CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

CONTENTS

THE INFLUENCE OF HABIT IN PLANT-LIFE.
IN ALL SHADES.
COLONIAL FARM-PUPILS.
A GOLDEN ARGOSY.
INVESTORS AND THE STOCK EXCHANGE.
THE ‘LADY GODIVA.’
OCCASIONAL NOTES.

Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art. Fifth Series. Established by William and Robert Chambers, 1832. Conducted by R. Chambers (Secundus).

No. 112.—Vol. III.

Price 1½d.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1886.

THE INFLUENCE OF HABIT IN PLANT-LIFE.

The old maxim regarding the power of habit is usually and rightly regarded as exhibiting a thorough application to the regulation of animal life. Not merely in human affairs is habit allowed to be ‘a second nature;’ but in lower life as well, the influence of use and wont is plainly perceptible. A dog or cat equally with a human being is under the sway of the accustomed. That which may be at first unusual, soon becomes the normal way of life. Even, as the physiologist can prove, in a very large part of ordinary human existence, we are the creatures of habit quite as much as we are the children of impulse. It is easily provable, for example, that such common acts as are involved in reading, writing, and speaking, are merely perpetuated habits. At first, these acquirements present difficulties to the youthful mind. A slow educative process is demanded, and then, by repetition and training, the lower centres of the brain acquire the power of doing the work of higher parts and centres. We fall into the habit, in other words, of writing and speaking, just as our muscles fall into the way of guiding our movements. No doubt, a large part of the difficulty is smoothed away for us by the fact that we inherit the aptitude for the performance of these common actions. But they fall, nevertheless, into the category of repeated and inherited habits; and equally with the newer or fresh ideas and tasks we set ourselves, the actions of common life may be regarded as merely illustrating the curious and useful effect of repeated and fixed habit on our organisation.

Recent researches in the field of plant-life, however, it is interesting to note, show that habit does not reign paramount in the animal world alone. The plant-world, it has been well remarked, too often presents to the ordinary observer the aspect of a sphere of dull pulseless life, wherein activity is unrepresented, and wherein the familiar actions of animal existence are unknown. Nothing is farther from the truth than such an idea. The merest tyro in botany is nowadays led to study actions in plants which are often indistinguishable from those of animal life. Instead of the plant-world being a huge living domain which never evinces a sign of sensation or activity, the botanist can point to numerous cases in which not only are the signs of sensibility as fully developed in the plant as in the animal, but in which also many other phases of animal life are exactly imitated. We thus know of plants which droop their leaves on the slightest touch, and exhibit as delicate a sensitiveness as many high animals, and a much finer degree of sensibility than most low animals. Then, again, when, with the microscope, we inspect that inner plant-life which is altogether hidden from the outer world, we see that the tissues of plants exist in a state of high activity. Currents of protoplasm are seen to run hither and thither through the plant-cells, and active movements to pervade the whole organisation of the living organism. Vital activity is the rule, and inertness the exception, in plant-life; and the discovery of this fact simply serves to impress anew upon us the danger and error of that form of argument which would assume the non-existence of higher traits of life in plants, simply because they are invisible to the unassisted sight.

The effects of habit on plant-life are nowhere better seen than in the curious differences which exist between the food and feeding of certain plants and the practices of their more familiar plant-neighbours. The food of an ordinary green plant, as is well known, consists of inorganic matters. Water, minerals in solution, ammonia, and carbonic acid gas, constitute the materials from which an ordinary plant derives its sustenance. It is curious to reflect that all the beauty of flower and foliage merely represents so much carbonic acid gas, water, and minerals, fashioned by the wondrous vital powers of the plant into living tissues. Yet such is undoubtedly the case. Between the food of animals and green plants, we perceive this great difference—namely, that whilst the animal demands water, oxygen gas, and minerals—all three being inorganic materials—it also requires ready-made living matter to supply the wants of its frame. This ready-made living matter the animal can only obtain from other animals or from plants; and as a matter of fact, animals demand and require such materials to feed upon. In one sense, the plant, then, exhibits higher powers than the animal, for it is more constructive. It can build up its frame from non-living matter entirely; whilst the animal, less constructive, requires a proportion of already living matter in its food. What has just been said of the food of plants applies to those which possess green colouring-matter associated with the plant-tissues. This green colour, so universally diffused throughout the plant kingdom, is called chlorophyll by the botanist. It exists in the cells of plants in the form of granules, and is intimately associated with the living matter or ‘protoplasm’ of the cells. The presence or absence of green colour in a plant makes all the difference in the world to its habits. The want of this chlorophyll, in fact, converts the habits of the plant into that of the animal.

If we select a plant which possesses no green colour, we may be prepared for some startling revelations respecting the mode of life of such a plant. Examples of a total want of chlorophyll are seen in the fungi, that large group of plants which harbours our mushrooms, toad-stools, and like organisms as its familiar representatives. If we inquire how the non-green fungus lives, we shall discover, firstly, that it is like an animal in respect, firstly, of the gas on which it feeds. The green plant, we saw to feed on carbonic acid gas; but the fungus, like the animal, inhales oxygen. Furthermore, a still more remarkable fact must be detailed respecting the difference between the habit of the green plants and their non-green neighbours. When an ordinary green plant takes in the carbonic acid gas which it has obtained from the atmosphere—whither it has come from the lungs of animals and elsewhere—it performs a remarkable chemical operation. The green colour enables it, in the presence of light, to decompose the carbonic acid gas (which consists of carbon and oxygen) into its elements. The carbon is retained by the plant, and goes to form the starch and other compounds manufactured by the organism. But the oxygen, which is not required, at least in any quantity, in the living operations of the green plant, is allowed to escape back to the atmosphere, where it becomes useful for animal respiration. Thus, what the animal exhales (carbonic acid), the green plant inhales; and what the green plant exhales (oxygen), the animal inhales. We have here a remarkable cycle of natural operations, which suggests how beautifully the equilibrium of nature is maintained. It may be added that the want of light converts even the green plant to somewhat animal habits. In the dark, the decomposition of carbonic acid is suspended, chlorophyll alone being insufficient for the analysis. Then, the green plant seems to inhale oxygen and to emit carbonic acid, like the animal and its non-green relative; to return, however, to its normal habit with the returning light. At the same time, the plain difference of habit in respect of the want of green colour in the fungi and other plants, is in itself a remarkable fact of plant-life.

Other differences in habit may also be noted between the plants which possess green colour and those that want it. We have already alluded to the fact that green plants feed on inorganic or lifeless matters, and that they build up these matters into their living tissues. On the other hand, the habits of the fungi and non-green plants lead them to resemble animals in that they feed upon organic materials; that is, on matter which is derived from other plants or animals. As a matter of fact, most fungi are found growing in places where decaying organic matters exist. The gardener, in growing edible fungi, supplies them with such materials in the form of manure. Again, those fungi which cause skin-diseases in man (for example, ringworm) feed on the tissues in which they are parasitic, and in so doing absorb organic matter. The plants which are not green, in this way appear to prefer organic matters, like animals. In habits, therefore, they present a striking contrast to their green neighbours.

The habit of parasitism, however, which has just been alluded to is a powerful means of inaugurating and maintaining change of life and living in plants. A parasitic being is one which lives in or upon some other living organism. There are degrees of parasitism, however: some parasites are mere ‘lodgers,’ so to speak; others both board and lodge at the expense of their host, and these latter are of course the more typical parasites of the two. But there are even degrees and differences to be seen in the behaviour of plant-lodgers and boarders. For example, mistletoe is a plant of peculiar habits, in respect that whilst its roots enter the substance of the tree-host to which it is attached, and drink up so much of the sap that host is elaborating for its own use, it also can make food-products for itself. For the green leaves of mistletoe, like the leaves of other plants, take in carbonic acid gas, and decompose it, as already described, retaining the carbon, and setting the oxygen free. On the other hand, a parasitic fungus will not elaborate any food-products for itself; and hence it is, if anything, a more complete and typical ‘boarder’ even than mistletoe. The effects of habit in plant-life are here seen in a double sense and aspect. Not only is it through the exercise of ‘habit’ that a plant becomes a parasite; but it is a variation in the parasitic and acquired habit for a parasitic plant to develop its own special ways of feeding. Habit within habit is thus seen to operate powerfully in bringing about the existent phases of the life of plants.

Plants without green colour are, however, not the only members of the vegetable world in which the habit of feeding like animals has been inaugurated. Some of the most remarkable chapters in botany have been recently written on the habits of so-called carnivorous or insectivorous plants—that is, plants which subsist on insects in other forms of animal life, and which lay traps designed to capture their unwary prey. The Common Sundew (Drosera) of our bogs and marshes catches flies and other insects by means of an ingenious arrangement of sensitive tentacles which beset its leaf, aided by the gummy secretion of the leaf itself. The Venus’ Flytrap (Dionæa) captures insects by converting its leaf into a closing trap; the alarm to close being conveyed to the sensitive parts of the plant by the insect touching one or more of the six sensitive hairs which are seen on the surface of the leaf. The Side-saddle plants (Sarracenia) of the New World and the Pitcher plants (Nepenthes) of the Old World likewise capture insects. Their leaves form receptacles, in which, as is well known, flies and other insects are literally drowned. Within the Sarracenia’s hollow leaf, a honey-secretion is found, together with a limpid fluid found at the bottom of the pitcher. There seems little doubt that flies and other insects, attracted by the honey-secretion, pass into the pitcher, and are then suffocated by the fluid found below. This much has been proved—namely, that the fluid has an intoxicating effect on insects, and that, once entrapped, the insects ultimately perish in the pitchers. It is equally notable that their retreat is cut off by the presence of pointed hairs, which, on the facilis descensus principle, and by pointing downwards, allow the insect easy admittance, but present an array of bayonet-points on its attempt to escape. In the Nepenthes or Pitcher plants of the Old World, insects are similarly captured, and are prevented from escaping by various contrivances, such as a series of incurved hairs or hooks, or allied apparatus.

