"Do the village Chinese women have those funny smashed-up feet, Cousin Peregrine?"

"In the north of China they have. In the south only ladies deform themselves in this fashion; and the Tartar women always leave their own beautiful little feet uninjured. Well, the men came out of their cottages and fields, and pressed eagerly but good-naturedly round me."

"Do the village men wear pigtails?"

"Every Chinaman wears a pigtail. A Chinaman without a pigtail would be as great a rarity as a Manx cat, or rather, I ought to say, he would be like the tailless fox in the fable; only you would never catch a Chinaman trying to persuade his friends that it was creditable to have no tail! For I must tell you that pigtails are sometimes cut off—as a degradation—when a man has committed some crime. But as soon as he can, he gets the barber to put him on a false pigtail, as a closely-cropped convict might wear a wig. They roll them up when they are at work if they are in the way, but if a servant came into your room with his tail tucked up you would be very angry with him, It would be like a housemaid coming in with her sleeves and skirt tucked up for house-cleaning—most disrespectful!"

"Were these the men you showed something to that they thought wonderful?"

"Yes, Fred. And now I'll tell you what it was. You must know that I could speak no Chinese, and my new friends could speak no English, so they chattered like magpies to each other, and laughed like children or Chinamen—for the Chinese are very fond of a joke. When they laughed I laughed, and we bowed and shook hands, and they turned me round and felt me all over, and felt my hands."

"What about your hands, Cousin?"

"I had on dog-skin gloves, yellow ones. Now when all the male population of the hamlet had stroked these very carefully, I perceived that they had never seen gloves before, and that they believed themselves to be testing the feel of a barbarian's skin."

"Barbarian?"

"Certainly, Bessie. They give us the same polite name that we feel ourselves more justified in applying to them. Well, when they had laughed, and I had laughed, and we had shaken hands afresh, laughing heartily as we did so, and I began to feel it was time to go on and catch up my boat, which was floating sluggishly down the winding stream of the Peiho, I resolved on one final effect, like the last scene of a dramatic performance. Making vigorous signs and noises, to intimate that something was coming, and they must look out sharp, and feeling very much like a conjurer who has requested his audience to keep their eyes on him and 'see how it's done'—I slyly unbuttoned my gloves, and then with much parade began to draw one off by the finger-tips.

"'Eyah! Eyah!' cried the Chinamen on all the notes of the gamut, as they fell back over each other. They thought I was skinning my hands. I 'smiled superior,' as I took the gloves off, and made an effect almost as great by putting them on again."

"Oh, Cousin Peregrine, weren't they astonished?"

"They were, Maggie, And unless they are more familiar with Europeans now, the mystery is probably to this day as unsolved to them as the trick of the ball of thread and the twelve needles still is to me. By this time, however, my boat was

'Far off, a blot upon the stream,'

and I had to hasten away as fast as I could to catch it up. I parted on the most friendly terms from my narrow-eyed acquaintance, but when I had nearly regained my boat I could still see them in their blue-cotton dresses and long pigtails, gazing open-mouthed at my vanishing figure across the rice-fields."

* * * * *

After a few seconds' silence, during which Maggie had sat with her eyes thoughtfully fixed on the fire, she said, "Cousin Peregrine, you said in your letters that it was very cold in the north of China. If Chinamen know nothing about gloves, how can they keep their hands warm?" Maggie had a little the air of regarding this question as a poser, but Cousin Peregrine was not disconcerted.

"My dear Maggie, your question reminds me of another occasion, when I astonished a most respectable old China gentleman by my gloves. I will tell you about it, as it will show you how the Chinese keep their hands warm.

"It was on this very same expedition. We were at Tung-Chow, about eight miles from Pekin. At this place we had to leave the river, and take to our Tartar ponies, which our Chinese horse-boys had ridden up to this point to meet us. We had hired a little cart to convey our baggage, and I was sitting on my pony watching the lading up of the cart, when a dear old Chinaman, dressed in blue wadded silk, handsomely lined with fur, came up to me, and with that air of gentlemanly courtesy which is by no means confined to Europe, began to explain and expound in his own language for my benefit."

"What was he talking about? Could you tell?"

"I soon guessed. The fact is I am not very apt to wear gloves when I can help it, especially if I am working at anything. At the moment the old Chinese gentleman came up I was holding the reins of my pony with bare hands (my gloves being in my pocket), and as the morning was cold, my fingers looked rather blue. Having ascertained by feeling that my coat-sleeves would not turn down any lower than my wrists, he touched my hands softly, and made courteous signs, indicating that he was about to do me a good turn. Having signalled a polite disapprobation of the imperfect nature of my sleeves, he drew my attention to his own deep wide ones. Turning them back so as to expose the hands, the fine fur lining lay like a rich trimming above his wrists. Then with a glance of infinite triumph he bespoke my close attention as, shivering, to express cold, he turned the long sleeves, each a quarter of a yard, over his hands, and stuffing each hand into the opposite sleeve they were warm and comfortable, as it were in a muff, which was a part of his coat. More sensible than our muffs too, the fur was inside instead of out.

"He was the very pink of politeness, but at this point his pride of superior intelligence could not be restrained, and he broke into fits of delighted laughter, in which the horse-boys, the spectators, my friends, and (as is customary in China) everybody within sight and hearing joined.

"I took good care to laugh heartily too. After which I made signs the counterpart of his. He looked anxious. I put my hand in my pocket, and drew out my gloves. He stared. I put them on, and nodded, to show that that was the way we barbarians did it.

"'Eyah!' cried the silk-robed old gentleman.

"'Eyah!' echoed the horse-boys and the crowd.

"Then I laughed, and the horse-boys laughed loudly, and the crowd louder still, and finally the old gentleman doubled himself up in his blue silk fur-lined robe in fits of laughter.

"An Asiatic only relishes one thing better than being outwitted—that is to outwit.

"'Eyah! Eyah! Ha! ha! ha!' they cried as we rode away.

"'Ha! ha! ha!' replied I, waving a well-gloved hand, on my road to Pekin."



WAVES OF THE GREAT SOUTH SEAS.

(Founded on Fact.)

"Very likely the man who drew it had been nearly drowned by one himself."

"Very likely nothing of the sort!"

"How could he draw it if he hadn't seen it?"

"Why, they always do. Look at Uncle Alfred, he drew a splendid picture of a shipwreck. Don't you remember his doing it at the dining-room table, and James coming in to lay the cloth, and he would have a bit of the table left clear for him, because he was in the middle of putting in the drowning men, and wanted to get them in before luncheon? And Uncle Herbert wrote a beautiful poem to it, and they were both put into a real magazine. And Uncle Alfred and Uncle Herbert never were in shipwrecks. So there!"

"Well, Uncle Alfred drew it very well, and he made very big waves. So there!"

"Ah, but he didn't make waves like a great wall. He did it very naturally, and he draws a great deal better than those rubbishy old pictures in Father's Robinson Crusoe."

"Well, I don't care. The Bible says that when the Children of Israel went through the Red Sea the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. And I believe they were great waves like the wave in Robinson Crusoe, only they weren't allowed to fall down till Pharaoh and his host came, and then they washed them all away."

"But that's a miracle. I don't believe there are waves like that now."

"I believe there are in other countries. Uncle Alfred's shipwreck was only an English shipwreck, with waves like the waves at the seaside."

"Let's ask Cousin Peregrine. He's been in foreign countries, and he's been at sea."

The point in dispute between Maggie and her brother was this:—The nursery copy of Robinson Crusoe was an old one which had belonged to their father, with very rough old wood-cuts, one of which represented Robinson Crusoe cowering under a huge wave, which towered far above his head, and threatened to overwhelm him. This wave Maggie had declared to be unnatural and impossible, whilst the adventure-book young gentleman clung to and defended an illustration which had helped him so vividly to realize the sea-perils of his hero.

It was the day following that of Cousin Peregrine's arrival, and when evening arrived the two children carried the book down with them to dessert, and attacked Cousin Peregrine simultaneously.

"Cousin Peregrine, you've been at sea: isn't that an impossible wave?"

"Cousin Peregrine, you've been at sea: aren't there sometimes waves like that in foreign places?"

"It's not very cleverly drawn," said Cousin Peregrine, examining the wood-cut; "but making allowance for that, I have seen waves not at all unlike this one."

"There!" cried the young gentleman triumphantly. "Maggie laughed at it, and said it was like a wall."

"Some waves are very like walls, but those are surf-waves, as they are called, that is, waves which break upon a shore. The waves I am thinking of just now are more like mountains—translucent blackish-blue mountains—mountains that look as if they were made of bottle-green glass, like the glass mountain in the fairy tale, or shining mountains of phosphorescent light—meeting you as if, they would overwhelm you, passing under you, and tossing you like the old woman in the blanket, and then running away behind you as you go to meet another. Every wave with a little running white crest on its ridge; though not quite such a curling frill as this one has which is engulfing poor Robinson Crusoe. But his is a surf-wave, of course. Those I am speaking of are waves in mid-ocean."

"Not as tall as a man, Cousin Peregrine?"

"As tall as many men piled one upon another, Maggie."

"It certainly is very funny that the children should choose this subject to tease you about tonight, Peregrine," said Mamma.

We are all apt to speak inaccurately. Mamma did not mean that the subject was a comical one, but that it was remarkable that the children should have started it at dessert, when the grown-up people had been discussing it at dinner.

They had not been talking about Robinson Crusoe's wave, but about the loss of an Australian vessel, in sad circumstances which were in every one's mouth. A few people only had been saved. They had spent many days in an open boat in great suffering, and the particular question discussed at dinner was, whether the captain of a certain vessel which had passed without rescuing them had been so inhuman as to see and yet to leave them.

