perty of that capital dancer, Jack Pearson, on the evening of the ball. They were traced to him, and recovered; after which experience of his attractive qualities, George not only forswore his acquaintance, but made some very vigorous efforts at self-reform, which, after various alternations and relapses, terminated ultimately, to the infinite joy of his mother, in a very satisfactory degree of amendment in his own character and conduct. EVERY-DAY ENTOMOLOGY. THE APHIS FAMILY. eggs remain undeveloped through the winter-generally sealed to some plant, or sheltered in some safe recessand in the spring the perfect insects come forth from them; these perfect insects then go on, not to produce ova, but to bring forth other insects as perfect as themselves, until autumn returns, when ova are once more produced, and safely stored up for the winter. Here, however, we open upon one of those striking passages in natural history in which the science of entomology especially abounds. If, during the month of November, one were to take the trouble to find and dig down to the nest of a yellow ant, common enough in our pastures-the Formica flava-he would most probably IN studying this family of insects, we turn from the witness a scene which would amply repay the exerdirect to the indirect plagues of the human race. The cise. This ant is the nurse, the almost second parent, Culicides will pierce and exasperate, but the Aphides of the eggs of the aphides. In the autumn, when can devastate and destroy. At present, the aphis fa- the eggs are deposited by the last generation of the mily is a particularly popular tribe of insects, and we aphides, they are collected by the ants, and carried by hear of nothing but vastators, turnip aphides, grass underground tunnels to their nests. Here they are aphides, &c.; in fact, there is an aphis mania. Whilst carefully stored up in a proper apartment, and are these little creatures are setting the world in a panic- treated with the tenderest care, and watched over with whether needlessly or not, is not our present business-the most anxious jealousy and solicitude. The ants lick it may be both interesting and instructive to devote them with their tongues, and varnish them over with a a little space to their natural history. peculiar liquid. If it is requisite to move them, they are carried most carefully between their mandibles; and on warm sunny days they are brought to the surface of the nest to get the benefit of the air, and are always carried down again as the chilly shades of evening close upon them. Why all this care? In the spring, the eggs are hatched, and female aphides come forth from them; and now the watchful toil of the foster-mother is all rewarded. The ants are to the female aphides-to use the expressive simile of Linnæus-as their milch cows! Large flocks of these tiny kine are thus collected together in the ants' nests, and repay their owners in producing the sweet delicious fluid which everybody knows under its name of 'honey-dew.' This fluid is excreted by a peculiar apparatus in the abdomen of the aphis, and it may often be seen in drops upon the leaves of trees infested by them. 'Honey-dew' was once supposed to be a disease of the leaves themselves, and has been the subject of many foolish mistakes and superstitions. The above is the true source of this fluid; and it is sought after with the greatest avidity by the ants. The aphides are all minute in size; they are soft in structure, and have oval bodies, with small heads. They have four wings, long slender legs, apparently too fragile to support the well-conditioned bodies they uphold; and they are provided with a very curious beak, called the rostrum, or haustellum, which consists of a delicate semi-transparent tube, at the end of which is an opening so minute, as to defy detection with an ordinary microscope, but capable of being demonstrated by pressure, when a droplet of fluid will appear at the orifice. In some, this sucking apparatus is considerably longer than the body of the insect; and when not in use, is carried underneath it, and projects some distance beyond, turning up like a sort of tail. There are many species belonging to the family which exhibit a great variety in their external aspect. Some are transparent green insects, which have all the appearance of winged pieces of vegetation, so perfectly do they correspond in colour with the hue of the young shoots upon which they prey. To this it is owing that their presence is frequently only first observed when the plants droop, and wear an unhealthy appearance from their attacks. Some are black, others brown, citron-coloured, or even white, or of the colour of bronze. They appear to change their hues occasionally with the nature of the juices upon which they feed. In the month of August, if we examine some of our rose-trees, we shall find several of the aphides preying upon them of a pale rose colour, although, in the previous months, their colour was green. Some have a flat dead colour; others glisten like animated drops of brown varnish: some are more gaily painted; and