At first sight, there seems a plain reason for classifying together all these insect-capturing plants, especially when it is discovered that they utilise the insects they capture for food. Botanists did not realise till recently that the capture of insects by plants was a strictly utilitarian and purposive act—namely, that its intent was to feed and nourish the plant. Once awaking to this truth, much that was formerly mysterious in the life and ways of these plants became clear. They captured the insects and fed upon them; in these words were found the clue to and explanation of a seeming anomaly in plant-life. These plants might thus be supposed simply to differ from other green plants, and to resemble the fungi in their preference for an animal dietary, in part at least. For, with their roots in the soil, and possessing green leaves, they appear to subsist partly upon the matters on which ordinary green plants live, and partly upon organic matters, like mistletoe. But a further study of these curious plants shows that the whole facts of the case are hardly to be comprised within this somewhat narrow compass. Habit within habit again appears as the principle which has wrought out important differences between the various kinds of insect-eating plants. Taking the case of the Sundew first, we discover that this plant actually digests its insect-food. From glands with which the leaf is provided, fluids are poured out which resemble the gastric juice of our own stomachs in their digestive properties. The matter of the insect-body is thus absorbed into the substance and tissues of the plant, just as the substance of our own food passes, through digestion, to become part and parcel of our own tissues. Of the Venus’ Flytrap, the same remarks hold good. This plant will digest fragments of raw beef as readily as its own insect-prey. The closed leaf is converted into a kind of temporary stomach, within which the imprisoned insect is killed, digested, and its tissues absorbed, to nourish the plant. In the Pitcher plants, a similar result happens to the insect-prey. Digestion and absorption of the nutrient parts of the prey are the duties performed by the modified leaves.

The foregoing facts would therefore seem to present a remarkable uniformity in the life of the plants just mentioned. Similarity of habits would seem to reign supreme, under variations in the method of capturing the insect-prey. Turning now to the case of the Side-saddle plants and their allies, we discover how remarkably the habits of these plants have come to differ. Investigation has shown that the flies, which are apparently drowned in the pitchers of Sarracenia in a manner exactly similar to that in which they fall victims to the artifice of the Pitcher plants, in reality are subjected to a widely different action. The Pitcher plant digests its flies, as we have seen; but in the Side-saddle plants no digestion takes place. What happens in the latter appears to consist of a simple process of decay. The insects are allowed to putrefy and decompose amid the watery fluid which drowns them; and in due time, the pitcher becomes filled with a fluid which has been compared to ‘liquid manure.’ It is this decomposing solution, then, which is duly absorbed by the Sarracenia. Rejecting this idea, there can be no other explanation given of the use of the elaborate fly-catching ‘pitchers.’ And, moreover, analogy would force us to conclude that the explanation just given is correct. If fungi feed on decomposing organic matters, why should not a Sarracenia exhibit like habits? No reasonable reply can be given save that which sees in the Sarracenia a curious difference of habit from the apparently similar Pitcher plants. The latter, in other words, eat their meal fresh; the Sarracenias, like humanity with its game, eat their meat in a ‘high’ state.

The ordinary feeding of plants may, lastly, be cited, by way of showing how marvellously intricate must be the conditions which operate to produce differences in habits, sometimes amounting almost to special likings on the part of vegetable units for one kind of food, and equally special dislikes to other foods. The farmer knowing the preference for certain food-elements by certain plants, requires to ‘rotate’ his crops, to avoid injurious exhaustion of his soils. For instance, buckwheat will not flourish unless potassium is supplied to it. The chloride of potassium, and next to it the nitrate, are the minerals preferred by this plant. Still more extraordinary is the preference exhibited by one of the violet tribe (Viola calaminaria), which will only grow in soils that contain zinc. Here, the effects of habit are seen in a singularly clear fashion; for there seems every reason to assume that the partiality for a by no means common element in soils, has been an acquired, and not an original taste of the plants which exhibit it. The botanist thus becomes aware of the existence of a ‘taste,’ or ‘selective power’ as it is termed, in the plant-world, influencing their food, and, as a matter of logic, affecting also their structure, functions, and entire existence. It has been found that the pea and bean tribe (Leguminosæ) specially desire lime, amongst their requirements. Potatoes exhibit a special partiality for potash; and turnips share this taste. Plants in which the seed assumes a high importance, as in most of our cereals, on the other hand, demand phosphoric acid; and certain plants, such as wheat, will withdraw large quantities of silica or flint from the soil. Iodine is found characteristically in seaweeds, and the element in question is obtained from the kelp produced by burning marine plants.

No better commentary on the life and habits of plants in respect of their food-tastes can be given than in the words of an eminent physiologist, who, speaking of the food of the corn-plant, says: ‘Without siliceous (or flinty) earth, that plant cannot acquire sufficient strength to sustain itself erect, but forms a creeping stem, feeble and pale; without calcareous earth (or lime), it dies even before the appearance of the second leaf; without soda and without potash, it never attains a greater height than between four and five inches; without phosphorus, though growing straight and regularly formed, it remains feeble and does not bear fruit; when iron is present in the soil, it gives that deep green tint so familiar to us and grows rapidly robust; without manganese, it develops in a stunted manner and produces few flowers.’ After the revelations of chemistry concerning the habits and tastes of plants and the bearing of proper food on their growth, it is not to be wondered at that scientific agriculture should be regarded as the only solution of many of the present-day difficulties of the farmer.

IN ALL SHADES.

CHAPTER X.

For a second, nobody answered a word; this quiet declaration of an honest self-sacrifice took them all, even Nora, so utterly by surprise. Then Edward murmured musingly: ‘And it was for this that you gave up the prospect of living at Cambridge, and composing symphonies in Trinity gardens!’

The mulatto smiled a deprecating smile. ‘Oh,’ he cried timidly, ‘you mustn’t say that. I didn’t want to make out I was going to do anything so very grand or so very heroic. Of course, a man must satisfy himself he’s doing something to justify his existence in the world; and much as I love music, I hardly feel as though playing the violin were in itself a sufficient end for a man to live for. Though I must confess I should very much like to stop in England and be a composer. I’ve composed one or two little pieces already for the violin, that have been played with some success at public concerts. Sarasate played a small thing of mine last winter at a festival in Vienna. But then, besides, my father and friends live in Trinidad, and I feel that that’s the place where my work in life is really cut out for me.’

‘And your second great passion?’ Marian inquired. ‘You said you had a second great passion. What is it, I wonder?—Oh, of course, I see—your profession.’

(‘How could she be so stupid!’ Nora thought to herself. ‘What a silly girl! I’m afraid of my life now, the wretched man’ll try to say something pretty.’)

‘O no; not my profession,’ Dr Whitaker answered, smiling. ‘It’s a noble profession, of course—the noblest and grandest, almost, of all the professions—assuaging and alleviating human suffering; but one looks upon it, for all that, rather as a duty than as a passion. Besides, there’s one thing greater even than the alleviation of human suffering, greater than art with all its allurements, greater than anything else that a man can interest himself in—though I know most people don’t think so—and that’s science—the knowledge of our relations with the universe, and still more of the universe’s relations with its various parts.—No, Mrs Hawthorn; my second absorbing passion, next to music, and higher than music, is one that I’m sure ladies won’t sympathise with—it’s only botany.’

‘Goodness gracious!’ Nora cried, surprised into speech. ‘I thought botany was nothing but the most dreadfully hard words, all about nothing on earth that anybody cared for!’

The mulatto looked at her open-eyed with a sort of mild astonishment. ‘What?’ he said. ‘All the glorious lilies and cactuses and palms and orchids of our beautiful Trinidad nothing but hard words that nobody cares for! All the slender lianas that trail and droop from the huge buttresses of the wild cotton-trees; all the gorgeous trumpet-creepers that drape the gnarled branches of the mountain star-apples with their scarlet blossoms; all the huge cecropias, that rise aloft with their silvery stems and fan-shaped leaves, towering into the air like gigantic candelabra; all the graceful tree-ferns and feathery bamboos and glossy-leaved magnolias and majestic bananas and luxuriant ginger-worts and clustering arums: all the breadth and depth of tropical foliage, with the rugged and knotted creepers, festooned in veritable cables of vivid green, from branch to branch among the dim mysterious forest shades—stretched in tight cordage like the rigging yonder from mast to mast, for miles together—oh, Miss Dupuy, is that nothing? Do you call that nothing, for a man to fix his loving regard upon? Our own Trinidad is wonderfully rich still in such natural glories; and it’s the hope of doing a little in my spare hours to explore and disentomb them, like hidden treasures, that partly urges me to go back again where manifest destiny calls me to the land I was born in.’

The mulatto is always fluent, even when uneducated; but Dr Whitaker, learned in all the learning of the schools, and pouring forth his full heart enthusiastically on the subjects nearest and dearest to him, spoke with such a ready, easy eloquence, common enough, indeed, among south Europeans, and among Celtic Scots and Irish as well, but rare and almost unknown in our colder and more phlegmatic Anglo-Saxon constitutions—that Nora listened to him, quite taken aback by the flood of his native rhetoric, and whispered to herself in her own soul: ‘Really, he talks very well after all—for a coloured person!’

‘Yes, of course, all those things are very lovely, Dr Whitaker,’ Marian put in, more for the sake of drawing him out—for he was so interesting—than because she really wanted to disagree with him upon the subject. ‘But then, that isn’t botany. I always thought botany was a mere matter of stamens and petals, and all sorts of other dreadful technicalities.’

‘Stamens and petals!’ the mulatto echoed half contemptuously—‘stamens and petals! You might as well say art was all a matter of pigments and perspective, or music all a matter of crotchets and quavers, as botany all a matter of stamens and petals. Those are only the beggarly elements: the beautiful pictures, the glorious oratorios, the lovely flowers, are the real things to which in the end they all minister. It’s the trees and the plants themselves that interest me, not the mere lifeless jargon of technical phrases.’

