himself the editor of the work, to which is prefixed, in his own name, an elegant and learned epistle dedicatory to Francis de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. This book, now rarely to be met with, is not only the unacknowledged source from whence various subsequent writers, and especially Morison, derived their ideas of botanical arrangement; but it was a mine of science to which Linnaeus himself gratefully avowed his obligations. His own copy evinces the assiduity with which he studied the book. He has laboured throughout to remedy the defect of which Haller complains, of the want of synonyms, and has subjoined his own generic names, nearly to every species. He has particularly indicated those remarkable passages, in p. 13 and 15, where the germination of plants and their sexual distinctions are explained. In the former we trace the first rudiments of a natural classification of plants by the differences in their cotyledons; or, in other words, we find the origin of the natural systems of Linnaeus and Jussieu; in the latter passage we detect the fundamental principle of the Linnaean artificial system. On these subjects the reader may consult our article on Botany. Nor were these merely incidental suggestions of the illustrious author. He has pursued his enquiries to a conclusion on which the existence of Botany as a science depends, and which the no less eminent Conrad Gesner detected about the same time, though his ideas respecting it were not then made public. The principle to which we allude is the classification of plants by their parts of fructification alone. This was afterwards extended, by the greatest writers on the subject, as Ray and Tournefort, and more completely by Linnaeus, to the discrimination of their genera by the same parts, more particularly considered and contrasted. To this more extensive conclusion, indeed, the principle of Cesalpinus directly and inevitably leads. He pursued it himself to such a length, as to develop some of the most important characters for generic distinctions, such as the flower being superior or inferior with respect to the fruit; the heart of the seed situated at its summit or base; the seeds, or the cells of the seed-vessels, solitary or otherwise; the partitions of certain pericarps parallel or contrary to their valves. Linnaeus remarks that this author, though the first systematical botanist, found out as many natural classes, or orders, as any of his followers. He did not indeed well define the philosophical limits of genera in the vegetable kingdom, and therefore his work cannot regularly be quoted throughout for generic synonyms. The want of plates of his own, and of references to other authors, render, as we have already hinted, some of his names and descriptions unintelligible. Yet Linnaeus has in manuscript filled up many blanks which he had been obliged to leave in his own Classes Plantarum, where the system of Cesalpinus first assumed a synoptical form. This author might probably have adopted a more clear and methodical mode of arranging and explaining the botanical part of his subject, had he not had in view the vague and desultory manner of Pliny, whom he closely imitates in the materials of his numerous chapters, as well as in his style of description. A small and unimportant Appendix to this work, of 19 pages, appeared at Rome in 1603, which is of very rare occurrence, but may be found reprinted in Boccone's Museo di Pitante rare, p. 125.

Cesalpinus printed at Rome, in 1596, a 4to volume of 222 pages, entitled De Metallicis, dedicated to Pope Clement VIII. which, like his botanical publications, is now extremely rare. In the philosophy Caesalpinus. of this work, Aristotle is his guide; in its method and composition, Pliny. A prelatory address to the Pope declares it to have been undertaken in opposition to a certain treatise on the same subject, which, though written with diligence and elegance, contained many things inconsistent with the principles of philosophy, and subversive of the peripatetic doctrines; and with the author of which, as being excommunicated by the holy church of Rome, no measures were to be kept.

In our author's Quesstionum Peripateticae libri quinque, published at Rome in 1603, it appears that he scrupled not to stand forth, as an open defender of the Aristotelian philosophy, without any concealment of his own peculiar opinions and hypotheses, derived from thence. By these he incurred the charge of atheism, from a physician named Taurel, who, punning on the name of his antagonist, entitled his book Alpes caesae, hoc est, Andree Caesalpini monstrosa dogmata discussa et excussa. This attack however met with little or no countenance, and the learned Aristotelian died in the course of the year, receiving, no doubt, in the very focus of sanctity itself, the funeral honours due to an orthodox physician of his holiness.

Of the medical publications of Caesalpinus, entitled Praxis universalis medicinae, and De medicamentorum facultatibus, we have had no opportunity of forming an opinion for ourselves. By what is to be gathered from his other writings, his ideas of the medical qualities of plants and fossils seem adopted from ancient writers, rather than from any considerable portion of actual experiment. Like other physicians of his time, he was too much occupied in ascertaining the articles of the materia medica, to find leisure for doubt, or for practical enquiry, respecting the truth of their reputed virtues. He did however promulgate some original ideas, relative to the investigation of the properties of plants by their taste and smell. With Botany he was not only theoretically but practically conversant. He left behind him a collection of above 760 dried specimens, one of the earliest upon record, which is said to have come into the hands of Micheli, and therefore is doubtless still preserved in the museum of Dr Targioni Tozzetti at Florence. A catalogue of this venerable Herbarium is reported to have been prepared for the press; but we do not find that it ever appeared.

Caesalpinus having been settled at Pisa, when the great Galileo first presumed to doubt the infallibility of the Aristotelian philosophy; and, most likely, when that rising character became, at the age of twenty-six, Professor of Mathematics in the same university; we cannot presume him to have been free from the party spirit which so disgracefully manifested itself there. He must have concurred in the measures which his own associates, leagued with the ruling powers, thought proper to adopt. The ancient school philosophy, derived from the Peripatetics, whether it was considered as a mere abstract speculation, or whether, as being equally absurd and unintelligible with the orthodox establishment, it did not excite alarm, was, as every body knows, allowed to go on very lovingly with that establishment; nor did it, in general, raise any more suspicion than the heathen mythology, studied and exemplified in the same and other schools. But when a spirit of truth and enquiry arose; when principles and opinions were to be submitted to the tests of reason and experiment; the same fatal results, which the preceding age had witnessed in what was called religion, were justly apprehended for what was now, with scarcely more propriety, denominated philosophy. Hence the papal authority, which had suffered shipwreck in the one case, wanting the wisdom to avoid a similar disgrace in the other, gladly clung for support to any ally. These two celebrated occasions, the divorce of Henry VIII., and the base persecution of Galileo, are almost the only ones in which the authority of the Pope has been exerted about any matter that human reason could determine, or that much signified, except to his own immediate dependants, how it might be determined. It is a memorable fact, that his decision was no less just in one case, than unjust in the other; yet both were equally ruinous, the former to his power, the latter to his credit. So hazardous is the exercise of usurped or over-strained authority, and so infallibly, thanks to the Author of all Good! do truth and justice rise, with renovated vigour, from such contests!

By this view of our subject, the mystery above aluded to becomes clearly unravelled. Caesalpinus, though a known heretic and infidel, professing to be an obedient son, and even a champion, of the church, tried to rise by the ruin of equally learned, and more honest, men than himself. On the side on which he was absurd and censurable, and on that side only, he was unjust and unprincipled; nor is such a character uncommon. Where he exercised his unbiased judgment, and honestly sought for truth, he, like Galileo, enlarged the bounds of human knowledge, and made discoveries which will for ever claim the gratitude and admiration of mankind.

(J. J.)