others prettily marked in green and black. Several are sure to attract notice by their being clothed in a white woolly robe, by means of which they are wafted through the air almost as lightly as the thistle-down. The Aphis lanigera is thus adorned: it is the too familiar apple blight;' and communicates to the trees it infests that hoary aspect which all have beheld them wear, particularly toward the end of the summer, when white cottony flakes are seen waving from the branches. The aphides live in an imperfect society, and seem happy in the fellowship they mutually enjoy; but it is the fellowship of eating and drinking alone. Like all gluttons, they have a great aversion to locomotion: they love to cat and drink, and live generally on the very spot where good food is to be found; and, like gluttons still, it is not uncommon for them to meet with their fate upon the very scene of their festivities. These few general particulars have reference to the perfect insects: much interest attaches to the earlier history of the aphides. It is curious that these insects produce eggs in the autumn, but are viviparous-that is, produce their young alive during the summer. The The insects thus produced are capable of giving birth to a progeny of live aphides, and are endowed with enormous fecundity. Reaumur watched one under a glass vessel, and found that, in a single day, it became the parent successively of twenty young, and without itself suffering any apparent diminution of size. In fact, he naïvely remarks, that when once this function comes into play, they seem to do nothing else. It is a remarkable fact, and one upon which much obscurity hangs, that these aphides are virgin mothers; and they will produce their young incessantly for eight or nine generations without alteration of condition in that particular. M. Bonnet instituted some most laborious experiments to decide the question, and was repeatedly a witness to this fact. On one occasion he states that the mother of ninety-five aphides never paired! The insect upon which he experimented was born before his eyes, and instantly isolated, so that the possibility of a mistake cannot exist. This striking anomaly in the history of the aphides caused, at its first announcement, the greatest sensation in the scientific world, and for a long period its truth was severely questioned: it now stands among the most surely-based facts in entomology, having its foundation on a number and variety of experiments equal to the importance of the occasion. Beyond a certain limit, this faculty ceases. It is curious that aphides of the other sex are not born until the autumn, when they fulfil their functions; ova are then produced, and our summer friends bid us farewell for the season. Legion is the name of the aphides, for very many they are of a truth. It was a calculation of Reaumur, who seems to have had a sort of affection for this tribe of insects, that one aphis may be the mother of the vast number of 5,904,900,000! Professor Owen more recently gives the following as an approximation to the actual numbers a single aphis may be the progenitor of: the Aphis lanigera produces each year ten viviparous broods, and one which is oviparous, and each generation averages one hundred individuals; consequently, by the tenth generation, a quintillion will have been produced! This wonderful fertility exceeds that of any known animal. It is this which makes the plague of aphides so severe an infliction upon a country. In a few short weeks, where there had been but a little regiment, there will stand up an exceedingly great army-an army in whose ranks millions take the place of hundreds. Occasionally, from unascertained causes, these armies will emigrate; and taking flight, will darken the air with their numbers. In White's Natural History of Selborne,' it is related that on a summer afternoon in 1785, the people of the village were visited with a dense shower of these insects. Those who were out of doors at the time were literally powdered over with their bodies, and the surrounding vegetation went into appropriate mourning, altering from green to black by reason of the multitudes which alighted upon it, so as to form a thick coat. In the autumn of 1834, a great flight of them was caught by a hurricane, and suddenly diffused over many parts of Belgium. In 1836, the inhabitants of Hull were seriously incommoded by a host of them loading the air in numbers so immense, as to fill the eyes, nose, and mouth of all who were in the open air at the time of their visit; but of this there are instances innumerable. cient to send a panic to the very heart of the hop- Some account of the destructive doings of this family of insects will be read with interest at the present moment. The Aphis lanigera, or 'apple blight,' is reported to have been brought into this country from America, and was traced by Sir Joseph Banks to an importation of young American apple-trees into some nursery-grounds in the vicinity of the metropolis. It soon spread, and laid waste thousands of trees, extending its ravages all over the