They sat there late into the night, discussing things musical and West Indian and otherwise, without any desire to move away or cut short the conversation; and Dr Whitaker, his reserve now broken, talked on to them hour after hour, doing the lion’s share of the conversation, and delighting them with his transparent easy talk and open-hearted simplicity. He was frankly egotistical, of course—all persons of African blood always are; but his egotism, such as it was, took the pleasing form of an enthusiasm about his own pet ideas and pursuits—a love of music, a love of flowers, a love of his profession, and a love of Trinidad. To these favourite notes he recurred fondly again and again, vigorously defending the violin as an exponent of human emotion against Edward’s half-insincere expression of preference for wind instruments; going into raptures to Nora over the wonderful beauty of their common home; and describing to Marian in vivid language the grandeur of those marvellous tropical forests whose strange loveliness she had never yet with her own eyes beheld.

‘Picture to yourself,’ he said, looking out vaguely beyond the ship on to the star-lit Atlantic, ‘a great Gothic cathedral or Egyptian temple—Ely or Karnak, wrought, not in freestone or marble, but in living trees—with huge cylindrical columns strengthened below by projecting buttresses, and supporting overhead, a hundred feet on high, an unbroken canopy of interlacing foliage. Dense—so dense that only an indistinct glimmer of the sky can be seen here and there through the great canopy, just as you see Orion’s belt over yonder through the fringe of clouds upon the gray horizon; and even the intense tropical sunlight only reaches the ground at long intervals in little broken patches of subdued paleness. Then there’s the solemn silence, weird and gloomy, that produces in one an almost painful sense of the vast, the primeval, the mystical, the infinite. Only the low hum of the insects in the forest shade, the endless multitudinous whisper of the wind among the foliage, the faint sound begotten by the tropical growth itself, breaks the immemorial stillness in our West Indian woodland. It’s a world in which man seems to be a noisy intruder, and where he stands awestruck before the intense loveliness of nature, in the immediate presence of her unceasing forces.’

He stopped a moment, not for breath, for it seemed as if he could pour out language without an effort, in the profound enthusiasm of youth, but to take his violin once more tenderly from its case and hold it out, hesitating, before him. ‘Will you let me play you just one more little piece?’ he asked apologetically. ‘It’s a piece of my own, into which I’ve tried to put some of the feelings about these tropical forests that I never could possibly express in words. I call it “Souvenirs des Lianes.” Will you let me play it to you?—I shan’t be boring you?—Thank you—thank you.’

He stood up before them in the pale light of that summer evening, tall and erect, violin on breast and bow in hand, and began pouring forth from his responsive instrument a slow flood of low, plaintive, mysterious music. It was not difficult to see what had inspired his brain and hand in that strangely weird and expressive piece. The profound shade and gloom of the forest, the great roof of overarching foliage, the flutter of the endless leaves before the breeze, the confused murmur of the myriad wings and voices of the insects, nay, even the very stillness and silence itself of which he had spoken, all seemed to breathe forth deeply and solemnly on his quivering strings. It was a triumph of art over its own resources. On the organ or the flute, one would have said beforehand, such effects as these might indeed be obtained, but surely never, never on the violin. Yet in Dr Whitaker’s hand that scraping bow seemed capable of expressing even what he himself had called the sense of the vast, the primeval, and the infinite. They listened all in hushed silence, and scarcely so much as dared to breathe while the soft pensive cadences still floated out solemnly across the calm ocean. And when he had finished, they sat for a few minutes in perfect silence, rendering the performer that instinctive homage of mute applause which is so far more really eloquent than any mere formal and conventional expression of thanks ‘for your charming playing.’

As they sat so, each musing quietly over the various emotions aroused within them by the mulatto’s forest echoes, one of the white gentlemen in the stern, a young English officer on his way out to join a West Indian regiment, came up suddenly behind them, clapped his hand familiarly on Edward’s back, and said in a loud and cheerful tone: ‘Come along, Hawthorn; we’ve had enough of this music now—thank you very much, Dr Thingummy—let’s all go down to the saloon, I say, and have a game of nap or a quiet rubber.’

Even Nora felt in her heart as though she had suddenly been recalled by that untimely voice from some higher world to this vulgar, commonplace little planet of ours, the young officer had broken in so rudely on her silent reverie. She drew her dainty white lamb’s-wool wrapper closer around her shoulders with a faint sigh, slipped her hand gently through Marian’s arm, and moved away, slowly and thoughtfully, toward the companion-ladder. As she reached the doorway, she turned round, as if half ashamed of her own graciousness, and said in a low and genuine voice: ‘Thank you, Dr Whitaker—thank you very much indeed. We’ve so greatly enjoyed the treat you’ve given us.’

The mulatto bowed and said nothing; but instead of retiring to the saloon with the others, he put his violin case quietly under his arm, and walking alone to the stern of the vessel, leant upon the gunwale long and mutely, looking over with all his eyes deep and far into the silent, heaving, moonlit water. The sound of Nora’s voice thanking him reverberated long through all the echoing chambers of his memory.

COLONIAL FARM-PUPILS.

It would be a matter of considerable interest if statistics could be obtained showing the number of parents who at the present time find themselves under the necessity of answering that much-debated question, ‘What shall I do with my sons?’ The comparatively narrow paths which lead to fame and prosperity are now so densely crowded by youths of good breeding and education, that but few parents are able to decide, without much anxious consideration, which is the best one for their sons to start life’s journey upon. Some parents choose the learned professions; others select a commercial career; while not a few decide upon a colonial life for their sons. The wisdom, or otherwise, of this last decision we do not here propose to discuss. We accept the plain fact that many well-bred and carefully nurtured young men annually leave these shores as emigrants, bound for the British colonies or the United States. The object of our remarks is to present to the fathers of these young emigrants what the writer—who has seen much, both of emigrants and emigration, on both sides of the Atlantic—regards as a piece of sorely needed advice upon one point of the great question of emigration, as it affects the sons of English gentlemen and ‘blue-blooded boys’ in general.

The average British parent is, as a rule, very ignorant of everything connected with life and labour in the colonies. He is perhaps a fairly successful man of business, or has risen in his profession; but in attaining this success, he has probably been so engrossed with his own occupations, that he has found but little opportunity of turning his attention to matters concerning him less closely. It is not indeed to be expected that any one man should be intimately acquainted with many different subjects. In these days of competition, the division of knowledge is as necessary as the division of labour; and it is the duty of those who are practically acquainted with emigration or any other subject to advise those who are not so well informed. This is what we now propose to do. We desire that our remarks upon the farm-pupil system in the British colonies be understood to apply equally to the Western States of America, which, so far as this article is concerned, are to all intents and purposes British colonies.

To the youth who has been brought up in a comfortable English home, under the care of watchful parents, emigration to any of the colonies brings a very rude and abrupt change of life. Thenceforth, parental oversight will be no longer obtainable, and the young emigrant will have to seek his own living among strangers in a strange land, where evil influences are generally numerous, where the ordinary mode of life is often very rough, and where no one need hope for success unless he is willing and able actually to perform hard manual labour. Under these circumstances, it naturally appears desirable to most parents to do all that lies within their power to obtain for their sons some training to fit them for their future life. This desire has called into existence the system under which many moderately well-to-do young emigrants, on first leaving England, agree to pay a premium to some colonist who is already established on a farm of his own, in order that they may be taught colonial farming.

The system is not in any way essentially a bad one; but it is open to great abuses, and in too many cases leads to fraud. No detailed rules for the guidance of the parents of young emigrants in this matter can be laid down. The necessities vary according to the circumstances of each particular case. But, in a general way, it may be stated that, when the parents of a youth can afford to pay a premium for his instruction, and have ascertained that the settler with whom they are placing their son is in a position faithfully to exercise that amount of oversight which they desire for him, there cannot be any very great abuse of the system. At the same time, it must be admitted that there is seldom any necessity why a premium should be paid. If the young emigrant be steady and of average push and intelligence, there is certainly little or nothing to prevent him obtaining all the experience he requires without paying any premium. Nevertheless, a youth of weak character, easily led away, and of indolent habits, may of course be benefited by a certain amount of care and oversight.

Farming, as practised in the colonies and in the Western States of America, is of the most elementary kind. A person of limited abilities may very easily acquire a knowledge of all its details. Moreover, in these thinly peopled countries, labourers are in great demand. It may be safely asserted that, in those colonies and in those portions of the west of America to which emigration is now chiefly directed, any young man, willing and able to perform ordinary farm-work, will find little difficulty in obtaining employment, at least during the summer months, in spite of the large number of men who are almost always in want of work in large cities. A perfect novice may find it necessary to work for a time for his board and lodging merely; but after a while, he will probably find himself in a position to demand at least sufficient wages, in addition to his board and keep, to maintain himself respectably. If the young emigrant follows the course thus suggested, he may not find his path quite so smooth as that of the young man who has paid his premium; but he will have a better chance of obtaining practical experience of farming. He will live in his master’s house, board at his table, and be treated very much as a member of the family—indeed, the premiumed pupil could hardly be better off; but he will be compelled to learn in a way which he who pays a premium can hardly be, and he will actually be paid for gaining the experience he requires, instead of paying for it!

The eagerness on the part of colonial farmers to obtain farm-pupils is capable of a very simple explanation. In most cases, these men know well enough that there is no real need for the system to be followed; but if they can succeed in obtaining a pupil, they are hardly to be blamed for so doing, as it is no slight advantage to themselves. In the colonies, the harvest usually is plentiful, while the labourers are few, and labour, consequently, is expensive. Obviously, therefore, a pupil who will pay to work and who will not be constantly wanting to leave, is a very great boon to any settler. It should be clearly recognised that, in most cases, if the pupil works in such a way as he must do if he is to obtain a useful practical knowledge of his occupation, his labour alone will amply remunerate the farmer, even if the latter has to find both board and lodging. Clearly, therefore, if a substantial premium be added, the advantage to the settler is considerable. The pupil-system often affords a good deal of amusement to keen-sighted Americans who are in a position to see its weak points. Not unfrequently the writer has had said to him on the other side of the Atlantic: ‘How uncommonly stupid you English people must be to be willing to pay to work!’ This expression not inaptly sums up the whole case.