"How could he help seeing them?" Mamma had indignantly asked. "It was daylight, and of course somebody was on the deck, even if the captain was still in bed. Don't talk to me, Peregrine! You would say black is white for the sake of argument, especially if it was to defend somebody. But little as I know about the sea, I know that it's flat."

"And that's flat!" interposed Papa.

"It's all very well making fun of me," Mamma had continued with good-humoured vehemence, "but there were no Welsh hills and valleys to block the view of castaway fellow-creatures not a mile off, and it was daylight, and he must have seen them."

"I'm not quite sure about the hills and valleys," Cousin Peregrine had replied; "and hills of water are quite as troublesome to see through as hills of earth."

At this moment the dining-room door had opened to admit the children, Maggie coming first, and making her courtesy in the doorway, with the old fat, brown-calf-bound Robinson Crusoe under her arm. It opened without the slightest difficulty at the picture of the big wave, and the children appealed to Cousin Peregrine as has been related.

Maggie was a little taken aback by a decision which was in favour of her brother's judgment. She was apt to think rather highly of her own, and even now she pondered, and then put another question—

"But if the waves were so very, very big, Cousin, they would swallow up the ships!"

"No, Maggie, not if the sailors manage their ship properly, and turn her about so that she meets the wave in the right way. Then she rides over it instead of being buried under it."

"It would be dreadful if they didn't!" said Maggie.

"I remember being in a ship that didn't meet one of these waves in the right way," said Cousin Peregrine.

"Tell us all about it," said Fred, settling himself with two or three severe fidgets into the seat of his chair.

"I was going to have protested against the children asking you for another story so soon, Peregrine," said Mamma, "but now I feel selfish, for your wave-story will be quite as much for me as for the little ones."

"Where was it, Cousin Peregrine?"

"Where was the wave, do you mean? It was in the great South Seas. As to where I was, I was in a sailing-vessel bound for South Australia. To begin at the beginning, I must explain to you that this vessel was one of those whose captains accepted the instruments offered by the Board of Trade to any ship that would keep a meteorological log. I was fond of such matters, and I took the trouble off the captain's hands, by keeping his meteorological log for him."

"What is a meteorological log, Cousin?"

"A kind of diary, in which you put down the temperature of the sea and air, how cold or hot they are—the way the wind blows, how the barometer is, and anything special and interesting about the weather overhead or the currents in the sea. Now I must tell you that there had been a good deal of talk about currents of warm water in the Southern Ocean, like the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic, which keeps the west coasts of Great Britain so warm. But these South Sea currents had not been very accurately observed, and information on the subject was desired. Well, one day we got right into a warm current."

"How did you know, Cousin?"

"By drawing up a bucket of water out of the sea, and putting the thermometer into it. But I ought to tell you what a thermometer is—"

"We know quite well," said Maggie. "Nurse always put it into Baby's bath when he had fits, to see if the water was the right warmth."

"Very good, Maggie. Then let me tell you that the water of the sea got nearly thirty degrees warmer on that day between noon and midnight."

"How did you know about midnight?" Maggie inquired doubtfully; "weren't you in bed?"

"No, I was not, I was very busy all day 'taking observations' every hour or two, and it was at twelve o'clock this very night that the 'comber' broke on deck."

"What is a 'comber'?"

"A 'comber' is the name for a large wave with a comb or crest of foam, a sort of wave over which our ship ought to have ridden; but I must tell you that it was no easy matter to meet them on this occasion, because (owing to the cross currents) the waves did not all go one way, but came at us from various points. The sea was very heavy, and the night was very dark. I tried the heat of the water for the last time that evening, and having bade good-night to the officer whose watch was just over, I stayed for a few minutes to talk to the officer whose watch was just beginning, before going below to go to bed. We were standing aft, and, fortunately for us, near one of the masts, when through the darkness we saw the sloping sides of a great South Sea wave coming at the fore part of the ship, but sideways. 'The rigging!' shouted the officer of the watch, and as we both clung to the ropes the wave broke on our bows, smashed the jib-boom, and swept the decks from stem to stern."

"And if you hadn't held on by the rigging you would have been washed away?"

"I am afraid we should, Fred, for every loose thing on deck was swept off in less than a minute. The bull kept his feet, by the bye; but then he had four, and I have only two."

"The bull! what bull?"

"We were taking some cattle out to Australia. There was a bull who lived in a stable that had been made for him on deck. When this comber broke over us it tore up the bull's house, and carried it overboard, but I met the bull himself taking a walk at large as I went below to change my clothes and get some sleep."

"Were you wet?"

"Drenched, my dear Maggie; but when I got to my cabin I found that there was no hope of rest for some hours. The wave had flooded the cabins, broken in doors, and washed everything and everybody about. So we all had to set to work to bale out water, and mop up our bed-rooms; and as the wave had also put out what lights there were, we had to work in the dark, and very uncomfortable work it was! What the women and children did, and the poor people who were sea-sick, I hardly know. Of course we who could keep our feet did the work."

"Weren't you ever sea-sick?"

"Never, I am thankful to say."

"Not when it's very, very rough?"

"Not in a gale. I have once or twice on that voyage been the captain's only companion at dinner, tied to the mast to keep myself steady, and with the sherry in one pocket and my wine-glass in another to keep them steady, and quite ashamed of my appetite, for if the sea doesn't make you feel very ill it makes you feel very well."

"I had no idea there were such very big waves really," said Maggie, thoughtfully.

"I see that they are quite big enough to shelter the captain's character, Peregrine," said Mamma, smiling, "and I am much obliged to you for correcting my ignorance. I don't wish to believe that any English sailor would pass a boat in distress without giving help, if he saw it."

"I am quite sure no English sailor would, and very few real sailors of any nation, I think. A real seaman knows too well what sea-perils are, and that what is another man's case one day may be his the next; and cowardice and cold-heartedness are the last sins that can be laid at Jack Tar's door as a rule. But I will finish my story by telling the children what happened next morning, as it goes to illustrate both my statements, that it is not easy to see an open boat in a heavy sea, and that sailors are very ready to risk their lives for each other."

"You're like Captain Marryat, Cousin Peregrine," said Fred.

"He's not a sailor captain, he's a soldier captain," said Maggie. "Go on, Cousin."

"As I told you, we had two or three hours of very disagreeable work before our cabins were even tolerably comfortable; but it made us more tired than ever, and when I did turn in I slept like a top, and the rolling of the ship only rocked me to sounder slumbers. I was awakened at seven o'clock next morning by a fellow-passenger, who popped in to cry, 'There's a man overboard!' 'Who?' shouted I as I jumped up. 'Giovanni,' he replied as he vanished, leaving me to follow him on deck as quickly as possible. Now, Fred, picture to yourself a grey morning, the damp deck of our vessel being rapidly crowded with everybody on board, and all eyes strained towards a heavy sea, with big blue-black mountains of water running at us, and under us, and away from us all along; every wave had a white crest: but there were some other patches of snowy white hovering over the dark sea, on which all the experienced eyes were soon fixed!"

"What were they?" whispered Fred.

"Albatross," said Cousin Peregrine. "They had been following us for days, hovering, swooping, and whirling those great white wings of theirs, which sometimes measure nine feet from tip to tip."

"What did they follow you for?"

"They came to pick up anything that may be thrown overboard, and they came now, as we knew, after poor Giovanni, whose curly black head kept ducking out of their way as he swam with desperate courage in our wake."

"Oh, Cousin Peregrine! Didn't the captain stop the ship?"

"Certainly, Maggie, though, quickly as it was done, it left the poor fellow far away behind. And heavy as the sea was, they were lowering a boat when I got on deck, and the captain had called for volunteers among the sailors to man it."

"Oh, I hope he got them!"

"I hope you won't insult a noble and gallant profession by having any doubt about it, Maggie. He might have had the ship's crew bodily if he had wanted them, and if the waves had run twice as high."

"Spare me!" said Mamma.

"As it was the few men needed were soon ready. The boat was launched without being upset, and the men got in without mishap. Then they laid themselves to their oars, we gave them a parting cheer, and they vanished from our sight."

"Drowned, Cousin Peregrine?"

"No, no. Though I can tell you we were as anxious for them as for Giovanni now. But when they had crossed the first water-mountains, and gone down into the water-valleys beyond, they were quite out of sight of the crowd on the deck of the ship, daylight though it was."

"I retract everything I ever said," cried Mamma impetuously.

"And not only could we not see them, but they could not see the man they were risking their lives to save. Those crested mountains which hid them from us hid him from them."

"What did you do?"

"Men were sent up the masts to look out from such a height that they could look over the waves. They could see both Giovanni and the boat, and as they were so high up the men in the boat could see them. So the men on the masts kept their eyes on Giovanni, and the men in the boat kept their eyes on the men on the masts, and steered their course according to the signals from the look-out."

"And they saved him?"

"Yes, they brought him back; and if we cheered when they went away, you may believe we cheered when they got safe to the ship's side again."

"And who was Giovanni? and did he get all right?"

"Giovanni was one of the sailors, an Italian. He was a fine young fellow, and appeared to think nothing whatever of his adventure. I remember he resolutely refused to go below and change his clothes till he had helped to haul up the boat. With his white teeth shining through a broad grin, he told us in his broken English that he had been overboard every voyage he had taken. He said he didn't mind anything except the swooping and pecking of the albatross. They obliged him to dive so constantly, to keep his eyes from their beaks."

"Was it a comber washed him overboard?"

"No. He was mending the jib-boom, and lost his hold and fell into the sea. He really had a very narrow escape. A less active swimmer might easily have been drowned. I always think, too, that he had an advantage in the fact that the water was warm."

"I am so glad the nasty albatross were disappointed."

"The nasty albatross were probably disappointed when they found that Giovanni was not a piece of spoilt pork. However, they set their beautiful wings, and went their way, and we set our sails, and went our way, which was to Adelaide, South Australia."



COUSIN PEREGRINE'S TRAVELLER'S TALES.