kingdom, until, at the present time, there scarcely exists a locality in Great Britain which has not experienced the visitation of the scourge. This aphis is furnished with a most efficient instrument for its work, in a sharp penetrator contained in its rostrum, which will pierce even the tough bark of an apple-tree; It is a comfort to know that the aphides have their a syringe-like apparatus then sucks up the vital juices, destroyers. The lady-bird, whose burning house and the part becomes covered with unsightly excrescences, children at home' excite the sympathy of our juvenile the leaves curl up, wither, fall off, and the branch friends, commits a most salutary havoc among these perishes altogether. On several occasions, this minute little gluttons; and, like a wolf in a sheepfold, it kills and pretty aphis has so nearly annihilated the apple those whom it cannot devour. It has often proved the crop, as to put a stop in some countries to the manufac-hop-growers' best, though much abused, and shamefully ture of cider; and while our orchards have been thus de- persecuted, friend. It is not very long since that the vastated, those on the continent have suffered in an equal parish engines, and several private ones, with a great ratio. The aphides also attack the more direct food of store of tobacco-water, were called upon to do battle man, and sustenance of beasts, with equally fatal effects. against an unusual flight of these poor insects, in utter Many kinds fall upon wheat, oats, and barley, and are ignorance of the real services and entire harmlessness particularly obnoxious to pease, of which it is related of the unhappy creatures they were destroying. If our by Messrs Kirby and Spence that, in one year, the Every-day Entomology' can get a hearing among those actual crop was only equal to the seed sown, in conse- who fell into this mistake, the lady-birds will be somequence of their attacks, and the fields were given up to what indebted to us for the result. The larvæ of the swine, as the produce was not worth the harvesting. syrphidae are fearful enemies of the aphides. They are In 1810, they caused so great a dearth of the same hatched from eggs artfully placed in the very middle food, as to make it impossible to procure a sufficient of a flock of these insects, and thus the larva awakes to supply for the consumption of the navy. Those who its existence with thousands of its prey immediately know anything of the appearance of a bean crop, must around it. The aphides, with characteristic stolidity, often have noticed the top, as it were, covered with creep about in the most stupid manner into the very soot; this appearance is due to the collier' aphis-a embrace of their foe. The larva seizes one of them, little black fellow, who does a vast deal of mischief in pierces it with a three-pronged dart, draws it into its his way. Singularly enough, aphides have been found mouth, pumps out its juices, and casts the dry carcase inside codling-apples. In the Entomological Magazine' contemptuously aside when it has drained all. This is is an account of this curious circumstance. On cutting the work of an instant when the larva is hungry; and open one of the apples, a whole troop of them was dis- Reaumur beheld one devour twenty aphides in less covered in its centre, and a number of other codlings than twenty minutes. They penetrate wherever their were found tenanted in the same manner. After the prey is found; nor is curled-up leaf, nor sheltered very closest examination, no aperture could be dis- bower, nor vegetable home, always an efficient proteccovered by which the insects could have entered; tive against their incursions. The larva of the Heand they all speedily died on exposure to air. The merobius also wages a fierce warfare with them; and bare mention of the ill-boding words, the fly,' is suffi- seizing them by its long, crooked, perforated mandibles, rapidly sucks out their vital fluids. There are also several kinds of aphidivorous flies, such as Scava riberii, Pyrastri, &c. which occasionally make their appearance in vast flights upon our sea-coasts, and appear hanging in the rear of flights of aphides. We may perhaps be expected to say a word, while treating of the family, upon the aphis which has been supposed by some to be the cause of the present disease in the potato crop; and we are the more disposed to do so, because great ignorance prevails upon the subject an ignorance we regret to see even in a portion of the press. The aphis is named by Mr Smee the Vastator, by others the A. pestilens. Mr Smee has laid down a chain of laws, which he believes to regulate the ravages of the aphides, to many of which, as they are merely statements of well-known facts, the fullest assent may be given; but they are made to lead to the most erroneous conclusions, when it is asserted that the potato disease is a direct consequence of the attacks of aphides. The vastator is no new aphis; it has been known and described many years ago, and is a very common insect upon decaying plants. The theory is, moreover, entirely negatived