The abuses to which the system is open are many. In the first place, an exorbitant sum—sometimes as much as one hundred pounds—is asked. Considering that the pupil could in most cases obtain the necessary experience without paying any premium, and that he actually remunerates the settler by working for him, we consider that, under all ordinary circumstances, ten pounds paid to the settler is ample. In the next place, an agent of some kind is necessary to mediate between the parents of a youth and the colonial settler; and either this agent or the settler, or both, may be dishonest, and fail to fulfil their contracts; indeed, the difficulty which a parent would meet with in attempting to compel a defaulting settler to carry out his agreement, is a great incentive to fraud. Only a short time ago it was reported in the daily papers that a number of youths who had paid premiums to an agent in England to be placed with farmers in California, found, on their arrival there, that no arrangements whatever had been made for their reception—in short, that they had been swindled. Similar cases have been heard of before. At the same time, we do not wish to say that there are not honest agencies.

Those who have seen most of the hap-hazard way in which emigration, not only of the poorer, but also of the better classes, is carried on from this country, often express amazement at the injudicious acts which are constantly being committed by ill-advised young emigrants and their blind though well-meaning parents. The needless paying of premiums by parents who can ill afford to spare the money is but one of these indiscretions. Passing over without comment the practice of shipping ‘ne’er-do-wells’ off to the colonies in the vain hope that they will do better there than at home, we cannot help remarking that numbers of promising young men, who are utterly unfitted for the life of an emigrant, are constantly being sent out, and either they, or the country to which they are sent, subsequently get blamed for an almost inevitable failure. Nothing, too, could be more injudicious than the placing of capital in the hands of inexperienced young emigrants at the outset of their career. In a large number of cases it is wholly lost; indeed, it is a common saying in America that but few young Englishmen commence to make headway in their new home until they have either lost or spent all they originally brought out with them and have had to buckle-to in sober earnest. As recommended in a late number (No. 95) of this Journal, those who are intended for a colonial career should go through a course of school-training especially intended to fit them for it.

A GOLDEN ARGOSY.

A NOVELETTE.

CHAPTER XIII.

With the exception of her eyes and her teeth, Miss Wakefield was an ordinary, nay, almost a benevolent, woman. About sixty years of age, with a figure perfectly straight and supple, and wearing her own hair, which was purple black, she might have passed for forty, save for the innumerable lines and wrinkles on her face. Her eyes were full of a furtive evil light, and never failed to cast a baleful influence over the spectator; her teeth were large and white, but gapped here and there in the front like a saw. Mr Slimm mentally compared her with some choice assortments of womankind he had encountered in the mines and kindred places, and they did not suffer in the comparison.

‘Your business?’ she said coldly.

‘Madam, you will do me the favour to sit down,’ he replied. ‘What I have to say will take a considerable time.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, with the same frigid air; ‘I prefer to stand.’ Some subtle instinct told her this visit boded no good, and she knew in dealing with an adversary what an advantage a standing position gives one.

By way of answer, Mr Slimm continued standing also.

‘Madam,’ he commenced, ‘what I have to say to you concerns the affairs of the late Mr Morton of Eastwood. He was an old friend of mine. Very recently, I heard of his death. I am determined to have justice done.’

Was it fancy, or did these thin feline lips grow white? He could have sworn he saw them quiver. Anyway, fancy or not, if the worst came to the worst, he had a great card to play.

Mr Slimm continued: ‘He died, as you are aware, after a curious illness, and rather suddenly at the last. If I am correct, there was no inquest.’

It was not fancy, then! Mr Slimm’s keen eyes detected a sudden shiver agitate her frame, and his ear caught a quick painful respiration. Why did no one think of this? he said to himself.

‘However, for the present we will pass that over. Mr Morton was known to have been a rich man. All he had was left, I understand, to you?’

‘In that, sir, you are perfectly right. Pray, continue.’

‘Now, at one time, I understand, poor Morton intended to leave everything to his niece. Was that so?’

Miss Wakefield inclined her head coldly.

‘And since his death, not the slightest trace of the bulk of the money has been discovered. Is that not so?’

Miss Wakefield inclined her head once more.

‘Well, we have now discovered where the money is.’

‘Discovered where the money is! where my money is!’ the woman cried with a grating laugh. ‘And I presume you came to bring it to me. After all this long while, fancy getting my own at last!’

‘I suppose you will do something for Mrs Seaton?’ inquired Slimm.

‘Do something for them—of course I will,’ she laughed hardly. ‘I’ll go and call on them. I will let them see me ride in my carriage, while they are begging in the gutter. I will give them a sixpence when they come to ask alms at my house.—Oh, tell me, are they starving?—are they starving, I say?’ she gasped in her passionate utterance, clutching the American by the arm. ‘Are they living on charity? Oh, I hope so—I hope so, for I hate them—hate them!’ The last words hissed lingeringly and spitefully through her teeth.

‘Well, not quite,’ Slimm replied cheerfully. ‘It must be consoling to your womanly feelings to know they are getting on first-rate—in fact, they are as happy and comfortable as two people can be.’

‘I am sorry for that,’ she said, with a little pant between each word. ‘I hoped they were starving. What right have they to be happy, when I am so miserable?’

‘Really, madam, it is no pleasure to bring you news, you take it so uncomfortably,’ Slimm replied. ‘These histrionics, I know, are intended merely to disguise your delicate and tender feelings. Now, we admit this money belongs to you. What will you stand for the information? ‘Forty thousand pounds is a lot of money.’

‘Not one farthing,’ replied the woman—‘not one single farthing. The money is mine, and mine it shall remain.’

‘In that case,’ said Slimm cheerfully, ‘my mission is at an end.—I wish you a very good-morning.’

‘Stop! Do you mean to say you intend to hold the secret unless I agree to some terms?’

‘Your powers of penetration do you credit, madam. That is precisely what I do mean.’

‘And what, pray, is the price placed upon your secret?’

‘Half!’

‘Half!’ she echoed, with a bitter laugh. ‘You are joking. Twenty thousand pounds! Oh, you have made a mistake. You should go to a millionaire, not come to me.’

‘Do I understand you to decline?’

‘Decline!’ she exclaimed in a fury. ‘Rather than pay that money to them, I would starve and rot! Rather than pay that, the money shall remain in its secret hiding-place till it is forgotten!—Do you take me for an idiot, a drivelling old woman with one foot in the grave? No, no, no! You do not know Selina Wakefield yet. Twenty thousand pounds. Ah, ah, ah! The fools, the fools, the miserable fools, to come and ask me this!’

‘Perhaps you will be good enough to name a sum you consider to be equivalent to the service rendered,’ said the American, totally unmoved by this torrent of invective.

‘Now you talk like a man of sense,’ she replied. ‘You are quite determined, I see, not to part with your secret until you have a return. Well, let me see. What do you say to a thousand pounds, or, to stretch a point, fifteen hundred?’

‘Appalling generosity!’ replied Slimm, regarding the ceiling in rapture—‘wasteful extravagance! I cannot accept it. My principals are so grasping, you know. Now, as a personal favour, and to settle this little difficulty, could not you add, say, another five pounds?’

‘Not another farthing.’

‘Then I am afraid our interview is at an end,’ he said regretfully.—‘Now, look here. My friends are in no need of money, and are a long way from the state you charitably hoped to find them in. You are getting on in life, and we can afford to wait. When you are no more—not to put too fine a point upon it—we shall lay hands on the treasure, and live happily ever after—yes, madam.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ she said sulkily.

‘Let me put it another way. Suppose we come to an agreement. It is highly probable that where the money is, a will is concealed. Now, it is very certain that this will is made in Mrs Seaton’s favour. If we make an arrangement to divide the spoil, and that turns out to be so, what a good thing it will be for you! On the other hand, if there is no will, you still have a handsome sum of money, which without our aid you can never enjoy; and do not mistake me when I say that aid will never be accorded without some benefit to the parties I have the honour to represent.’

‘And suppose I refuse?’

‘So much the worse for you. Then we have another course open, and one I decidedly advocate. We will at our own risk recover the money, trusting to our good fortune to find the will. If not, we will throw the money in Chancery, and fight you for it on the ground of undue influence and fraud.’

‘Fraud, sir! What do you mean?’ exclaimed the lady, trembling with indignation and hatred.

Mr Slimm approached her more closely, and looking sternly into her eyes, said: ‘Mark me, madam!—the Seatons are not unfriended. I am by no means a poor man myself, and I will not leave a stone unturned to unravel this mystery. Do you think I am fool enough to believe that my old friend hid his money away in this strange manner unless he had some fear? and if I mistake not, you are the cause of that fear. Had he intended his wealth for you, he would have left it openly. Nothing shall be left undone to fathom the matter; and if necessary’—here he lowered his voice to an impressive whisper—‘the body shall be exhumed. Do you understand, madam?—exhumed?’

The pallor on the woman’s face deepened to a ghastly ashen gray. ‘What would you have me do?’ she exclaimed faintly.

‘Come to our terms, and all will be well,’ Slimm said, pursuing the advantage he had gained; ‘otherwise’—here he paused—‘however, we will say nothing about that. What I propose is this: that an agreement be drawn up and entered into upon the terms, that in case no will is found with the money, the property is divided; and if a will is found leaving the property to Mrs Seaton, you take five thousand pounds. That is my final offer.’

‘I—I consent,’ she faltered humbly, at the same time longing, in her passionate madness, to do her antagonist some deadly mischief, as he stood before her so calmly triumphant.

‘Very good,’ he said quietly—‘very good. Then I presume our intercourse is at an end. You will be good enough to be at Mr Carver’s office in Bedford Row at three o’clock to-morrow afternoon.’

‘One moment. Are you in the secret?’

‘Madam, I have that felicity. But why?’

‘Perhaps now we have come to terms, you may be good enough to tell me where it is.’

‘Curiosity, thy name is woman,’ said Slimm sententiously. ‘I am sorry I cannot gratify that little wish; but as you will doubtless be present at the opening ceremony, you will not object to restrain your curiosity for the present—Good-morning.’