JACK OF PERA.

(Founded on Fact.)

"Cousin Peregrine, oughtn't we to love our neighbour, whether he's a nice neighbour or a nasty neighbour?"

"Certainly, Maggie."

"But need we when he's a nasty next-door neighbour?" asked Fred, in such rueful tones that Cousin Peregrine burst out laughing and said, "Who is your nasty next-door neighbour, Fred, and what has he done?"

"Well, his name is Mackinnon, Cousin; and everybody says he's always quarrelling; and he complained of our screaming and the cockatoo playing—no, of the cockatoo's screaming and our playing prisoners' base, and he kept our ball once, and now he has complained of poor dear Ponto's going into his garden, and the dear darling old thing has to be tied up, except when we take him out for stiff walks."

"I didn't notice anything stiff about his walk yesterday, Fred, He took the fence into your nasty neighbour's garden at one bound, and came back with another."

"I don't know what can make him go there!" cried Fred; "I wish he understood about keeping to his own grounds."

"Ponto never lived in Constantinople, that is evident," said Cousin Peregrine.

"Did you ever live in Constantinople, Cousin?" asked Maggie.

"Yes, Maggie, I am happy to say I have."

"Why are you glad, Cousin?"

"Because in some respects it is the loveliest city on earth, and I am glad to have seen it."

"Tell us what it is like."

"And tell us why you say Ponto never lived there."

"I was a good deal younger than I am now," said Cousin Peregrine, "when I saw Constantinople for the first time, and had seen much less of the world than I have seen since; but even now I remember nothing in my travels with greater delight than my first sight of that lovely city. It was from the sea. Do you know anything about the Sea of Marmora, Fred?"

"I don't think I know much," said Fred doubtfully.

"But we've got an atlas," said Maggie, "so you can show it us, you know."

"Well, give me the map. Here is the Sea of Marmora, with Turkey-in-Europe on one side of it, and Turkey-in-Asia on the other side of it. This narrower part that you come into it by is called the Dardanelles, that narrower part that you go out of it by is called the Bosphorus. The Bosphorus is about two miles broad; it is salt water, you know, and leads from the Sea of Marmora to the Black Sea, which is farther north. This narrow piece of water going westward out of the Bosphorous is called the Golden Horn. Constantinople—which is built, like Rome, on hills—rises above the shores of the Bosphorus and on both sides of the Golden Horn. The part of it which is south of the Golden Horn is called Stamboul, and is the especially Turkish Quarter. Across the Golden Horn from Stamboul lies the Quarter called Galata—the commercial port—and beyond that Pera—beautiful Pera!—the Quarter where English people live when they live at Constantinople. North of these are more suburbs, and then detached Turkish villages and gay gardens dotting the banks of the Bosphorus."

"But you lived at Pera?"

"Yes, I lived at Pera; in a house looking into the Turkish cemetery."

"Was it nice, Cousin, like our churchyard? or do the Turks do horrid things with their dead people, like those Chinese you told us about, who put them in boxes high up in the air?"

"The Turks bury their dead as we do, my dear Maggie, and they plant their graveyards with cypresses, which, standing tall and dark among the headstones of the graves, have a very picturesque effect. The cemetery in all Turkish towns is a favourite place of public resort, but I cannot say that it is kept in very nice order, as a rule. For the sake of a water-colour sketch I made in one, I was very glad that the upright headstones were tumbling about in all directions, it took away the look of stiffness and monotony; but I am bound to say that the graves looked neglected as well as picturesque. The cemetery at Pera had too much refuse, and too many cocks, hens, and dogs in it. It looked very pretty, however, from my windows, sloping down towards the Golden Horn, beyond which I could catch a glimpse of Stamboul on the heights across the water. But I have not yet told you what Constantinople looked like when I first saw it."

"You began about the Sea of Marmora, Cousin, and here it is. I've had my middle finger on it ever since we found it, to keep the place."

"Very good, Maggie. We were coming up the Sea of Marmora one evening, and drew near to Constantinople about sunrise. I knew we were near, but I could not see anything, because a thick white mist hung in front of us like a veil resting on the sea. We were near the mouth of the Bosphorus when the sun broke out, the white mist rose slowly, like the curtain of a theatre, and—more beautiful than any scene that human hands can ever paint—I saw the Queen of Cities glittering in the sunshine."

"What made it glitter? Are the houses built of shiny stuff?"

"The houses are built of wood, but they are painted in many colours. The rounded domes of the mosques are white, and the minarets, tall, slender, and fretted, are white, with golden tops, or white and blue. I can give you no idea how beautifully the shapes of the mosques and minarets break the uniformity of the mass of houses, nor how the gay colours, the white and the gold, shone like gems against a cloudless blue sky when the mist rose. No princess in an Eastern fairy-tale ever dazzled and delighted the beholder by lifting her veil and displaying her beauty and her jewels more than my eyes were charmed when the veil was lifted from Constantinople, and I saw her lovely and sparkling in the sun."

"Are the streets very beautiful when you get into them?"

"Ah, Fred, I am sorry to say—no. They are very dirty, and very narrow. But they are picturesque, and made doubly so by the fact that in them you meet people of all nations, in every kind of dress, gay with all colours of the rainbow."

"Are there shops in the streets?"

"Most of the shops are all together in certain streets by themselves, forming what is called a Bazaar. But in the other streets there are a few, such as sweetmeat shops and coffee shops, where the old Turks go to drink thick black coffee, and smoke, and hear the news; and (if they wish it) to be shaved."

"I thought Turks wore long beards?"

"The lower-class Turks, and the country ones, and those who like to follow the old fashions, wear beards, but they have their heads shaved, and wear the turban. Most modern Turks, Government officials, and so forth, shave off their beards and whiskers, and wear short hair and a moustache, with the fez, or cloth cap. The old-fashioned dress is much the handsomest, I think, and I am sorry it is dying out."

"The poor women-Turks aren't allowed to go out, are they, Cousin Peregrine?"

"Oh yes, they are, but they have to be veiled, and so bundled up that you can not only not tell one woman from another, but they hardly look like women at all—more like unsteady balloons, or inflated sacks of different colours. They wear yellow leather boots, and no stockings. Over the boots they wear large slippers, in which they shuffle along with a gait very little less awkward than the toddle of a cramp-footed lady in China. If they are ungraceful on foot, matters are not much better when they ride. Sitting astride a donkey (for they do not use side-saddles), a Turkish lady is about as comical an object as you could wish to behold, though I have no doubt she is quite unconscious of looking anything but dignified, as she presses on to her shopping in the Bazaar, screaming to the half-naked Arab donkey-boy to urge on her steed with his stick. As the great cloak dress, in which women envelop themselves from head to foot when they go out, is all of one colour, they have this advantage over Englishwomen out shopping, that they do not look ugly from being bedizened with ill-assorted hues and frippery trimmings. In fact a mass of Turkish women, each clothed in one shade of colour, looks very like a flower-bed—a flower-bed of sole-coloured tulips without stalks!"

"The Bazaars are bigger than Charity Bazaars, I suppose," said Maggie thoughtfully; "are they as big as the Baker Street Bazaar?"

"The Bazaar of Stamboul, the Turkish Quarter of Constantinople, is almost a Quarter by itself. It takes up many, many streets, Maggie. I am sure I wish with all my heart I could take you children through it. You would think yourselves in fairy-land, or rather in some of those underground caves full of dazzling treasures such as Aladdin found himself in."

"But why, Cousin Peregrine? Do the Turks have very wonderful things in their shops?"

"I fancy, Maggie, that in no place in the world can one see such a collection of valuable merchandise gathered from all quarters of the globe. But it is not only the gold, the jewels, the ivories, the gorgeous silks and brocades, morocco leathers, and priceless furs, which make these great Eastern markets unlike ours. The common wares for everyday use are often of a much more picturesque kind than with us. There is no great beauty in an English boot-shop, but the shoe-bazaar in Stamboul is gay with slippers of all colours, embroidered with gold and silver thread, to say nothing of the ladies' yellow leather boots. A tobacconist's shop with us is interesting to none but smokers, but Turkish pipes have stems several feet long, made of various kinds of wood, and these and the amber mouth-pieces, which are often of very great value, and enriched with jewels, make the pipe-seller's wares ornamental as well as useful. Nor can our gunsmiths' shops compete for picturesqueness with the Bazaar devoted to arms, of all sorts and kinds, elaborately mounted, decorated, sheathed, and jewelled. Turkey and Persian carpets and rugs are common enough in England now, and you know how handsome they are. Turbans, and even fezes, you will allow to look prettier than English hats. Then some of the shops display things that one does not see at all at home, such as the glass lamps for hanging in the mosques and Greek churches. Nor is it the things for sale alone which make the Bazaar so wonderful a sight. The buyers and sellers are at least as picturesque as what they sell and buy. The floor of each shop is raised two or three feet from the ground, and on a gay rug the turbaned Turk who keeps it sits cross-legged and smokes his pipe and makes his bargains, whilst down the narrow street (which in many instances is arched overhead with stone) there struggle, and swarm, and scream, and fight, black slaves, obstinate camels, primitive-looking chariots full of Turkish ladies, people of all colours in all costumes, and from every part of the world."

"It must be a wonderful place," sighed Maggie; "streets full of beautiful shoes, and streets full of beautiful carpets."

"Just so, Maggie."

"Not at all like a London Bazaar, then. I thought perhaps it was a place that shut up to itself, with a beadle sitting at the door?"

"I never was in Stamboul at night, but my belief is that the Bazaar is secured at night by the locking up of gates. You know the people who own the shops do not live in them, and as most valuable merchandise remains in the Bazaar, it must be protected in some way. I suppose the watchmen look after it."

"Have the Turks watchmen like the old London watchmen, Cousin? With nightcaps, and rattles, and lanterns, and big coats?"