by the fact, that diseased stalks are to be found in abundance without a trace of the aphides upon them. Entomology is taught no new thing in being told that aphides are attacking all sorts of vegetables; their omnivoracity was on record long before the outbreak of the potato disease; but it is new to learn-and the fact, if it be such, should be well proved first-that that peculiar and most remarkable disorganisation of tissues and fluids which marks the potato disease, can be the result of the labours of sucking insects. Were 'gangrene,' as it is called, the consequence of the attacks of aphides, and transmissible from generation to generation, our beans, and pease, and hops, and many of our flowers, would have long since perished out of our hands. We state, therefore, our definite belief, that the aphis family is entirely innocent of the present charge against them; and with the more confidence, because it is in entire harmony with, to our personal knowledge, the private and declared sentiments of the most eminent entomologists of the present day. THE SCOTCH COLONY OF OTAGO. A REMARKABLE plan of colonisation has just been brought under public notice in Scotland. Everybody is aware that New Zealand, consisting of three islands in the Southern Ocean, is one of the finest countries in the world as respects soil, climate, natural productions, and suitableness for supporting a large civilised community-a country worthy of becoming the Great Britain of the Southern Hemisphere. This fine country, however, has from various causes been hitherto ill adapted for immigration. It was occupied at first by a company of settlers without the sanction of their government, which recognised New Zealand as an independent state, and at length assumed the sovereignty with reluctance. Even after this step, much time was wasted in discussing the proprietary rights of the chiefs, till, through neglect and misconception, the country was driven into a petty war between the natives and Europeans, which disturbed everything, and almost ruined the reputation of the colony at home. It was an association for colonising on a great scale, called the New Zealand Company, whose grievances were neither few nor small, which at length brought the subject under the review of parliament; and to avert consequences damaging to the character of one of his colleagues, Sir Robert Peel, with much magnanimity, acknowledged that there had been serious blunders in the whole line of policy pursued, and promised that every proper amends should be made. Since that time, one thing after another has been set to rights; the New Zealand Company has been put in a position to fulfil its intentions and engagements; and by the latest accounts, the miserable claims of the natives-the source of much of their enmity and strife-have been settled by the payment of a few thousand pounds. With an intelligent governor, and a garrison of two thousand soldiers, no new disturbance is likely to break the peace of the colony. New Zealand, thus rescued from mismanagement, and with its liberties guaranteed by acts of parliament, now stands in interesting relationship to the home country.* It forms a field for immigration more favourable, we believe, than almost any other crown colony, and we may soon expect to hear of its becoming a scene of thriving industry and comfort. It would, nevertheless, fail in realising this expectation if emigration were left to be conducted on the hap-hazard principle which has latterly been pursued. Here a little explanation is desirable. About the middle of the seventeenth century, the principal North American colonies were founded by Sir George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, and others, by patents from the crown. These patents gave a very extensive authority, and, in effect, permitted the patentees to colonise districts with hosts of persons from the mother country as circumstances appeared to direct. The patentee was a kind of petty sovereign, while the colonists under him formed the elements of a nation, to whom were assured the privileges of British subjects. All these colonies were ultimately successful. They had at first serious difficulties to contend with, such as the clearing of the forest, and fights with their Indian neighbours; but in the end they got over all obstacles, and history shows with what a masculine spirit they wrested an acknowledgment of independence from the crown of these realms. Since that era, colonisation has been one of the lost arts. Instead of a nobleman, like Baltimore, or a hero, like Penn, leading out great bodies of men to the wilderness, and constructing from the first an epitome of British society-gentlemen, scholars, teachers, merchants, tradesmen, agriculturists, mechanics, and labourers-it has been the practice for a poor struggling class of individuals to emigrate in detached families, and these being without friends or leaders, have usually had to endure many hardships. Besides the discomforts which too commonly attend this species of emigration, colonists are scattered over a very wide