Miss Wakefield watched our ambassador’s cab leave the door, and then threw herself, in the abandonment of her passion, upon the floor. In the impotence of her rage and despair, she lay there, rolling like a mad dog, tearing at her long nails with the strong uneven teeth. ‘What does he know?’ she hissed. ‘What can he know? Beaten, beaten at last!’

‘What a woman!’ soliloquised Slimm as he rolled back Londonwards. ‘I must have a cigar, to get the flavour out of my mouth.’

When he arrived at Mr Carver’s, he found Eleanor and her husband awaiting him with great impatience.

‘What cheer, my comrade?’ Edgar asked with assumed cheerfulness.

‘Considering the circumstances of the case and the imminent risk I ran, you might at least have expressed a desire to weep upon this rugged bosom,’ Slimm answered reproachfully. ‘I found the evil, like most evils, not half so bad when it is properly faced.’

‘And Miss Wakefield?’ asked Mr Carver anxiously.

‘Gentle as a sucking-dove—only too anxious to meet our views. In fact, I so far tamed her that she has made an appointment to come here to-morrow to settle preliminaries.’

‘But what sort of terms did you come to?’ Eleanor asked.

Slimm briefly related the result of his mission, and its unexpected and desirable consummation, to the mutual astonishment of his listeners; indeed, when he came to review the circumstances of the case, he was somewhat astonished at his own success.

‘Wonderful!’ exclaimed Mr Carver, gazing with intense admiration at his enemy. ‘I could not have believed it possible for one man single-handed to have accomplished so much.—My good friend, do I really understand that in any case we get half the money; and in one case, all but five thousand pounds?’

‘Precisely; and you get the agreement drawn up, and we will get away to Eastwood the day after to-morrow. I declare I feel as pleased as a schoolboy who has found the apple at hide-and-seek. I feel as if I was getting young again.’

‘Then you think it is really settled?’ Edgar asked, with a sigh of pleasure and relief.

‘Not the slightest doubt of it,’ said the American promptly. ‘And I think I may be allowed to observe, that of all the strange things I ever came across throughout my long and checkered career, this is about the strangest.’

‘It certainly beats anything I ever remember,’ said Mr Carver with a buoyant air.—‘What do you say, Bates?’

‘Well, sir,’ Mr Bates admitted, ‘there certainly are some points about it one does not generally encounter in the ordinary run of business.’

CHAPTER XIV.

When the poet, in the pursuit of his fancy, eulogised the stately homes of England, he must have forgotten or totally ignored a class of dwelling dearer to my mind than all the marble halls the taste or vanity of man ever designed. The Duke of Stilton doubtless prefers his ancestral home, with its towers and turrets, its capacious stables—which, by-the-bye, seem the first consideration in the Brobdingnagian erections of the hour; he may wander with an air of pride through the Raphael hall and the Teniers gallery or the Cuyp drawing-room. For me, he can have his art treasures, his Carrara marbles, his priceless Wedgwood, his Dresden. He may enjoy his drawing-rooms—blue, red, and every colour in the universe. He may dine in the bosom of his family on every delicacy a cordon bleu can devise to tickle the palate and stimulate the appetite, with its accompaniment of rose-patterned silver and dainty china. Let him luxuriate in it all, if he will.

I have in my mind’s eye a house far different from His Grace’s, but which, nevertheless, if not rich in costly bric-à-brac, has an appearance of harmony and refinement refreshing beyond belief. It is the house, or, if you will, the villa of Eastwood. Against the main road is a rugged stone wall, moss-incrusted and lichen-strewn, and surmounted by dense laurel. Opening the old-fashioned wooden gate, a broad path leads to the door, which is some forty yards away, at the side of the house. It is a low, gray stone house, clustered with ivy and clematis, and climbing roses twisting round the long double row of windows. In front is the lawn, quite half an acre in extent, and shut off from a garden by a brick wall, covered with apricot and nectarine. On the right, leading towards the house, is a sloping bank, all white and fragrant in spring with violets; and above this bank, approached by an ancient horse-block, is the old-world garden. It is a large garden, with broad green paths, sheltered by bowers of apple-trees, and the borders gay with wall-flowers, mignonette, stocks, pansies, London-pride, Tom-Thumb, and here and there great bushes of lavender and old-man. Far down is a walk of filbert trees, where the wily squirrel makes merry in the harvest-time, and the cherry-trees all melodious with the song of the blackbird. There is a balmy smell here of thyme and sage and endive, and the variety of sweet herbs which our grandmothers were wont to cull in autumn, and suspend in muslin bags from the kitchen rafters.

Opening the heavy hall door with the licensed freedom of the novelist, we find ourselves in the hall, whence we reach the drawing-room. Here we find our friends, awaiting the arrival of Miss Wakefield. They have been talking and chatting gaily; but as the time for that lady’s arrival draws near, conversation becomes flat, and there is an air of expectation and suppressed excitement about them, which would at once convince the observer that something important was on hand.

Mr Carver rose from his seat, and, for about the fiftieth time, walked to the window and looked out. It was amusing to note his easy air and debonair appearance, which was palpably assumed to impress the spectators with the idea that he was by no means anxious. The only member of the party who really could be said to be at ease was Mr Bates. He wore his best clothes, and had an air of resigned settled melancholy, evidently expecting the worst, and prepared to have his cup of joy—representing in his case his partnership—dashed from his lips at the last moment.

Felix was discussing the affair with Edgar in a low voice, and Eleanor sat white and still, only showing her impatience ever and anon by a gentle tap upon the floor with her heel. Mr Slimm was whistling softly in a low key, and industriously engaged in whittling a stick in his hand. Mr Carver returned from his post of observation and threw himself back in his chair with an involuntary sigh. Slimm put up his knife.

‘I vote we begin,’ said Edgar at length.

‘No, no; it would not do—it really would not do,’ interposed Mr Carver, seeing the company generally inclined to this view. ‘The lady whom we await is capable of anything. If we found a will in her absence, she would not be above saying we put it there.’

‘Judging from my limited experience of the lady, I calculate you are about right, sir,’ said Mr Slimm. ‘No; after so many years’ patience, it would certainly be unwise to do anything rash now.’

‘It is the last few moments which seem so hard,’ Eleanor said. ‘Suppose, after all, we should find nothing!’

‘For goodness’ sake, don’t think of such a thing!’ Edgar exclaimed. ‘Fancy, after all this bother and anxiety!’

The party lapsed into silence again, and once more Mr Carver strolled towards the window. It is strange, when one is anxiously waiting for anything, how slowly time goes. Edgar took his watch out of his pocket every other minute, like a schoolboy who wears one for the first time.

‘I think I will walk down the road and see if she is coming,’ Slimm observed. ‘It would look a little polite, I think.’

Edgar murmured something touching love’s young dream, and asked the American if the fascination was so strong.

‘Well, no,’ he replied. ‘I don’t deny she is fascinating; but it is not the sort of glamour that generally thrills the young bosom. One thing we all agree upon, I think, and that is, that we shall be all extremely pleased to see the lady.’

‘That is a strange thing in itself,’ Edgar replied drily. ‘The damsel is evidently coy. She is at present, doubtless, struggling with her emotion. I fancy she does not intend to come.’

At this moment there was a sound of wheels, and a coach pulled up at the gate. After a moment, a tall black figure was seen approaching the house. A few seconds later, Miss Wakefield entered the room.

INVESTORS AND THE STOCK EXCHANGE.

SECOND ARTICLE.

In a former article we endeavoured to explain the modus operandi of Stock Exchange transactions; and our object now is to make a few remarks upon the rights and duties of investors and members of the Stock Exchange respectively. As formerly explained, when any business is transacted on the Stock Exchange, the broker always renders to his client a contract containing the particulars of the transaction, which is understood to be carried through in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Stock Exchange. These rules have been compiled with the strictest regard to the rights and duties of both parties, and are altered from time to time as circumstances may require. They are in complete accordance with the law of the land; and when any question has arisen in regard to Stock Exchange affairs, the courts of law have invariably allowed that those rules have been framed on the most equitable principles.

When a contract has been rendered, broker and client are equally bound to fulfil their part of it: the broker, in the case of a purchase, to deliver to, his client an authentic certificate of the stock, and in the case of a sale, to pay for the stock on delivery of a properly executed transfer; the client to pay the consideration-money, &c., when the stock is purchased for him, and to deliver the transfer duly executed, with the certificate, when the stock is sold. Many investors, while looking very sharply after their rights, entirely lose sight of their duties, and altogether forget that there must be two parties to every contract. When a man sells stock, he is entitled to a cheque for the proceeds the moment he hands the executed transfer to his broker, and no sooner; and when stock is purchased, the broker is entitled to receive the purchase-money when he delivers the transfer to his client for signature, and no sooner. Many persons, however, imagine that if they send their broker a cheque for stock bought a day or two after the account-day, it will be time enough, being ignorant of the fact that the latter is obliged by the rules to pay for the stock when it is delivered to him, either on the account-day or any subsequent day. Those living at a distance from London should therefore be careful to let the money be in the hands of their broker on the morning of the account-day at the very latest; or if they object to pay for stock before receiving it, should instruct a banker in the City to pay for the stock, or proportionately for any part, on delivery, so that the broker may not be out of the money. Of course, brokers are not supposed to have unlimited balances at their bankers, and it is frequently a real hardship for them to be obliged to find the money as best they can. The Stock Exchange rules admit of no delay whatever, and must be acted up to by the members, without any regard to the negligence or inattention of the investor.

When stock payable to bearer is not delivered to the buying-broker on the account-day, he has the power, on the following day, of ordering it to be purchased, or ‘bought in’ as it is called, in the market for immediate delivery, and any loss consequent upon the buying-in must be paid by the seller. In the case of registered stocks, however, ten days after the account-day are allowed for delivery. This is only reasonable, as a deed of transfer frequently requires the signature of several sellers, or the seller may reside at a distance, and thus delay cannot be avoided. On the expiry of the time named, the broker can ‘buy in,’ as in the case of stock to bearer. If the buyer of stock to bearer does not receive the stock from his broker within a day or two after the account-day, or registered stock within about ten days after the account-day, he has a perfect right to know the reason of the delay, and failing any proper excuse, should give instructions to ‘buy in,’ as explained above.

