[U] _Vide_ Contuzzi, Leggi di Composizioni e di Decomposizioni degli Stati. It is widely believed, for instance, that China is dying a natural death. Assuming it to be the fact, what will be the rules to govern the inheritance of these Oriental domains? Great Britain, Russia, Germany, the United States, and other nations have acquired footholds and established interests within Chinese territory. Disputes will inevitably arise between them; many will be settled by mutual compromise in which, perhaps, the chief consideration will be the amount of warlike force behind the arguments advanced; many others will be sure to find their way to an arbitral tribunal, and before that body arguments will be made and by that body decisions will be handed down embracing principles not now to be found in the books, but which the circumstances of the case and the demands of justice require. And so will doubtless ensue a growth of “international judge-made law and equity” which will gradually work an extension of the arbitral jurisdiction into fields at present unknown to the law of nations. One thing is certain: the law so developed must not, on the one hand, be in conflict with the Grotian doctrine of the equality of states as rightly understood, nor, on the other, with that great all-pervading law of the survival of the fittest--a law which determines the destinies of men and nations alike. THE FATE OF THE BEAGLE. BY THE REV. V. MARSHALL LAW. On the 27th of December, 1831, his Majesty’s ship Beagle, a ten-gun brig, under the command of Captain Fitz Roy, R. N., sailed from Devonport, England, on an expedition the purpose of which was to complete a survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego that had been begun under Captain King (1826-’30); to survey the shores of Chile and Peru, and of some islands in the Pacific; and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the world. The voyage was one of the most memorable ones in the annals of scientific exploration, for, besides the direct results, which, in the condition of geography and natural history at the time, constituted very important additions to knowledge, it carried Charles Darwin, then young and full of the enthusiasm for study that never left him. Mr. Darwin accompanied the expedition on the invitation of its commander, Captain Fitz Roy, and with the special sanction of the Lords of the Admiralty, and, as it turned out, next to the captain of the vessel was perhaps the most important member of it. He made it his special business to inquire into the character and method and the reason of all the natural objects and phenomena he saw, examining what was in the sea while they were upon it, and, when they landed, going ashore and studying the geography and geology and life of the region as thoroughly as the time of stay would permit, and collecting no end of notes and specimens as material for future study.