district of country, and society amongst them is of slow and feeble growth. An attempt to colonise on something like the old method is now to be made, the main difference being, that instead of a nobleman with a patent, there is to be a company with a charter. One of the old usages in instruction, according to a distinct form of belief-one colonising was the establishing a provision for religious was a Church of England, another was a Puritan, a third was a Roman Catholic, colony; and it is worth while mentioning, in passing, that Lord Baltimore's Roman Catholic colony of Maryland was the province in which toleration and shelter were first given to persons not of the legalised religion. There is no doubt others, yet, as respects colonising, the practice is not something invidious in favouring one sect beyond all without its recommendations. It forms an inducement for a large body of individuals to band together on a The following acts of parliament deserve attention:-Act 9-10 Vict., cap. 103, and Orders in Council, whereby representative government, on a liberal scale, is awarded to New Zealand, together with municipal charters for local purposes; and the jurisdiction under these charters will in each case extend over the whole territory of the particular settlement. Act 9-10 Vict., cap. 382, and charters, constituting the New Zealand Company a colonising body. Act 10-11 Vict., cap. 112, and the agreement concluded on 14th May 1847, whereby the future colonisation of New Zealand is to be the joint operation of the Crown and the Company, and that harmony of action which had hitherto been desiderated is thoroughly secured. With such titles, individual property and possession on the part of settlers are equally secure as any in Great Britain; whilst the liberties and privileges of British subjects are also secured to them as colonists. basis of common sympathy. The assurance that, on landing, the emigrant will find the whole machinery of his favourite religious and secular instruction in operation, cannot but prove a strong temptation to break loose from old associations at home. Without imitating the general intolerance of the American colonisers, the New Zealand Company proposes to carry out the principle of denominational settlements. Having acquired by its charter vast tracts of land, it offers to deal with parties for erecting colonies of a particular religious denomination. In this manner it has arranged to plant a settlement in connection with the Church of England, and also one in connection with the Free Church of Scotland, the latter being a numerous body of Presbyterians, occupying the position of dissenters from the national church. It is of this last-mentioned settlement we propose to speak. We draw attention to it on no sectarian grounds, but solely from a wish to give as correct an idea as possible of what will probably be one of the most interesting movements of the day. thousands of this and other songsters. I never heard The district apportioned to this Scotch colony is situated in the Middle Island of New Zealand, near its southern extremity, south latitude 45 degrees 40 minutes to 46 degrees 20 minutes. It comprises 400,000 acres of land, and is called Otago; such, we suppose, being the name given to the spot by the natives. The capital of Otago is to be called Dunedin, that being the Celtic name for Edinburgh, and therefore appropriate. The New Zealand Company is the seller of the lands, The locality of the proposed settlement is between and the party who transfers emigrants to the colony. eight and nine hundred miles from the scene of the No one, however, is accepted who is not recommended disturbances, which took place near the northern end through the agency of the Lay Association of the Free of the Northern Island. It is believed that there are no Church.' This is a body of respectable individuals, more than one thousand natives in the whole of the whose head-quarters are in Edinburgh (5, George Street) Middle Island; and in the large district of Otago, there and in Glasgow (3, West Nile Street); and governed are only about fifty men, women, and children in all, by arrangements sanctioned and approved by the Genone of whom are likely to give any offence. The settle- neral Assembly of their communion. A person, therement has a coast line of from fifty to sixty miles in fore, who inclines to become a settler in Otago, requires length, lying between the mouth of Otago harbour and to apply to a secretary of the association at either of a headland called the Nuggetts. It extends an average the above places; if approved of, he makes a deposit, the distance inland of seven miles, to the foot of a low receipt for which places him in connection with the mountain range. The land is fertile, and untimbered, New Zealand Company. Looking over the pamphlets but with an adequate supply of wood. The most re-issued by the Association, we observed that priority in markable feature in the district is the great facility of choosing allotments of land will be determined by ballot internal water communication. Its surface