The Committee of the Stock Exchange have always done everything in their power to insure the strict fulfilment of all bargains entered into by the members; and if any investor feels aggrieved or thinks he has been unfairly dealt with, a letter addressed to the Committee will at once bring the culprit to book. Accounts are settled fortnightly, about the middle and end of each month; and every member of the House prepares, or ought to prepare, a balance-sheet, showing exactly how he stands on these occasions. If a member finds that he is unable to meet his engagements, he should at once notify the fact to the Committee, when he will instantly be declared a defaulter. This disagreeable duty is performed by an official of the Stock Exchange, who, after three knocks with a hammer, which resound through the House, intimates that ‘Mr —— begs to inform the House that he is unable to comply with his bargains.’ If, as frequently happens, the defaulter has issued cheques on the account-day which have been returned by his banker, the formula is: ‘Mr —— has not complied with his bargains.’ After such declaration, the defaulting member is precluded from any further dealings with his fellow-members, and his affairs are placed in the hands of the official assignee, who proceeds to wind up the estate and distribute whatever dividend it will realise. The sound of the dreaded ‘hammer’ produces universal stillness and apprehension, and where a few seconds before was heard the hum of many voices and the sound of hurrying feet, now every ear is on the alert to hear the name of the proscribed member. As soon as the name is announced, it is posted up in a conspicuous part of the House, exposed to the gaze and subject to the derogatory remarks of the members for the rest of the day. As may well be imagined, the fact of having been ‘hammered,’ whatever a man’s future life may be, casts a dark shadow which cannot be got rid of; and investors may be quite certain that the members of the Stock Exchange will strain every nerve to avoid the disgrace. The rules of the House are, however, inexorable, and the fatal hammer must sound if engagements are not strictly and promptly met. In no trade, business, or profession does the punishment follow so quickly upon the offence, and it would be well if all commercial and financial default were as promptly declared to the world.

As will be seen from what we have said, the rights and duties of investors and members are clearly defined, and both parties have a right to expect them to be carried out with punctuality. Promptitude is praiseworthy under all circumstances, but on the Stock Exchange it is essential for the sake both of members and investors. No slovenliness or easy slipshod habits of doing business should be permitted on either side; and investors, while insisting on their rights, should bear in mind that their contracts with their brokers ought to be carried out with exactitude on their part, to enable the latter to fulfil their duties towards their fellow-members.

One other point we would urge investors to bear in mind, and that is, that stockbrokers are not prophets. Many investors, especially ladies, think the reverse. We have frequently heard very hard words indeed used towards brokers who have been unfortunate enough to advise a purchase which has turned out badly; but a moment’s thought must demonstrate the folly of such expressions of feeling. If a broker knows positively what course the market is to take in any particular stock, he has only to buy or sell it to the amount required for producing the profit he desires. Many investors, however, when smarting under losses, are apt to rush to conclusions which reflection proves to be utterly unjust. It is true that stockbrokers ought to be better acquainted with stocks and everything pertaining thereto than the large majority of investors; but it is absurd to suppose that their views should never be wrong. Let investors be satisfied with a reasonable rate of interest, never buy stock without the advice of a stockbroker, never buy what they cannot pay for, or sell what they are not prepared to deliver, and we are certain there would be fewer sleepless pillows and more money in the coffers.

Speculation, we fear, is inherent in the human constitution, and all that we can say on the subject is not likely to put a stop to it. It is natural to the human animal to desire to make money without working for it, and no doubt such a state of affairs will exist to the end. But experience teaches. We once heard an old man, who had been a large speculator in his early days, say that if he had put his money into consols when he first began to save, and continued doing so, instead of running after high rates of interest, he would have been a very much richer man in his old age. In the furious race for riches, we feel certain that the steady investor has the best of it; and the man who is not even able to do more than make both ends meet is infinitely happier than he who spends restless days and sleepless nights in the pursuit of that sudden wealth, which he, in all probability, goes down to his grave without acquiring.

THE ‘LADY GODIVA.’

AN AUSTRALIAN STORY.

It happened that one summer, a few years ago, I found myself travelling up the Barwon River, just where it commences to form the boundary between Queensland and New South Wales. The weather was terribly hot, and feed for horses scarce, so that I was only too glad to accept the invitation of a hospitable settler, an old acquaintance in digging days gone by, to stay and ‘spell’ for a week or two, whilst my horses put on a little condition in his well-grassed paddocks. The country round about at that time, even on the river frontages, was very sparsely settled, and comparatively young people could remember when the blacks were ‘bad.’ Dingoes, kangaroos, wild-cattle, and ‘brombees’ or wild-horses, roamed the great scrubs in thousands; and with respect to broken-in and branded individuals of the two latter species, the laws of meum and tuum seemed to be very lightly regarded amongst the pioneers of the border; and for a settler to put in an appearance at his neighbour’s killing-yard whilst the operation of converting bullock into beef was going on, was deemed the very height of bad manners, inexcusable, indeed, unless perhaps in the newest of new-chums, at least till the hide was off and the brand cut out.

My friend had only recently taken up ground on the river; but his next and nearest neighbour, old Tom Dwyer, who resided about five-and-twenty miles away, was a settler of many years’ standing; and it was from him that, towards the end of my stay with the Brays, came an invitation to the wedding festivities of his only daughter, who was to be married to a young cousin, also a Dwyer, who followed the occupation of a drover.

As Bray and myself rode along in the cool of the early morning—the womenkind and children having set out by moonlight the night before in a spring-cart—he gave me a slight sketch of the people whose hearty invitation we were accepting.

‘A rum lot,’ said my old friend—a fine specimen of the bushman-digger type of Australian-born colonist, hardy, brave, and intelligent, who had, after many years of a roving, eventful life, at last settled down to make himself a home in the wilderness—‘a rum lot, these Dwyers. Not bad neighbours by no means, at least not to me. I speak as I find; but people do say that they come it rather too strong sometimes with the squatters’ stock, and that young Jim—him as is goin’ to get switched—and old Tom his uncle do work the oracle atween ’em. I mind, not so long ago, young Jim he starts up north somewhere with about a score head o’ milkers and their calves; and when he comes back again in about six months, he fetched along with him over three hundred head o’ cattle! “Increase,” he called ’em—ha, ha! A very smart lad is Jim Dwyer; but the squatters are getting carefuller now; and I’m afraid, if he don’t mind, that he’ll find himself in the logs some o’ these fine days. He’s got a nice bit o’ a place over the river, on the New South Wales side, has Jim, just in front o’ Fort Dwyer, as they call the old man’s camp. You could a’most chuck a stone from one house to the other.’

So conversing, after about three hours’ steady-riding through open box forest country, flat and monotonous, we arrived at ‘Fort Dwyer’—or Dee-wyer, as invariably pronounced thereabouts—a long, low building, constructed of huge, roughly squared logs of nearly fireproof red coolabah, or swamp-gum, and situated right on the verge of the steep clay bank, twenty feet below which glided sullenly along the sluggish Barwon, then nearly half a ‘banker.’

A hearty welcome greeted us; and the inevitable ‘square-face’ of spirits was at once produced, to which my companion did justice whilst pledging the health of the company with a brief, ‘Well, here’s luck, lads!’ For my own part, not daring to tackle the half-pannikinful of fiery Mackay rum so pressingly offered, with the assurance that it was ‘the finest thing out after a warm ride,’ I paid my respects to an immense cask of honey-beer which stood under a canopy of green boughs, thus running some risk of losing caste as a bushman by appropriating ‘the women’s swankey,’ as old Dwyer contemptuously termed it, whilst insisting on ‘tempering’ my drink with ‘just the least taste in life, sir,’ of Port Mackay, of about 45 o. p. strength.

There must have been fully one hundred people assembled; and the open space just in front of the house was crowded with buggies, spring-carts, wagonettes, and even drays; but the great centre of attraction was the stockyard, where Jim Dwyer was breaking-in to the side-saddle a mare, bought in one of his recent trips ‘up north,’ and intended as a present for his bride, of whom I caught a glimpse as she sat on an empty kerosene tin, with her sleeves rolled up, busily engaged in plucking poultry; a fair type of the bush-maiden, tall and slender, with good, though sharply cut features, deeply browned by the sun, laughing dark eyes, perfect teeth—a rare gift amongst young Australians—and as much at home—so old Bray assured me—on horseback cutting out ‘scrubbers’ or ‘brombees,’ as was her husband-elect himself.

The rails of the great stockyard were crowded with tall, cabbage-tree-hatted, booted and spurred ‘Cornstalks’ and ‘Banana-men’ (natives of New South Wales and Queensland respectively); and loud were their cries of admiration, as young Dwyer, on the beautiful and, to my eyes, nearly thoroughbred black mare, cantered round and round, whilst flourishing an old riding-skirt about her flanks.

‘She’ll do, Jim—quiet as a sheep’—‘My word! she’ll carry Annie flying’—‘What did yer give for her, Jim?’—‘A reg’lar star, an’ no mistake!’ greeted the young man, as, lightly jumping off, he unbuckled the girths and put the saddle on the slip-rails.

Jim Dwyer differed little from the ordinary style of young bush ‘native’—tall, thin, brown, quick-eyed, narrow in the flanks; but with good breadth of chest, and feet which, from their size and shape, might have satisfied even that captious critic the Lady Hester Stanhope, under whose instep ‘a kitten could walk,’ that the Australians of a future nation would not be as the British, ‘a flat-soled generation, of whom no great or noble achievement could ever be expected.’

I fancied that, as the young fellow came forward to shake hands with Bray, he looked uneasily and rather suspiciously at me out of the corner of one of his black eyes. My companion evidently observed it also, for he said laughingly: ‘What’s the matter, Jim? Only a friend of mine. Is the mare “on the cross?” And did you think he was a “trap?”’