"The Turkish watchmen wear turbans—not nightcaps; but they have lanterns and big coats, and in one respect they are remarkably like the old 'Charlies,' as the London watchmen used to be called. Their object is not (like policemen) to find robbers and misdoers, but to frighten them away. Just as the old Charlies used to spring their wooden rattles that the thieves might get out of their way, so the Turkish watchman strikes the ground with an iron-shod staff, that makes a great noise, for the same purpose. In one respect, however, the Turkish watchmen are most useful—they give warning of fires."

"Are there often fires in Constantinople?"

"Very often, Fred. And when a big straggling city is built of wood in a hot climate which keeps the wood so dry that a spark will set it ablaze, when the water-supply is small, and the water-carriers, who feed the fire-engines from their leathern water-pots, are chiefly bent upon securing their pay for the help they give; and when, to crown all, the sufferers themselves are generally of the belief that what is to happen will happen, and that there is very little use in trying to avert calamity—you may believe that a fire, once started, spreads not by houses, but by streets, leaving acres of black ruins dotted with the still standing chimneys. However, I fancy that of late years wider streets and stone buildings are becoming commoner. There were stone houses, built by Europeans, in Constantinople even when I was there."

"Did you see a fire whilst you were there?"

"Yes, indeed. One came so near the house where I lived that I had everything packed up ready for a start, but fortunately my house escaped. I must tell you that the Turks have one very sensible custom in connection with these fires. They have what are called fire-towers, on which men are stationed to give warning when a fire breaks out in any part of the town. They have a system of signals, by which they show in what quarter of the city the fire is. At night the signalling is done by lamps. There is an old Genoese tower between Pera and Galata which has been made into a fire-tower. The one at Stamboul I think is modern. These buildings are tall—like light-houses—so that the signals can be seen from all parts of Constantinople, and so that the men stationed on them have the whole city in view. Besides these signals, it is part of the watchman's duty, as I told you, to give warning of a fire, and the quarter in which it has broken out. I assure you one listens with some anxiety when the ring of his iron-tipped staff on the rough pavement is followed by the cry, 'Yan ghun vah! Stamboul-dah' ('There is a fire! In Stamboul'); or 'Yan ghun vah! Pera-dah' ('There is a fire! In Pera')."

"But there are fire-engines?"

"There may be very good ones now. In my time nothing could be more futile than the trumpery one which was carried on men's shoulders. Indeed, until the streets are much less rough, narrow, and steep, I do not see how one could be driven at any speed."

"Did the men who carried the engine run?"

"Yes, and at a good swinging pace too, their half-naked bodies streaming with perspiration, and (I should have thought) their labours quite doubled by yelling as they ran. Their cries are echoed by the formidable-looking band which follows, waving long poles armed with hooks, &c., for pulling down houses to stop the progress of the flames. On the heels of these figures follow mounted officials, whose dignity is in a fixed proportion to the extent of the calamity. If the fire is a very very extensive one, the Sultan himself has to be upon the spot."

"It must be very exciting," said Fred, in a tone of relish.

"You've told us lots about Constantinople now, Cousin Peregrine," said Maggie, who had the air of having heard quite enough on the subject; "now tell us about why you said Ponto never was in Constantinople. Don't the Turks keep dogs?"

"Not as we do, for pets and friends; and yet the dog population of Constantinople is more numerous and powerful, and infinitely more noisy, than I can easily describe to you."

"Whom do they belong to then?"

"They have no special masters or mistresses. They are more like troops of wolves than a collection of Pontos."

"But who gives them their dinners?"

"They live on offal and the offscourings of the city, and though the Turks freely throw all their refuse into their streets, there are so many dogs that they are all half-starved. They are very fierce, and have as a rule a great dislike to strangers. At night they roam about the streets, and are said to fall upon any one who does not carry a lantern."

"But does anybody carry a lantern—except the watchmen?"

"Everybody does. Coloured paper lanterns, like the Chinese ones, with a bit of candle inside. With one of these in one hand and a heavy stone or stick in the other, you may get safely through a night-walk among the howling dogs of Stamboul."

"What horrible beasts!"

"I think you would pity them if you were there. They are half starved, and have no friends."

"There isn't a home for lost and starving dogs in Constantinople then?"

"The whole city may be considered as the headquarters of starving dogs, but not of lost ones. That reminds me why I said Ponto had not lived there. If he had he would know his own grounds, and keep to them."

"But, Cousin Peregrine, I thought you said the Turkish dogs had no particular homes?"

"Every dog in Constantinople belongs to a particular Quarter of the town, which he knows, and to which he confines himself with marvellous sagacity. In the Quarter in which he was born, there he must live, and there (if he wishes to die peaceably) he must die. If he strays on any pretext into another Quarter, the dogs of the Quarter he has invaded will tear him to pieces, and dine upon his bones."

"How does he know where his own part of the town begins and ends?"

"I cannot tell you, Maggie. But I can tell you of my own knowledge that he does. Jack did, though we tried to deceive him over and over again."

"Who was Jack?"

"The handsomest dog I ever saw in Constantinople. The Turkish dogs are by no means beautiful as a rule, they are too much like jackals, and as they are apt to be maimed and covered with scars from fights with each other, they do not make much of what good looks they have. However, Jack was rather less wild and wolfish-looking than most of his friends. He was of a fine tawny yellow, and had an intelligent face, poor fellow. He belonged to our Quarter—in fact the cemetery was his home till he took to lying at our door."

"Then he was a Pera dog?"



"Yes, and I and the brother-officers who were living with me made friends with him. We gave him food and spoke kindly to him, and he laid aside his prejudices against foreigners, and laid his tawny limbs on our threshold. We became really attached to each other. He received the very British name of Jack, and seemed quite contented with it. He took walks with us. It was then that again and again we tried to deceive him about the limits of his Quarter, and get him into another one unawares. He never was misled. But later on, as he grew tame, less fearful of things in general, and more unwilling to quit us when we were out together, he sometimes strayed beyond his bounds, not because he was deceived as to his limits, but he ventured on the risk for our sakes. Even then, however, he would not walk in the public thoroughfares, he 'dodged' through gardens, empty courtyards and quiet by-places where he was not likely to meet the outraged dogs of the Quarter he was invading. The moment we were safe back 'in bounds' he came freely and happily to our side once more. I have often wondered, since I left Constantinople, how long Jack lived, and how he died."

"Oh, didn't you take him away?"

"I couldn't, my dear. And you must not think, Maggie, that if Turks do not pet dogs they are cruel to them. It is not the case. A Turk would never dream of petting a dog, but if he saw one looking hot and thirsty in the street he would be more likely to take trouble to get it a dish of water than many English people who feed their own particular pets on mutton-chops. Jack was not likely to be ill-treated after our departure, but I sometimes have a heart-sore suspicion that we may have raised dreams in his doggish heart never again to be realized. If he were at all like other dogs (and the more we knew of him the more companionable he became), he must have waited many a long hour in patient faithfulness at our deserted threshold. He must have felt his own importance as a dog with a name, in that wild and nameless tribe to which he belonged. He must have dreamed of his foreign friends on many a blazing summer's afternoon. Perhaps he stole cautiously into other Quarters to look for us. I hope he did not venture too far—Maggie—my dear Maggie! You are not fretting about poor Jack? I assure you that really the most probable thing is that our successors made friends with him."

"Do you really and truly think so, Cousin Peregrine?"

"On my word of honour I do, Maggie. You must remember that Jack was not a Stamboul dog. He belonged to Pera, where Europeans live, so there is a strong probability that his unusual tameness and beauty won other friends for him when we had gone."

"I hope somebody very nice lived in your house when you went away."

"I hope so, Maggie."

"Cousin Peregrine, do you think we could teach Ponto to know his own quarter?"

"I think you could, Fred. I once lived next door to a man who was very fond of his garden. It was a mere strip in front of his hut—for we were quartered in camp at this time—and not even a paling separated it from a similar strip in front of my quarters. My bit, I regret to say, was not like his in any respect but shape. I had a rather ragged bit of turf, and he had a glowing mass of flowers. The monotony of my grass-plat was only broken by the marrow-bones and beef-ribs which my dog first picked and then played with under my windows. I was as fond of him as my brother-officer was of his flowers. I am sorry to say that Dash had a fancy for the gayer garden, and for some time my good-tempered neighbour bore patiently with his inroads, and with a sigh buried the beef-bone that Dash had picked among the mignonette at the roots of a magnificent rose which he often alluded to as 'John Hopper,' and seemed to treat as a friend. Mr. Hopper certainly throve on Dash's bones, but unfortunately Dash took to applying them himself to the roots of plants for which I believe that bone manure is not recommended. When he made a hole two foot deep in the Nemophila bed, and laid a sheep's head by in it against a rainy day, I felt that something must be done. After the humblest apologies to my neighbour, I begged for a few days' grace. He could not have spoken more feelingly of the form, scent, and colour of his friend John Hopper than I ventured to do in favour of the intelligence of my friend Dash. In short I begged for a week's patience on his part, that I might teach Dash to know his own garden. If I failed to do so, I promised to put him on the chain, much as I dislike tying up dogs."

"How did you manage, Cousin?"

"Whenever Dash strayed into the next garden, I began to scold him in the plainest English, and covered him with reproaches, till he slunk gradually back to his own untidy grass-plat. When he touched his own grounds, I changed my tone at once, to approbation. At first this change simply brought him flying to my feet again, if I was standing with my friend in his garden. But after a plentiful application of, 'How dare you, Sir? Go back' (pointing), 'go back to your garden. If this gentleman catches you here again, he'll grind your bones to make John Hopper's bread. That's a good dog. No! Down! Stay where you are!'—Dash began to understand. It took many a wistful gaze of his brown eyes before he fully comprehended what I meant, but he learned it at last. He never put paw into Major E——'s garden without looking thoroughly ashamed of himself. He would lie on his own ragged lawn and wistfully watch me sitting and smoking among the roses; but when I returned to our own quarters he welcomed me with an extravagant delight which seemed to congratulate me on my escape from the enemy's country."

