History records many laudable efforts on the part of the Arabians in cultivating the natural sciences. Abou-al-Ryan-Byrouny, who died in the year 941, traveled forty years for the purpose of studying mineralogy; and his treatise on the knowledge of precious stones, is a rich collection of facts and observations. Aben-al-Beïthar, who devoted himself with equal zeal to the study of botany, traversed all the mountains and plains of Europe, in search of plants. He afterward explored the burning wastes of Africa, for the purpose of describing such vegetables as can support the fervid heat of that climate; and finally passed into the remote countries of Asia. The animals, vegetables, and fossils common to the three great portions of earth then known, underwent his personal inspection; and he returned to his native West loaded with the spoils of the South and East. Nor were the arts cultivated with less success, or less enriched by the progress of natural philosophy. A great number of inventions which, at the present day, add to the comforts of life, are due to the Arabians. Paper is an Arabic production. It had long, indeed, been made from silk in China, but Joseph Amrou carried the process of paper-making to his native city, Mecca, A. D. 649, and caused cotton to be employed in the manufacture of it first in the year 706. Gunpowder was known to the Arabians at least a century before it appeared in European history; and the compass also was known to them in the eleventh century. From the ninth to the fourteenth century, a brilliant light was spread by literature and science over the vast countries which had submitted to the yoke of Islamism. But the boundless regions where that power once reigned, and still continues supreme, are at present dead to the interests of science. Deserts of burning sand now drift where once stood their academies, libraries, and universities; while savage corsairs spread terror over the seas, once smiling with commerce, science, and art. Throughout that immense territory, more than twice as large as Europe, which was formerly subjected to the power of Islamism, and enriched by its skill, nothing in our day is found but ignorance, slavery, debauchery and death. Herein we have a striking illustration of the wonder-working of Providence. At a time when the nations of Europe were sunk in comparative barbarism, the Arabians were the depositaries of science and learning; when the Christian states were in infancy, the fair flower of Islamism was in full bloom. Nevertheless, the sap of the Mohammedan civilization was void of that vitality and of those principles which alone insure eternal progress, therefore was it requisite that the whole system should be transferred and exhausted on a more productive field, in order to secure the desired end.