is diversified at the Company's house in London (9, Broad Street by several streams and lagoons, to which the land has Buildings), in presence of the directors. The alloteasy slopes. The basin called Otago Harbour is a fine ments differ in dimensions and character. Of the land-locked sheet of water, fourteen miles in length, 400,000 acres of which the settlement is composed, the of which the lower half, being seven miles long, has a quantity first operated on is to consist of 144,600 acres. depth of from six to fifteen fathoms water, and the These are to be divided into 2400 properties; and each! upper half from two to three fathoms. Vessels may property is to consist of 60 acres, divided into three sail up to and unload at the quay. At the upper end allotments-namely, a town lot of a quarter of an acre, of the lower harbour is placed the Port Tower, with five a suburban lot of ten acres, and a rural allotment of fathoms water close in-shore ;* and further on, at the fifty acres. head of the basin, is the site of Dunedin, sheltered by an amphitheatre of green and wooded hills. Outside the boundary of Otago, to the westward,' says Colonel Wakefield in a letter to the secretary of the New Zealand Company, there is an extensive tract of pasture-land, boundless to the view, untrodden by the foot of man, and affording abundant food for sheep and cattle during the whole year, with the exception of a few weeks in winter, when the uplands are covered with snow, during which time the plains and valleys yield a more abundant herbage than in the heats of summer.' Speaking of the climate of the district, Mr Munro, in the New Zealand Journal,' observes-On the large plain, the climate appears to be a good deal like our own. The weather, while we lay at Otago, was most beautiful. (It was the end of April, answering to October in Europe.) The sky, a great part of the time, was without a cloud; and not a breeze ruffled the surface of the water, which reflected the surrounding wooded slopes, and every sea-bird that floated upon it, with mirrorlike accuracy. For some hours after sunrise, the woods resounded with the rich and infinitely-varied notes of *This is peculiar to Otago harbour, no other in New Zealand having the same advantage. The 2400 properties are to be appropriated in the The New Zealand Company, on account of its capital 72,300 36,150 72,300 From the sum of L.36,150 to be assigned to the from civil war, occurs in the life of Garret Byrne, one trustees of religious and educational uses, will be de- of the leaders of the Irish rebellion in '98, a scion of the frayed L.12,050, the price of the 6025 acres to be pur-princely house of that name-a house ever unfriendly chased as the estate of that trust. In like manner, to English domination in Ireland. The following remiout of the sum of L.72,300 to be assigned to the New niscences of Byrne are communicated by one who hapZealand Company, will be defrayed L.24,100, the price pened to cross his path at two of the most remarkable of the 12,050 acres to be purchased by the Company periods of his life. as its estate.' It will be perceived that the Company engages not only to carry the emigrant purchaser of land to Otago, but to send also a supply of labourers, free, by which means capitalists will be enabled at once to hire such assistants as they may require. We trust that no small degree of care will be exercised in adapting the supply of labourers to the demand for their services, and are glad to learn that means will be effectually adopted for preventing all kinds of gambling in town or other lots of land. Only one thing more requires a word of explanation. Although avowedly a colony in connection with the Free Church, Otago is open to all classes of religionists. Every respectable man, no matter what be his creed, is received as a brother; but all of course go with the understanding, that the religious ordinances and educational establishments of this Presbyterian body are alone to be guaranteed support from the fund set aside for purposes of this nature. If Episcopalians, for example, join in forming the settlement, they must look to themselves for means of religious and secular instruction suitable to their own feelings. By this arrangement, it is expected (perhaps too confidently) that all wrangling about division of funds for churches and schools-such as have vexed society in the northern settlements of New Zealand-will be effectually prevented. Without pronouncing any opinion on the merits of the plan proposed, we shall watch its development with interest, but not without the expectation, that when New Zealand becomes extensively and densely peopled, much broader schemes of social organisation will predominate. Whatever be the future views of the colonists in this respect, the enterprise in the meanwhile, with all its peculiarities, cannot be looked on with indifference. Afforded every desirable means of carrying out their own notions, and secured the invaluable privilege of self-government, we shall see whether a body of Scotsmen can realise the opinions formed of their perseverance, love of order, and sagacity. The first body of settlers, we are told, are expected to leave the Clyde some time in October, headed by Captain William Cargill, the recognised agent of the Company for Otago, and who, on landing, will act as justice of peace till the municipal government is formed. The day of departure of the expedition will be an interesting one for Scotland.