"Oh, Cousin Peregrine! We must try and teach Ponto to know his own garden."

"I strongly advise you to do so. Ponto is a gentleman of honour and intelligence, I feel convinced. I think he will learn his neighbourly duties, and if he does do so as well as Dash did—whatever you may think of Mr. Mackinnon—I think Mr. Mackinnon will soon cease to regard Ponto as—a nasty next-door neighbour."



THE PRINCES OF VEGETATION.

This fanciful and high-sounding title was given by the great Swedish botanist, Linnaeus, to a race of plants which are in reality by no means distantly allied to a very humble family—the family of Rushes.

The great race of Palms puzzled the learned Swede. He did not know where to put them in his system; so he gave them an appendix all to themselves, and called them the Princes of Vegetation.

The appendix cannot have been a small one, for the Order of Palms is very large. About five hundred different species are known and named, but there are probably many more.

They are a very beautiful order of plants; indeed, the striking elegance of their forms has secured them a prominence in pictures, poetry, and proverbs, which makes them little less familiar to those who live in countries too cold for them to grow in, than to those whose home, like theirs, is in the tropics. The name Palm (Latin, Palma) is supposed to have been applied to them from a likeness in the growth of their branches to the outspread palm of the hand; and the fronds of some of the fan-palms are certainly not unlike the human hand, as commonly drawn by street-boys upon doors and walls.

So beautiful a tree, when it flourished in the symbol-loving East, was sure to be invested with poetical and emblematical significance. Conquerors were crowned with wreaths of palm, which is said to have been chosen as a symbol of victory, because of the elasticity with which it rises after the pressure of the heaviest weight—an explanation, perhaps, more appropriate to it as the emblem of spiritual triumphs—the Palm of Martyrdom and the Palms of the Blessed.

But as a religious symbol it is not confined to the Church triumphant. Not only is the "great multitude which no man can number" represented to us as "clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands"—the word "palmer" records the fact that he who returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was known, not only by the cockle-shell on his gown, but by the staff of palm on which he leant. St. Gregory also alludes to the palm-tree as an accepted emblem of the life of the righteous, and adds that it may well be so, since it is rough and bare below, and expands above into greenness and beauty.

The palm here alluded to is evidently the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera). This is pre-eminently the palm-tree of the Bible, and was in ancient times abundant in the Holy Land, though, curiously enough, it is now comparatively rare. Jericho was known as "the city of palm-trees" in the time of Moses (Deut. xxxiv. 3). It is alluded to again in the times of the Judges (Judges i. 11; iii. 13), and it bore the same title in the days of Ahaz (2 Chron. xxviii. 15). Josephus speaks of it as still famous for its palm-groves in his day, but it is said that a few years ago only one tree remained, which is now gone.

It was under a palm that Deborah the prophetess sat when all Israel came up to her for judgment; and to an audience under the shadow of this tree, which bore her name, that she summoned Barak out of Kedesh-naphtali. Bethany means "the House of Dates," and the branches of palm which the crowd cut down to strew before our Lord as He rode into Jerusalem were no doubt of this particular species.

Women—as well as places—were often named after the Princes of Vegetation, whose graceful and stately forms approved them to lovers and poets as fit types of feminine beauty.

Usefulness, however, even more than ornament, is the marked characteristic of the tribe. "From this order (Palmae)," says one writer, "are obtained wine, oil, wax, flour, sugar, salt, thread, utensils, weapons, habitations, and food"—a goodly list of the necessaries of life, to which one may add many smaller uses, such as that of "vegetable ivory" for a variety of purposes, and the materials for walking-sticks, canework, marine soap, &c., &c.

The Princes of Vegetation are to be found in all parts of the world where the climate is adapted to the tropical tastes of their Royal Highnesses.

They have come into our art, our literature, and our familiar knowledge from the East; but they abound in the tropics of the West, and some species are now common in South America whose original home was in India.

The cocoa-nut palm (Cocos nucifera) is an Indian and South Sea Islands Prince; but his sway extends now over all tropical countries. The cocoa-nut palm begins to bear fruit in from seven to eight years after planting, and it bears on for no less than seventy to eighty years.

Length of days, you see, as well as beauty and beneficence, mark this royal race which Linnaeus placed alone!

Cocoa-nuts are useful in many ways. The milk is pleasant, and in hot and thirsty countries is no doubt often a great boon. The white flesh—a familiar school-boy dainty—is eaten raw and cooked. It produces oil, and is used in the manufacture of stearine candles. It is also used to make marine soap, which will lather in salt water. The wood of the palm is used for ornamental joinery, the leaves for thatch and basket-work, the fibre for cordage and cocoa-nut matting, and the husk for fuel and brushes.

Cocoa and chocolate come from another palm (Theobroma cacao), which is cultivated largely in South America and the West Indies.

Sago and tapioca are made from the starch yielded by several species of palm. The little round balls of sago are formed from a white powder (sago flour, as it is called), just as homoeopathic pillules are formed from sugar. It is possible to see chemists make pills from boluses to globules, but the Malay Indians are said jealously to keep the process of "pearling" sago a trade secret. Tapioca is only another form of sago starch. Sago flour is now imported into England in considerable quantities. It is used for "dressing" calicoes.

Among those products of the palm which we import most liberally is "vegetable ivory."

Vegetable ivory is the kernel of the fruit of one of the most beautiful of palms (Phytelephas macrocarpa).

This Prince of Vegetation is a native of South America. "It is short-stemmed and procumbent, but has a magnificent crown of light green ostrich-feather-like leaves, which rise from thirty to forty feet high." The fruit is as big as a man's head. Two or three millions of the nuts are imported by us every year, and applied to all the purposes of use and ornament for which real ivory is available.

The Coquilla-nut palm (Attalea funifera), whose fruit is about the size of an ostrich-egg, also supplies a kind of vegetable ivory.

Our ideas of palm-trees are so much derived from the date palm of Judaea, that an erect and stately growth is probably inseparably connected in our minds with the Princes of Vegetation. But some of the most beautiful are short-stemmed and creeping; whilst others fling giant arms from tree to tree of the tropical forests, now drooping to the ground, and then climbing up again in very luxuriance of growth. Many of the rattan palms (Calamus) are of this character. They wind in and out, hanging in festoons from the branches, on which they lean in princely condescension, with stems upwards of a thousand feet in length.

There is something comical in having to add that these clinging rattan stems, which cannot support their own weight, have a proverbial fame, and are in great request for the manufacture of walking-sticks. They are also largely imported into Great Britain for canework.

Another very striking genus (Astrocaryum) is remarkable for being clothed in every part—stem, leaves, and spathe—with sharp spines, which are sometimes twelve inches long. Astrocaryum murumura is edible. The pulp of the fruit is said to be like that of a melon, and it has a musky odour. It is a native of tropical America, and abundant on the Amazon. Cattle wander about the forests in search of it, and pigs fatten on the nut, which they crunch with their teeth, though it is exceedingly hard.

The date palm yields a wine called toddy, or palm wine, and from the Princes of Vegetation is also distilled a strong spirit called arrack.

And speaking again of the Judaean palms, I must here say a word of those which we associate with Palm Sunday—the willow palms—for which we used to hunt when we were children.

It is hardly necessary to state that these willow branches, with their soft silvery catkins, the crown of the earliest spring nosegays which the hedges afford, are not even distantly related to the Princes of Vegetation, though we call them palms. They are called palms simply from having taken the place of real palm-branches in the ceremonies of the Sunday of our Lord's Entry into Jerusalem, where these do not grow.

A very old writer, speaking of the Jews strewing palm-branches before Christ, says: "And thus we take palm and flowers in procession as they did ... in the worship and mind of Him that was done on the cross, worshipping and welcoming Him with song into the Church, as the people did our Lord into the city of Jerusalem. It is called Palm Sunday for because the palm betokeneth victory; wherefore all Christian people should bear palm in procession, in token that He hath foughten with the fiend our enemy, and hath the victory of hym."

A curious old Scotch custom is recorded in Lanark, as "kept by the boys of the Grammar-school, beyond all memory in regard to date, on the Saturday before Palm Sunday. They then parade the streets with a palm, or its substitute, a large tree of the willow kind (Salix caprea), in blossom, ornamented with daffodils, mezereon, and box-tree. This day is called Palm Saturday, and the custom is certainly a popish relic of very ancient standing."

But to return to palms proper. Before taking leave of them, there is one more word to be said in their praise which may endear this noble race to eyes which will never be permitted to see the wonders of tropical forests.

As pot-plants they are not less remarkable for the picturesqueness of their forms, than for the patience with which they endure those vicissitudes of stuffiness and chill, dryness, dust, and gas, which prove fatal to so many inmates of the flower-stand or the window-sill. Pot-palms may be bought of any good nurseryman at prices varying from two or three shillings to two or three pounds. Latania borbonica and Phoenix reclinata are good and cheap. Sandy-peaty soil, with a little leaf-mould, is what they like, and this should be renewed (with a larger pot) every second year. Thus, with the most moderate care, and an occasional sponging, or a stand-out in a soft shower, the exiled Princes of Vegetation, whose shoots in their native forests would have been of giant luxuriance, will live for years, patiently adapting themselves by slow growth to the rooms which they adorn, easier of management than the next fern you dig up on your rambles, and, in the incomparable beauty of their forms, the perpetual delight of an artistic eye.



LITTLE WOODS.

By little woods are here meant—not woods of small extent, but—woods in which the trees never grow big, woods that are to grown-up woods as children to grown-up people, woods that seem made on purpose for children, and dwarfs, and dolls, and fairies.