‘None o’ your business, Jack Bray,’ was the surly reply. ‘“Cross” or “square,” she’s mine till some one comes along who can show a better right to her, an’ that won’t happen in a hurry.’

‘Well, well,’ replied Bray, ‘you needn’t get crusty so confounded quick. But she’s a pretty thing, sure enough. Let’s go and have a look at her.’

Everybody now crowded round the mare, praising and admiring her. ‘Two year old, just,’ exclaimed one, looking in her mouth.—‘Rising three, I say,’ replied another.—‘And a cleanskin, and unbranded!’ ejaculated Bray, at the same time passing his hand along the mare’s wither.

‘That’s a disease can soon be cured,’ said Dwyer with a laugh. ‘I’m agoin’ to clap the J. D. on her now.—Shove her in the botte, boys, while I go an’ fetch the irons up.’

‘That mare’s a thoroughbred, and a race-mare to boot, and she’s “on the cross” right enough,’ whispered Bray, as we walked back towards the house. ‘She’s been shook; and though she ain’t fire-branded, there’s a half-sovereign let in under the skin just below the wither; I felt it quite plain; and I wouldn’t wonder but there’s a lot more private marks on her as we can’t see.’

‘Do you think, then,’ I asked, ‘that young Dwyer stole her?’

‘Likely enough, likely enough,’ was the reply. ‘But if he did, strikes me as we’ll hear more about the matter yet.’

Just at this moment, shouts of, ‘Here’s the parson!’—‘Here’s old Ben!’ drew our attention to a horseman who was coming along the narrow track at a slow canter.

A well-known character throughout the whole of that immense district was the Rev. Benjamin Back, ‘bush missionary;’ and not less well known was his old bald-faced horse Jerry. The pair bore a grotesque resemblance to each other, both being long and ungainly, both thin and gray, both always ready to eat and drink, and yet always looking desolate and forlorn. As the Rev. Ben disengaged his long legs from the stirrups, the irrepressible old Dwyer appeared with the greeting-cup—a tin pint-pot half full of rum—which swallowing with scarcely a wink, to the great admiration of the lookers-on, the parson, commending Jerry to the care of his host, stalked inside, and was soon busy at the long table, working away at a couple of roast-ducks, a ham, and other trifles, washed down with copious draughts of hot tea, simply remarking to ‘Annie,’ that she ‘had better make haste and clean herself, so that he could put her and Jim through, as he had to go on to Bullarora that evening to bury a child for the Lacies.’

Having at length finished his repast, all hands crowded into the long room, where before ‘old Ben’ stood bride and bridegroom, the former neatly dressed in dark merino—her own especial choice, as I was told, in preference to anything gayer—with here and there a bright-coloured ribbon, whilst in her luxuriant black hair and in the breast of her dress were bunches of freshly plucked orange blossoms, that many a belle of proud Mayfair might have envied. The bridegroom in spotless white shirt, with handkerchief of crimson silk, confined loosely around his neck by a massive gold ring, riding-trousers of Bedford cord, kept up by a broad belt, worked in wools of many colours by his bride, and shining top-boots and spurs, looked the very beau-idéal of a dashing stockman, as he bore himself elate and proudly, without a trace of that bucolic sheepishness so often witnessed in the principal party to similar contracts.

The old parson, with the perspiration induced by recent gastronomic efforts rolling in beads off his bald head, and dropping from the tip of his nose on to the church-service in his hand, had taken off his long coat of threadbare rusty black, and stood confessed in shirt of hue almost akin to that of the long leggings that reached above his knees. It was meltingly hot; and the thermometer—had there been such an article—would have registered one hundred and ten or one hundred and fifteen degrees in the shade at the least. But it was all over at last. Solemnly ‘old Ben’ had kissed the darkly flushing bride, and told her to be a good girl to Jim—solemnly the old man had disposed of another ‘parting cup;’ and then, whilst the womenkind filled his saddle-bags with cake, chicken, and ham, together with the generous half of a ‘square-face’—or large square-sided bottle—containing his favourite summer beverage, old Dwyer, emerging from one of the inner rooms, produced a piece of well-worn bluish-tinted paper, known and appreciated in those regions as a ‘bluey,’ at sight of which the parson’s eye glistened, for seldom was it that he had the fortune to come across such a liberal douceur as a five-pound note; but as old Dwyer said: ‘We don’t often have a job like this one for you Ben, old man. We’re pretty well in just now, an’ I mean you shall remember it. An’ look here; Jerry’s getting pretty poor now, an’ I know myself he’s no chicken; so you’d best leave him on the grass with us for the rest o’ his days, an’ I’ll give you as game a bit o’ horse-flesh as ever stepped; quiet, too, an’ a good pacer. See! the boys is a-saddlin’ him up now.’

The old preacher’s life was hard, for the most part barren, and little moistened by kind offers like the present; and his grim and wrinkled face puckered up and worked curiously as he gratefully accepted the gift for Jerry’s sake, his constant companion through twelve long years of travel incessant through the wildest parts of Queensland; and with a parting injunction to ‘the boys’ to look after the old horse, he, mounting his new steed, started off on his thirty-mile ride to bury Lacy’s little child.

The long tables, at which all hands had intermittently appeased their hunger throughout the day, on fowls, geese, turkeys, sucking-pig, fish, &c., were now cleared and removed; a couple of concertinas struck up, and fifteen or twenty couples were soon dancing with might and main on the pine-boarded floor. Old men and young, old women and maidens, boys and girls, all went at it with a will, whirling, stamping, changing and ‘chaining’ till the substantial old house shook again, and fears were audibly expressed that the whole building would topple over into the river.

‘Not to-night, of all nights in the year,’ said old Dwyer; ‘although I do believe I’ll have to shift afore long. Ye’ll hardly think it—would ye?—that when I first put up the old shanty, it stood four chain, good, away from the bank; it was, though, all that; an’ many a sneaking, greasy black-fellow I’ve seen go slap into the water with a rifle bullet through his ugly carcass out of that back-winder, though it is plumb a’most with the river now.’

So, louder and louder screamed the concertinas, faster and faster whirled the panting couples, till nearly midnight, when ‘supper’ was announced by the sound of a great bullock bell, and out into the calm night-air trooped the crowd. The tables this time had been set out on the sward in front of the house, just without the long dark line of forest which bordered the river, through the tops of whose giant ‘belars’ the full moon shone down on the merry feasters with a subdued glory; whilst, in a quiet pause, you could hear the rush of the strong Barwon current, broken, every now and again, by a deep-sounding ‘plop,’ as some fragment of the ever-receding clayey bank would fall into the water. Four or five native bears, disturbed by the noise, crawled out on the limbs of a great coolabar, and with unwinking, beady-black eyes, gazed on the scene below, expressing their astonishment every now and again in hoarse mutterings, now low and almost inarticulate, then ‘thrum, thrumming’ through the bush till it rang again. From a neighbouring swamp came the shrill scream of the curlew; whilst far away in the low ranges of Cooyella, could be heard the dismal howl of a solitary dingo coo-ee-ing to his mates.

Scarcely had the guests taken their seats and commenced, amidst jokes and laughter, to attack a fresh and substantial meal, when a furious barking, from a pack of about fifty dogs, announced the advent of strangers; and in a minute more, three horsemen, in the uniform of the Queensland mounted police, rode up to the tables. One, a sergeant apparently, dismounted, and with his bridle over his arm, strode forward, commanding every one to keep their seats; for several at first sight of the ‘traps’ had risen, and apparently thought of quietly slipping away. This order, however, enforced as it was by the production of a revolver, together with an evident intention of using it on any absconder, brought them to their seats again.

‘What’s all this about?’ exclaimed old Dwyer. ‘We’re all honest people here, mister, so you can put up your pistol. Tell us civilly what it is you’re wantin’, an’ we’ll try an’ help you; but don’t come it too rough. You ought to be ’shamed o’ yourself. Don’t ye see the faymales?’

‘Can’t help the females,’ retorted the sergeant sharply. ‘I haven’t ridden four hundred miles to play polite to a lot of women. I want a man named James Dwyer; and by the description, yonder’s the man himself’—pointing at the same time across the table to where sat the newly-made husband, who had been one of the first to make a move at sight of the police.

‘What’s the charge, sargent?’ asked old Dwyer coolly.

‘Horse-stealing,’ was the reply; ‘and here’s the warrant, signed by the magistrate in Tambo, for his apprehension.’

I was sitting quite close to the object of these inquiries, and at this moment I heard young Mrs Dwyer, whilst leaning across towards her husband, whisper something about ‘the river’ and ‘New South Wales;’ and in another moment, head over heels down the steep bank rolled the recently created benedict, into the curious and cool nuptial couch of swiftly flowing, reddish water, which he breasted with ease, making nearly a straight line for the other bank, distant perhaps a couple of hundred yards.

The troopers, drawing their revolvers, dismounted, and running forward, were about to follow the example set by their superior, who was taking steady aim at the swimmer, perfectly discernible in the clear moonlight, when suddenly half-a-dozen pair of soft but muscular arms encircled the three representatives of law and order, as the women, screaming like a lot of curlews after a thunderstorm, clasped them in a tight embrace.

Young Mrs Dwyer herself tackled the sergeant, crying: ‘What! would you shoot a man just for a bit of horse-sweating! Leave him go, can’t you. He’s over the border now in New South Wales, mare and all; and you can’t touch him, even if you was there.’

Just then a yell of triumph from the scrub on the other shore seemed to vouch for the fact, and was answered by a dozen sympathetic whoops and shouts from the afore-mentioned ‘Cornstalks’ and ‘Banana-men,’ who crowded along our side of the river.

The sergeant struggled to free himself; and his fair antagonist unwound her arms, saying: ‘Come now, sargent, sit down peaceably and eat your supper, can’t you! What’s the good of making such a bother over an old scrubber of a mare!’

