"The number of schools under the care of your committee may be reported of thus:--Those situated in the Highlands and Islands, 125; those in the Lowlands, 64; and those planted at the expense of the Church of Scotland's Ladies' Gaelic School Society, and placed under your committee's charge, 20; in all, 209." ARARAT AND THE ARMENIAN HIGHLANDS.[19] It were a worthy and novel undertaking for a man of science, enterprise, and letters, to explore and describe in succession the most celebrated of the earth's mountains. And we know of no person better fitted for such a task, and likely to accomplish it with more honour to himself and advantage to the world, than the persevering traveller and able writer, the title of whose latest work heads this page. Has he allotted himself that task? We cannot say; but what he has already done looks like its commencement, and he has time before him to follow the path upon which he has so successfully and creditably entered. In Dr Moritz Wagner we have an instance of a strong natural bent forcing its way in defiance of obstacles. Compelled by the pressure of peculiar circumstances to abandon his academical studies at Augsburg before they were completed, and to devote himself to commercial pursuits, he entered a merchant's house at Marseilles. Business took him to Algiers, and his visit to that country, then in the early years of French occupation, roused beyond the possibility of restraint the ardent thirst for travel and knowledge which had always been one of his characteristics. Abandoning trade, he returned to Germany and devoted himself to the study of natural history, and especially to that of zoology, which he had cultivated in his youth. In 1836, being then in his twenty-ninth year, he started from Paris for Algeria, where he travelled for two years, sharing, in the capacity of member of a scientific commission, in the second and successful expedition to Constantina. It is a peculiarity, and we esteem it laudable, of many German travellers of the more reflective and scientific class, that they do not rush into type before the dust of the journey is shaken from their feet, but take time to digest and elaborate the history of their researches. Thus it was not until three years after his return to Europe, that Dr Wagner sent forth from his studious retirement at Augsburg an account of his African experiences, in a book which still keeps the place it at once took as the best upon that subject in the German language.[20] The work had not long been issued to the public, when its author again girded himself for the road. This time his footsteps were turned eastwards; Asia was his goal: he passed three busy and active years in Turkey and Russia, Circassia and Armenia. The strictly scientific results of this long period of observant travel and diligent research are reserved for a great work, now upon the anvil. To the general reader Dr Wagner addressed, a few months ago, two volumes of