-Who will not, in the language of the old blazon, wish that God may send the good ship to its destined port?' GARRET BYRNE. It is impossible to have any personal experience of the miseries of war, without earnestly longing for that period when swords shall be beat into ploughshares, and spears into pruning - hooks;' when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.' The pages of history have made us all familiar with the evils entailed by national quarrels upon the population of those countries which unhappily became the scene of strife and bloodshed; but however affecting such a picture may be, the multitude of sad groups' in it are wont to distract us; so that it may be well for us sometimes to detach a single figure from the mass, and to consider it in its own individual misery. Thus may we be able to obtain a glance behind the scenes, instead of always fixing our eye on the pomp and circumstance of glorious war,' until we become too much dazzled to view it in all its true aspects. It was in the year 1798: the Irish insurgents had been defeated at the battle of Vinegar Hill: Wexford was taken, and multitudes of the wretched people had been either slain or hanged.* It might have been reasonably expected that, after such a series of disasters, the rebellion would speedily have terminated; but the landing of the French force under Humbert revived the hopes of the disaffected, whose spirits were, however, soon after depressed by the capture of the French troops at Ballinamuck on the 8th of September. Notwithstanding the continued successes of the royal party, a considerable body of rebels still held out in the fastnesses of the Wicklow mountains, where they were headed by Garret Byrne and Holt. The command of a considerable force of British light troops was committed to Sir John Moore, one of our best generals, who was seconded by General the Marquis of Huntly. They encamped among the Wicklow mountains; and although operating day and night, were unable to bring the opposing force to action. At this period, a well known barrister and member of the Irish parliament, Mr Dodds, waited on Lord Cornwallis, and offered to go himself into the rebel camp, and, if his lordship permitted, to propose to the insurgents terms of surrender. Lord Cornwallis, with his usual humanity, gladly acceded to the proposal, and ordered the writer of this to accompany Mr Dodds to the camp of Sir John Moore, giving him power and instructions to cause the suspension of all military operations in that quarter until the effect of Mr Dodds's mission might be ascertained. Mr Dodds and myself left Dublin on horseback, and rode through a beautiful country to the Glen of Imail, a picturesque spot, where Sir John Moore's corps were encamped. We arrived towards evening; and on entering the general's tent, found a large party assembled after dinner. The Marquis of Huntly was one of the party. At his right hand sat, to my surprise, the noted Garret Byrne, the commander of the rebel army in the Wicklow mountains, who had only a few hours before surrendered himself to Sir John Moore. This Byrne was a remarkably tall and handsome man, whose house and property were in view of the tent wherein we sat; for in olden time his ancestors had been chieftains of part of that mountainous country, and his family still possessed estates in the most wild and romantic portion of Wicklow. Garret Byrne, with the characteristic insouciance of his race, appeared as jovial and unconcerned as if nothing extraordinary had happened to him, and he seemed heartily to enjoy the old Celtic music of the bagpipe, which was performed by a Highlander in full national costume, standing behind the Marquis of Huntly's chair. It was a striking scene. Our gallant generals, surrounded by their staff, and entertaining one of their foes with true British courtesy, in the very heart of those mountains which had once been the birthright of his ancestors, and where he was now a captive, forgetting for a moment his country's woes amid the joyous excitement of wine and song. When the party broke up, I entered more fully with Sir John Moore into the object of our visit. He then told me we had just come in time, as he had all things prepared for a general attack that night on the quarters of the rebels. Mr Dodds was permitted to enter alone into the rebel camp, now commanded by Holt; and the issue was, the surrender of the insurgents at discretion. The next day, Garret Byrne and Holt were transmitted to Dublin, to await the decision of the lord *It was the fate of the writer to see six gentlemen hanged at A striking instance of the vicissitudes of life arising this time on one gallows on the bridge of Wexford. |