‘An old scrubber of a mare!’ repeated the sergeant aghast ‘D’ye think we’d ride this far over a scrubber of a mare? Why, it’s the Lady Godiva he took; old Stanford’s race-mare, worth five hundred guineas, if she’s worth a penny. Bother me! if he didn’t take her clean out of the stable in Tambo, settling-night, after she’d won the big money! But there, you all know as much about it as I can tell you, that’s plain to be seen, for I never mentioned a mare; it was your own self, I do believe; and I’ll have him, if I have to follow him to Melbourne.—Just got married, has he? Well, I can’t help that; he shouldn’t go stealing race-mares.—Well, perhaps you didn’t know all about it,’ went on the sergeant, in reply to the asseverations of the Dwyer family as regarded their knowledge of the way the young man had become possessed of the mare. ‘But,’ shaking his head sententiously, ‘I’m much mistaken if most of this crowd hadn’t a pretty good idea that there was something cross about her. However,’ he concluded philosophically, ‘it’s no use crying over spilt milk. I’ll have to ride over to G—— at daylight—that’s another forty miles—and get an extradition warrant out for him. He might just as well have come quietly at first, for we’re bound to have the two of them some time or other.’

It was now nearly daylight; and our party set out on their return home, leaving the troopers comfortably seated at the supper, or rather by this time, breakfast table; while just below the house, in a bend of the river, we could see, as we passed along, a group of men busily engaged in swimming a mob of horses—amongst which was doubtless the Lady Godiva herself—over to the New South Wales shore, where, on the bank, plainly to be discerned in the early dawn, stood the tall form of her lawless owner.

‘How do you think it will all end?’ I asked Bray.

‘Oh,’ was the reply, ‘they’ll square it, most likely. I know something of that Stanford; he’s a bookmaker; and if he gets back the mare and a cheque for fifty or a hundred pounds, to cover expenses, he’ll not trouble much after Jim.’

‘Yes. But the police?’ I asked.

‘Easier squared than Stanford,’ answered Bray dogmatically.

That this ‘squaring’ process was successfully put in force seemed tolerably certain; for very shortly afterwards I read that at the autumn meeting of the N. Q. J. C., the Lady Godiva had carried off the lion’s share of the money; and I also had the pleasure of meeting Mr and Mrs Dwyer in one of Cobb & Co.’s coaches, bound for the nearest railway terminus, about three hundred miles distant, thence to spend a month or so in Sydney; Jim, as his wife informed me, having done uncommonly well out of a mob of cattle and horses which he had been travelling for sale through the colonies; so had determined to treat himself and the ‘missis,’ for the first time in their lives, to a look at the ‘big smoke.’

‘That was a great shine at our wedding, wasn’t it?’ she asked, as the coachman gathered up the reins preparatory to a fresh start. ‘But’—and here she tapped her husband on the head with her parasol—‘I look out now that he don’t go sticking-up to any more Lady Godivas.’

‘That’s so,’ laughed Jim. ‘I find, that I have my hands pretty full with the one I collared the night you were there. I doubt sometimes I’d done better to have stuck to the other one; and as for temp’—— Here Jim’s head disappeared suddenly into the interior of the coach; crack went the long whip; the horses plunged, reared, and went through the usual performance of attempting to tie themselves up into overhand knots, then darted off at top-speed on their sixteen-mile stage, soon disappearing in a cloud of dust along the ‘cleared line.’

OCCASIONAL NOTES.

ARTILLERY EXPERIMENTS.

The trials lately carried on at the Bill of Portland, supplement (says the Times) those of Inchkeith in certain respects. At Inchkeith it was sought to obtain a just idea of the effect of machine-gun and shrapnel fire on the detachment serving a gun mounted en barbette in an emplacement of tolerably recent design. Dummies were placed round the gun in exposed positions, and Her Majesty’s ship Sultan, under very favourable conditions of sea and weather, carried out some careful practice at various ranges. The results, accurately recorded, furnish data calculated to serve as a correction to mere conjecture. At Portland, the objects sought to be attained were two. The merits of the Moncrieff or ‘disappearing’ principle of mounting guns for coast-defence have been much discussed, and great advantages have been claimed for it with every show of reason; but no opportunity had ever been given to the system to practically demonstrate its defensive value. It was, therefore, sufficiently desirable that a practical experiment should be arranged in which ‘service-conditions’ should be observed as far as possible, so that there might be a something definite to set against prejudice either in favour of or against the system. It was proposed, at the same time, to seek to obtain data as to the accuracy of howitzer-fire from a floating platform.... To sum up the case with judicial fairness, the Portland experiments fully bear out all that the champions of the disappearing system have asserted; while its opponents—if there are any such—must perforce admit that at least nothing whatever is proved against it. More than this, however, appears to be indicated by these trials. There seems to be every reason to believe that all direct fire, whether of heavy or machine guns, against a disappearing gun when down, is thrown away; that in the short time during which this gun need be visible, it will require a very smart gun-captain on board ship merely to lay on it; that the more the smoke obscures it, the better, provided a position-finder is used; and finally, that to engage two or three dispersed disappearing guns would be a heart-breaking task for a ship. Probably the best chance of disabling guns mounted on this system is snap-shooting from the six-pounder quick-firing gun, which can be bandied almost as readily as a rifle. But, on the one hand, it does not necessarily follow that a hit from the six-pounder would have any effect on the disappearing gun; and, on the other hand, the latter would be able to get through a good deal of shooting before the six-pounder was able to come into effective action. Again, the six-pounder on board ship would presumably be met by the six-pounder on shore, which would shoot rather more accurately; while, even as opposed to these wonderfully handy little weapons, the disappearing system must stand superior to all others. In a turret or a cupola, more than half the length of the modern long guns must be always exposed to fire. All considerations, therefore, seem to point to the disappearing system as the most scientific method ever devised for protecting shore-guns, and the advantages to be obtained being so great, it becomes worth while to use every possible effort to bring the disappearing gun to practical perfection. The main difficulty is to render the larger guns independently automatic, and at present no gun larger than the eight-inch—the gun exhibited in the Inventions Exhibition—has been thus mounted in England.

SEA-GOING FISHING LIFEBOAT VESSELS.

Mr F. Johnson, the honorary managing secretary of the National Refuge Harbours Society, 17 Parliament Street, London, has made it the one aim of his life to devise such means as will conduce to diminish the large total of lives annually reported as having been lost at sea. He is now interesting himself in bringing to a practical application an invention of Mr John White, of Cowes, described as a Sea-going Fishing Lifeboat vessel, a model of which is now on public view at 72 New Bond Street, London. Broad in the beam, she has a large air-chamber divided into two compartments at the bow; another—of a smaller size—at the stern; and one running along on either side. Thus, however much sea she may ‘ship,’ with these air-chambers in use, it is not possible for her to sink. Except for the roofs of the fore and aft air-chambers, the vessel has no deck, an arrangement which of course gives her considerable buoyancy. The roofs of the side air-chambers are curved off, so that any water which might wash over one bulwark would pass across the vessel and wash out over the other. As a matter of fact, however, it is confidently believed that, even in a high sea, the vessel will be too buoyant to ship much water. It has naturally occurred to the inventor that in fine weather the fore air-chamber might be utilised as a cabin; he has therefore arranged that it may be unsealed and access obtained to it by means of a hatchway. It will be fitted up with cooking apparatus and beds, the latter articles also filling the rôle of life-buoys.

Those who interest themselves in this invention propose that vessels of the kind shall be launched around our coasts, equipped with fishing-gear, and manned with smacksmen, so that they may be ‘self-supporting;’ while their primary object will be to afford succour during stormy weather to any craft in distress. Thus, it is felt that the Fishing Lifeboat vessels might ride in the different fishing fleets, the smacks of which, being frequently far away from any harbour of refuge, are often disabled or utterly wrecked during a storm. Then, too, the vessels might fish in the neighbourhood of dangerous reefs and shoals, where their presence would be especially valuable. We believe that two or three years ago a fishing-smack was constructed very much on the lines indicated, and that, after effecting some rescues in the neighbourhood of the Goodwin Sands, she herself was wrecked, owing to her having been improperly laden with stone. Mr White has agreed to build Sea-going Fishing Lifeboat vessels of forty tons—a size which is considered most suitable—at a cost each of five hundred pounds. It is felt that a fair start might be made with twenty vessels, to be placed at different points around our coasts. Thus ten thousand pounds is required; and a public fund has been opened, and part of the money already subscribed. Those who desire to contribute should communicate with Mr Johnson, all cheques being crossed National Provincial Bank.

SOME FACTS ABOUT MONTE CARLO.

The Report, says a contemporary, of the International Committee in Nice upon the disgraceful gambling hell of Monte Carlo, which has just been issued, is to be made the ground of a collective diplomatic action against the protector of that institution, Prince Charles III. of Monaco. This important pamphlet gives a documentary catalogue of all the suicides which have taken place in Monte Carlo from 1877 to 1885. The total number of persons who have destroyed themselves in consequence of their losses at his Princely Highness’s gambling-tables is eighteen hundred and twenty—that is to say, there have been nearly as many suicides as the Prince has subjects. The catalogue is very complete, giving the name, the home, the age, and the date of death of each suicide, and a collection of the letters in which the wretched victims have commented upon their self-destruction. Nearly all of them curse the hour in which their eyes first set sight upon Monte Carlo. It is agreeable to learn from the table of nationality that the English and Americans have supplied the smallest number of victims. A tenth of the number are Germans and Austrians; but the largest contingent by far has been provided by France, Italy, and Russia. The appalling census was instituted by the Italian Consul-general in Nice, who found ready support from patriotic citizens of other lands. The callous brutality of the Monaco ‘government,’ if so honourable a name may be given to this organised gambling Company, is shown in the treatment of the suicides after their death. Scarcely one of them, except where friends have appeared in time to claim the body, has received a decent burial. After the poor wretch has lost all that he had, his corpse has been hurriedly hidden in the poor quarter of the burial-ground without funeral rites or mourners.

Printed and Published by W. & R. Chambers, 47 Paternoster Row, London, and 339 High Street, Edinburgh.

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