These little woods have many names, varying with the trees of which they are composed, or the districts in which they are found. One of the best-known names is that of copse or coppice, and it brings with it remembrances of the fresh beauty of spring days, on which—sheltered by the light copse-wood from winds that are still keen—we have revelled in sunshine warm enough to persuade us that summer was come "for good," as we picked violets and primroses to the tolling of the cuckoo.

Things "in miniature" have a natural charm for little people, and most of my young readers have probably been familiar with favourite copses, or miniature pine-forests. Perhaps some of them would like to know why these little woods never grow into big ones, and something also of the history and uses of those trees of which little woods are composed.

They are not made of dwarf trees. There are little woods, as well as big woods, of oak, elm, ash, pine, willow, birch, beech, and larch. In some cases the little woods are composed of the growth which shoots up when the principal trunk of the tree has been cut down, but they are generally little merely because they are young, and are cut down for use before they have time to grow into forest-trees. The object of this little paper is to give some account of their growth and uses. It will be convenient to take them alphabetically, by their English names.

The Ash (Fraxinus excelsior and other varieties) is a particularly graceful and fine tree at its full growth. It is a native of Great Britain, and of many other parts of the world. It is long lived. The most profitable age for felling it as a forest-tree is from eighty to a hundred years. The flower comes out before the leaves, which are late, like those of the oak. The bunches of seed-vessels, or "ash-keys," as they are fancifully called, were pickled in salt and water and eaten in old times. The Greeks and Romans made their spears of ash-wood. The wood is not so durable as that of some other trees, but it is tough, and is thus employed for work subject to sudden strains. It is good for kitchen-tables, as it scours well and does not easily splinter.

In little woods, or ash-holts, or ash-coppices, the ash is very valuable. They are either cut over entirely at certain intervals, or divided into portions which are cut yearly in succession. At four or five years old the ash makes good walking-sticks, crates to pack glass and china in, hoops, basket handles, fences, and hurdles. Croquet-mallets are also made of ash. At twelve or fourteen it is strong enough for hop-poles. There are many old superstitions in connection with the ash, and there is a midland counties saying that if there are no keys on the ash, within a twelvemonth there will be no king.

There are several fine American varieties, and both in the States and in Canada the wood is used for purposes similar to ours.

The Alder (Alnus glutinosa, &c.) is never a very large tree. It is supposed to be in maturity when it is sixty years old. It will grow in wetter places than any other tree in Europe—even than the willow. Though the wood is soft, it is very durable in water. Virgil speaks of it as being used for boats. It is highly valued in Holland for piles, and it is said that the famous bridge of the Rialto at Venice is built on piles of alder-wood. Though invaluable for water-pipes, pump-barrels, foundations for bridges, &c., alder-wood is of little use on dry land unless it can be kept perfectly dry. Wooden vessels and sabots, however, are made of it.

Alders are chiefly grown in little woods. Planted by the side of rivers, too, their tough and creeping roots bind and support the banks. Alder-coppices are very valuable to the makers of—gunpowder! Every five or six years the little alders are cut down and burned to charcoal, and the charcoal of alder-wood is reckoned particularly good by gunpowder manufacturers.

The Aspen, or Trembling Poplar (Populus tremula), like the alder, is fond of damp situations. It has also a white soft wood, used by the turner and engraver, and for such small articles as clogs, butchers' trays, &c, &c.

The quivering of its leaves is a favourite topic with poets, and there is a curious old Highland superstition that the Cross of Christ was made of aspen-wood, and that thenceforward the tree could never rest.

In "little woods" it may be cut every seven or eight years for faggots, and at fifteen or twenty years old for poles.

The Beech (Fagus sylvatica). With this beautiful tree all our young readers must be familiar. There may be those whose minds are not quite clear about wych-elms and sycamores, but the appearance of the beech-tree is too strongly marked to allow of any confusion on the subject.

The beech is spoken of by Greek and Roman writers, and old writers on British agriculture count it among the four timber trees indigenous to England: the beech, the oak, the ash, and the elm.

It is said, however, not to be a native of Scotland or Ireland. It attains its full growth in from sixty to eighty years, but is believed to live to be as old as two hundred. The timber is not so valuable as that of the other three British trees, but it is used for a great variety of purposes. Like the alder, it will bear the action of water well, and has thus been used for piles, flood-gates, mill-wheels, &c. It is largely used by cabinet-makers for house furniture. It is employed also by carriage-makers and turners, and for various small articles, from rolling-pins to croquet-balls. The dried leaves are used in Switzerland to fill beds with, and very nice such beds must be! Long ago they were used for this purpose in England. Evelyn says that they remain sweet and elastic for seven or eight years, by which time a straw mattress would have become hard and musty. They have a pleasant restorative scent, something like that of green tea. When we think how many poor people lie on musty mattresses, or have none at all, whilst the beech-leaves lie in the woods and go very slowly to decay, we see one more of the many instances of people remaining uncomfortable when they need not be so, because of their ignorance. The fact that beech-leaves are very slow to rot makes them useful in the garden for mulching and protecting plants from frost.

In Scotland the beech-chips and branches are burned to smoke herrings, and pyroligneous acid (a form of which is probably known to any of our young readers who suffer from toothache as creosote!) is distilled from them. Mr. Loudon tells us that the word "book" comes from the German word buch, which, in the first instance, means a beech, and was applied to books because the old German bookbinders used beech-wood instead of paste-board for the sides of thick volumes. Beech-wood is especially good for fuel. Only the sycamore, the Scotch pine, and the ash give out more heat and light when they burn. Beech-nuts—or beech-mast, as it is called—are eaten by many animals. Pigs, deer, poultry, &c., are turned into beech-woods to fatten on the mast. Squirrels and dormice delight in it. In France it is used to make beech-oil. This oil is used both for cooking and burning, and for the latter purpose has the valuable property of having no nasty smell.

Of the beauty of the beech as a forest-tree—let artists rave! Its smooth and shapely bole does not tempt the sketcher's eye alone. To the lover and the school-boy (and, alas! to that inartistic animal the British holiday-maker) it offers an irresistible surface for cutting names and dates. Upon its branches and beneath its shadow grow many fungi, several of which are eatable. Truffles are found there; those underground dainties which dogs (and sometimes pigs!) are trained to grub up for our benefit. They discover the whereabouts of the truffle by scent, for there is no sign of it above ground. Nothing else will grow under beech-trees, except holly.

Scarcely less charming than the beech-forests are beech-hedges. They cut and thrive with cutting like yew-hedges.

"Little woods" of beech are common in Buckinghamshire. They are chiefly grown for the charcoal, which is valuable for gunpowder.

"Copper-Beeches"—red-leaved beech-trees, very beautiful for ornamental purposes—all come from one red-leaved beech, a sort of freak of nature, which was found about a century ago in a wood in Germany.

The Birch (Betula alba, &c.) is also a tree of very distinctive appearance. The silver-white bark, which peels so delightfully under childish fingers, is not less charming to the sketcher's eye, whether as a near study or as gleaming points of high light against the grey greens and misty purples of a Highland hillside. It is emphatically the tree of the Highlands of the North. It bends and breaks not under the wildest winds, it thrives on poor soil, and defies mist and cold. So varied are its uses that it has been said that the Scotch Highlander makes everything of birch, from houses to candles, and beds to ropes! The North American Indians and the Laplanders apply it almost as universally as the Chinese use paper. The wigwams or huts of the North American Indians are made of birch-bark laid over a framework of birch-poles or trunks, and their canoes or boats are cased in it. The Laplander makes his great-coat of it,—a circular poncho with a hole for his head,—as well as his houses and his boots and shoes. It will be easily believed that birch-bark was used in ancient times for writing on before the invention of paper.

Birch-wood makes good fuel. It is also used by cabinet-makers. Its uses in "little woods" are many. The charcoal is good for gunpowder, and it is that of which crayons are made. Birch-coppices are cut for brooms, hoops, &c., at five to six years old, and at ten to twelve for faggot-wood, poles, fencing, and bark for the tanners. Birch-spray (that is, the twigs and leaves) is used for smoking hams and herrings, and for brooms to sweep grass. It is also used to make birch-rods; but as we think very ill of the discipline of any household in which the children and the pets cannot be kept in order without being beaten, we hope our own young readers are only familiar with birch-rods in picture-books.

The (Sweet or Spanish) Chestnut (Castanca vesca) is grown in "little woods" for hop-poles, fence-wood, and hoops. The wood of the full-grown tree is also valuable.

Evelyn says, "A decoction of the rind of the tree tinctures hair of a golden colour, esteemed a beauty in some countries." It would be entertaining to know if this is the foundation of the "auricomous fluids" advertised by hair-dressers!

Amongst "little woods" the dearest of all to the school-boy must surely be the hazel-copse! The Hazel (Corylus avellana) is never a large tree. It is, however, long lived, and of luxuriant growth. When cut it "stoles" or throws up shoots very freely, and when treated so will live a hundred years. With a single stem, Mr. Loudon assures us, it would live much longer. Filbert-hazels are a variety with longer nuts. Hazels are cultivated not only for the nuts, but for corf-rods,[1] hoops, fencing, &c., and hazel-charcoal, like beech-charcoal, is used for crayons. Like many other plants, the hazel has two kinds of flowers, which come out before the leaves. The long pale catkins appear first, and a little later tiny crimson flowers come where the nuts are afterwards to be.

Many old superstitions are connected with the hazel. Hazel-rods were used to "divine" for water and minerals by professors of an art which received the crack-jaw title of Rhabdomancy. Having tried our own hand at Rhabdomancy, we are able to say that the freaks of the divining-rod in sensitive fingers are sometimes as curious as those of a table among table-turners; and are probably susceptible of similar explanations.

The Larch (Larix Europaea, &c.). Though traceable in England for two hundred years, it is within this century that the larch has been extensively cultivated for profit. The exact date of its introduction from the mountain ranges of some other part of Europe is not known, but there is a popular tradition that it was first brought to Scotland with some orange-trees from Italy, and having begun to wither under hot-house treatment, was thrown outside, where it took root and throve thereafter. The wood of full-grown larch-trees is very valuable. To John, Duke of Athol, Scotland is indebted for the introduction of larch plantations on an enormous scale. He is said to have planted 6500 acres of mountain-ground with these valuable trees, which not only bring in heavy returns as timber, but so enrich the ground on which they grow, by the decayed spicula or spines which fall from them, as to increase its value in the course of some years eight or tenfold. The Duke was buried in a coffin made of larch-wood! This sounds as if the merits of the larch-tree had been indeed a hobby with him, but when one comes to enumerate them one does not wonder that a man should feel his life very usefully devoted to establishing so valuable a tree in his native country, and that the pains and pride it brought him should have awakened sentiment enough to make him desire to make his last cradle from his favourite tree.

Larch-wood is light, strong, and durable. It is used for beams and for ship-building, for railroad-sleepers and mill-axles, for water-pipes, and for panels for pictures. Evelyn says that Raphael, the great painter, painted many of his pictures on larch-wood. It will stand in heat and wet, under water and above ground. It yields good turpentine, but trees that have been tapped to procure this are of no use afterwards for building purposes. The larch is said not to make good masts for ships, but its durability in all varieties of temperature and changes of weather make it valuable for vine-props. When made of larch-poles these are never taken up as hop-poles are. Year after year the vines climb them and fade at their feet, and they are said to have outlasted at least one generation of vine-growers.

In "little woods" the larches are planted very close, so that they may "spindle up" and become tall before they grow thick. They are then used for hop-poles and props of various kinds.

The Oak (Quercus robur, &c.) is pre-eminently a British tree. Of its beauty, size, the venerable age it will attain, and its historical associations, we have no space to speak here, and our young readers are probably not ignorant on the subject.

The durability of its wood is proverbial. The bark is also of great value, and though the slow growth of the oak in its earlier years postpones profit to the planter, it does so little harm to other wood grown with it (being in this respect very different from the beech), that profitable coppice-wood and other trees may be grown in the same plantation.

The age at which the oak should be felled for ship-timber, &c., depends on many circumstances, and is fixed by different authorities at from eighty to a hundred and fifty years.

Oaks are said to be more liable than other trees to be struck by lightning.

Oak-coppices or "little woods" are cut over at from twelve to thirty years old. The bark is valuable as well as the wood.

The Pine (Pinus sylvestris, &c.), like the larch, will flourish on poor soils. It is valuable as a protection for other trees. The varieties and variations of this tree are very numerous.

It is a very valuable timber-tree, the wood being loosely known as "deal"; but "deals" are, properly speaking, planks of pine-wood of a certain thickness, "boards" being the technical name for a thicker kind. Pine trunks are used for the masts of ships. "In the north of Russia and in Lapland the outer bark is used, like that of the birch, for covering huts, for lining them inside, and as a substitute for cork for floating the nets of fishermen; and the inner bark is woven into mats like those made from the lime-tree. Ropes are also made from the bark, which are said to be very strong and elastic, and are generally used by the fishermen."

In the north of Europe great quantities of tar are procured from the Scotch pine. Torches are made from the roots and trunk.

Varieties of the pine are grown in "little woods" for hop-poles.

Pinus sylvestris (the "Scotch Pine"), though a native of Scotland, has only been planted and cultivated in Great Britain for about a century.

On the subject of "thinning and pruning" in plantations planters—like doctors—differ. An amusing story was sent to Mr. Loudon by the Duke of Bedford, in reference to his grandfather, who was an advocate for vigorous thinning in the pine plantations.

"The Duke perceived that the plantation required thinning, in order to admit a free circulation of air, and give health and vigour to the young trees. He accordingly gave instructions to his gardener, and directed him as to the mode and extent of the thinning required. The gardener paused and hesitated, and at length said: 'Your Grace must pardon me if I humbly remonstrate against your orders, but I cannot possibly do what you desire; it would at once destroy the young plantation; and, moreover, it would be seriously injurious to my reputation as a planter.' My grandfather, who was of an impetuous and decided character, but always just, instantly replied, 'Do as I desire you, and I will take care of your reputation.' The plantation was accordingly thinned according to the instructions of the Duke, who caused a board to be fixed in the plantation, facing the wood, on which was inscribed, 'This plantation has been thinned by John, Duke of Bedford, contrary to the advice and opinion of his gardener.'"

The Willow (Salix caprea, &c.). The species of willow are so numerous that we shall not attempt to give a list of them.

Willow-wood wears well in water, and has been used in shipbuilding and carpentery, and especially for small ware, cricket-bats and toys. Full-grown willows of all kinds are picturesque and very graceful trees. The growth of the tree kinds when young is very rapid.

Willows are largely cultivated in "little woods" for basket-making, hoops, &c. Shoots of the Salix caprea of only a year's growth are large enough to be valuable for wicker-work. It appears to be held by cultivators that the poorer the soil in which they are grown the oftener these willows should be cut over. "In a good soil a coppice of this species will produce the greatest return in poles, hoops, and rods every five, six, seven, or eight years; and in middling soil, where it is grown chiefly for faggot-wood, it will produce the greatest return every three, four, or five years."

Horses and cattle are fed on the leaves of the willow in some parts of France.

Willows are often "pollarded." That is, their tops are cut off, which makes a large crop of young shoots spring out, giving a shock-headed effect which in gnarled old pollards by river-banks is picturesque enough.

The "little woods" of willow on the river Thames and the Cam are well known. They are small islands planted entirely with willows, and are called osier-holts.

Osier-beds of all kinds are very attractive "little woods." One always fancies one ought to be able to make something of the long pliable "sally-withys"—as the Wiltshire folk call willow switches. Indeed, as a matter of fact, the making of rough garden-baskets is a very simple art, especially on the Scotch and German system. Let any ingenious little prowler in an osier-bed get two thickish willow-rods and fasten them at the ends with a bit of wire, so as to make two hoops. These hoops are then to intersect each other half-way up, one being perpendicular, to form the handle and the bottom of the basket, the other being placed horizontally, to form the rim. More wire will be needed to fix them in their positions. Much finer willow-wands are used to wattle, or weave, the basket-work; ribs of split osiers are added, and the wattling goes in and out among them, and at once secures them and rests upon them.

This account is not likely to be enough to teach the most intelligent of our readers! But one fancies that a rough sort of basket-making might almost be devised out of one's own head, especially if he had been taught (as we were, by a favourite nursemaid) to plait rushes.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: A corf is a large basket used for carrying coals or other minerals in a mine.]



MAY-DAY,

OLD STYLE AND NEW STYLE.

"Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose."—Milton.

On the whole, perhaps, May is the most beautiful of the English months, especially the latter half of it; and yet I suppose very few May-days come round on which we are not disposed to wonder why our ancestors did not choose a warmer, and indeed a more flowery season for Maypoles and garlands and out-door festivities.

Children who live in the north of England especially must have a painfully large proportion of disappointments out of the few May-days of childhood.

Books and pictures, old stories told by Papa or Mamma of clattering chimney-sweeps and dancing May Queens, such as they saw in their young days, or heard of from their elders, have perhaps roused in us two of the strongest passions of childhood—the love of imitation and the love of flowers. We are determined to have a May-bush round the nursery-window, duly gathered before sunrise. "Pretty Bessy," our nursemaid, can do anything with flowers, from a cowslip ball to a growing forget-me-not garland. The girls are apt pupils, and pride themselves on their birthday wreaths. The boys are admirably adapted for May sweeps. Clatter is melodious in their ears. They would rather be black than white. Burnt cork will disguise them effectually; but they would prefer soot. A pole is forthcoming; ribbons are not wanting; the poodle will dance with the best of us. We have a whole holiday on Saints' Days, and the 1st of May is SS. Philip and James'.

What then hinders our enjoyment, and makes it impossible to keep May-day according to our hopes?

Too often this. It is "too cold to dawdle about." Flowers are by no means plentiful; they are pinched by the east wind. The May Queen would have to dance in her winter clothes, and would probably catch cold even then. It is not improbable that it will rain, and it is possible that it may snow. Worse than all, the hawthorn-trees are behind time, and are as obstinate as the head-nurse in not thinking the weather fit for coming out. The May is not in blossom on May-day.

And yet May-day used to be kept in the north of England as well as in warmer nooks and corners. The truth is that one reason why we find the weather less pleasant, and the flowers fewer than our forefathers did, is that we keep May-day eleven days earlier in the year than they used to do.

To explain how this is, I must try and explain what Old Style and New Style—in reckoning the days of the year—mean.

First let me ask you how you can count the days. Supposing you wish to remain just one day and night in a certain place, how will you know when you have stayed the proper time? In one of two ways. Either you will count twenty-four hours on the clock, or you will stay through all the light of one day, and all the darkness of one night. That is, you will count time either by the Clock or by the Sun.

Now we say that there are 365 days in the year. But there are really a few odd hours and minutes and seconds into the bargain. The reason of this is that the Sun does not go by the Clock in making the days and nights. Sometimes he spends rather more than twenty-four hours by the Clock over a day and night; sometimes he takes less. On the whole, during the year, he uses up more time than the Clock does.

The Clock makes exactly 365 days of 24 hours each. The Sun makes 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 49 seconds, and a tiny bit besides.

Now in time these odd hours added together would come to days, and the days to years. About fifteen hundred years of this little difference between the Sun and the Clock would bring it up to a year. So that if you went by the Clock you would say, "It is fifteen hundred years since such a thing happened." And if you went by the Sun you would say, "It is fifteen hundred and one years since it happened."

Men who could think and calculate saw how inconvenient this would be, and what mistakes it would lead to. If the difference did not come to much in their lifetime, they could see that it would come to a serious error for other people some day. So Julius Caesar thought he would pull the Clock and the Sun together by adding one day every four years to the Clock's year to make up for the odd hours the Sun had been spinning out during the three years before. The odd day was added to the month of February, and that year (in which there are three hundred and sixty-six days) is called Leap Year.

You remember the old saw—

"Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November; February hath twenty-eight alone, All the rest have thirty-one; Except in Leap Year, at which time February's days are twenty-nine."

This is called the Old Style of reckoning.

Now I dare say you think the matter was quite settled; but it was not, unfortunately—the odd day every four years was just a tiny little bit too much, and now the Clock was spending more time over her years than the Sun. After more than sixteen hundred years the small mistake was becoming serious, and Pope Gregory XIII decided that we must not have so many leap years. For the future, in every four hundred years, three of the Clock's extra days must be given up, and ten days were to be left out of count at once to make up for the mistakes of years past.

This change is what is called the New Style of Reckoning. Pope Gregory began it in the year 1582, but we did not adopt it in England till 1752, and as we had then nearly two hundred years more of the little mistake to correct, we had to leave eleven days out of count. In Russia, where our new Princess comes from, they have not got it yet. The New Style was begun in England on September the 2nd. The next day, instead of being called September the 3rd, was called September the 14th. Since then we have gone on quite steadily, and played no more tricks with either the Sun's year or the Clock's year.

I wonder what happened in the year 1752 to all the children whose birthdays came between September the 2nd and September the 14th! I hope their birthday presents did not drop through because his Majesty George the Second had let eleven birthdays slip out of that year's calendar, to get the Clock and the Sun to work comfortably together.

Now I think you will be able to see that in the next year after this change, May-day was kept eleven days earlier in the Sun's year than the year before; and it has been at an earlier season ever since, and therefore in colder weather. May-day in the Old Style would have come this year about the middle of the month; and as years rolled on it would have been kept later and later in the summer, and thus in warmer and warmer weather, because of that little mistake of Julius Caesar. At last, instead of complaining that the May is not out by May-day, people would have had to complain that it was over.

Now in the New Style we keep May-day almost in Spring, and, thanks to Pope Gregory's clever arrangement, we shall always keep it at the same season.

It is not always cold on a May-day even in the north of England. I have a vivid remembrance of at least one which was most balmy; and, when they are warm enough for out-door enjoyment, the early days of the year seem, like the early hours of the day, to have an exquisite freshness peculiarly their own. Then the month of May, as a whole, is certainly the month of flowers in the woods and fields. Autumn is the gayest season of the garden, but Spring and early Summer give us the prettiest of the wild-flowers.

"Among the changing months May stands confest The sweetest, and in fairest colours drest."

That fine weather is not quite to be relied upon for May-day, even in the Old Style, some of the old May-day customs seem to suggest. In the Isle of Man it was the custom not only to have a "Queen of May," but also a "Queen of Winter." The May Queen was, as elsewhere, some pretty and popular damsel, gaily dressed, and with a retinue of maids of honour. The Winter Queen was a man or boy dressed in woman's clothes of the warmest kind—"woollen hood, fur tippet," &c. Fiddles and flutes were played before the May Queen and her followers, whilst the Queen of Winter and her troop marched to the sound of the tongs and cleaver. The rival companies met on a common and had a mock battle, symbolizing the struggle of Winter and Summer for supremacy. If the Queen of Winter's forces contrived to capture the Queen of May, her floral majesty had to be ransomed by payment of the expenses of the day's festivity.

Whether the Queen of Winter conquered in bad weather, and her fairer rival when the season was warm and the flowers abundant, we are not told.

This ceremony was probably learnt from the Danes and Norwegians, who were long masters of the Isle of Man. Olaus Magnus, speaking of the May-day customs of the Goths and Southern Swedes, says, "The captain of one band hath the name and appearance of Winter, is clothed in skins of beasts, and he and his band armed with fire-forks. They fling about ashes, by way of prolonging the reign of Winter; while another band, whose captain is called Florro, represents Spring, with green boughs such as the season affords. These parties skirmish in sport, and the mimic contest concludes with a general feast."

A few years ago in the Isle of Man the hillsides blazed with bonfires and resounded to horns on the 11th of May (May-eve, Old Style). "May flowers" were put at the doors of houses and cattle-sheds, and these were not hawthorn blossoms, but the flowers of the kingcup, or marsh marigold. Crosses made of sprays of mountain ash were worn the same night, and they, the bonfires and May flowers, were reckoned charms against "wizards, witches, enchanters, and mountain hags."

At Helston, in Cornwall, May-day seems to have been known by the name of Furry Day. Perhaps a corruption of "Flora's Day." People wore hawthorn in their hats, and danced hand-in-hand through the town to the sound of a fiddle. This particular performance was known as a "faddy."

It is probable that some of our May-day customs came from the Romans, who kept the festival of Flora, the goddess of flowers, at this season. Others, perhaps, have a different, if not an older source. One custom was certainly common to both nations. When the feast of Flora was celebrated, the young Romans went into the woods and brought back green boughs with which they decked the houses.

To "go a-Maying" is in fact the principal ceremony of the day wherever kept, and for whatever reason. In the north of England children and young folk "were wont to rise a little after midnight on the morning of May-day, and walk to some neighbouring wood accompanied with music and the blowing of horns, where they broke down branches from the trees, and adorned them with nosegays and crowns of flowers. This done, they returned homewards with their booty about the time of sunrise, and made their doors and windows triumph in the flowery spoil." Stubbs, in the Anatomie of Abuses (A.D. 1585), speaks of this custom as common to "every parish, town, and village." The churches, as well as the houses, seem in some places to have been dressed with flowers and greenery.

In an old MS. of the sixteenth century it is said that on the feast of SS. Philip and James, the Eton boys were allowed to go out at four o'clock in the morning to gather May to dress their rooms, and sweet herbs to perfume them, "if they can do it without wetting their feet!"

Thirty or forty years ago May-day decorations, in some country places, consisted of strewing the cottage doorsteps with daisies, or other flowers.

In Hertfordshire a curious custom obtained of decking the neighbours' doors with May if they were popular, and with nettles if they were the reverse.

In Lancashire rustic wags put boughs of various trees at the doors of the girls of the neighbourhood. Each tree had a meaning (well known in the district), sometimes complimentary, and sometimes the reverse.

In France it was customary for lovers to deck over-night the houses of the ladies they wished to please, and school-boys paid a like compliment to their masters. They do not seem, however, to have been satisfied with nosegays or even with green branches; they transplanted young trees from the woods to the side of the door they wished to honour, and then decked them with ribbons, &c. There is a curious record that "Henry II., wishing to recompense the clerks of Bazoche for their good services in quelling an insurrection in Guienne, offered them money; but they would only accept the permission granted them by the king, of cutting in the royal woods such trees as they might choose for the planting of the May—a privilege which existed at the commencement of the French Revolution." In Cornwall, too, it seems to have been the custom to plant "stumps of trees" before the houses, as well as to decorate them with boughs and blossoms. And Mr. Aubrey (1686) says, "At Woodstock in Oxon they every May-eve goe into the parke, and fetch away a number of haw-thorne-trees, which they set before their dores; 'tis a pity that they make such a destruction of so fine a tree."

One certainly agrees with Mr. Aubrey. Thorns are slow to grow, hard to transplant, and very lovely when they are old. It is not to be regretted that such ruthless destruction of them has gone out of fashion.

In Ireland "tall slender trees" seem to have been set up before the doors, as well as "a green bush, strewed over with yellow flowers, which the meadows yield plentifully." A writer, speaking of this in 1682, adds, "A stranger would go nigh to imagine that they were all signs of ale-sellers, and that all houses were ale-houses," referring to the old custom of a bunch of green as the sign of an inn, which is illustrated by the proverb, "Good wine needs no bush." I have an old etching of a river-side inn, in which the sign is a garland hanging on a pole.

I fancy the yellow flowers must have been cowslips, which the green fields of Erin do indeed "yield plentifully."

Besides these private May-trees, every village had its common Maypole, gaily adorned with wreaths and flags and ribbons, and sometimes painted in spiral lines of colour. The Welsh Maypoles seem to have been made from birch-trees, elms were used in Cornwall, and young oaks in other parts of England. Round these Maypoles the young villagers danced, and green booths were often set up on the grass near them.

In many villages the Maypole was as much a fixture as the parish stocks, but when a new one was required, it was brought home on May-eve in grand procession with songs and instrumental music. I am afraid there is a good deal of evidence to show that the Maypoles were not always honestly come by! However, the Puritan writers (from whose bitter and detailed complaints we learn most of what we know about the early English May-day customs) are certainly prejudiced, and perhaps not quite trustworthy witnesses. One good man groans lamentably: "What adoe make our young men at the time of May? Do they not use night watchings to rob and steale young trees out of other men's grounde, and bring them into their parishe, with minstrels playing before?"

But as the theft must have been committed with all the publicity that a fixed day, a large crowd, and a full band could ensure, and as we seem to have no record of interference at the time, or prosecutions afterwards, I hope we may infer that the owners of the woods did not grudge one tree for the village Maypole. A quainter vengeance seems to have sometimes followed the trespass. Honesty was at a discount. What had been once stolen was liable to be re-stolen. There seems to have been great rivalry among the villages as to which had the best Maypole. The happy parish which could boast the finest was not left at ease in its supremacy, for the lads of the other villages were always on the watch to steal it. A record of this custom amongst the Welsh reminds one that Wales was at once the land of bards and the home of Taffy the Thief. "If successful," says Owen, speaking of these Maypole robbers, they "had their feats recorded in songs."

In old times oxen were commonly used for farmwork, and it seems that they had their share in the May fun. Another Puritan writer says, "They have twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe having a sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen draw home this Maie poole."