or rum-punch-according to the pleasure of the ladies --after which dancing took place; and when the female part of the assemblage thought proper to retire, the gentlemen again sat down, or adjourned to another tavern, to crown_the_pleasures of the evening with an unlimited debauch. It is not (1824) more than thirty years since the late Lord Melville, the Duchess of Gordon, and some other persons of distinction, who happened to meet in town after many years of absence, made up an oyster-cellar party, by way of a frolic, and devoted one winter evening to the revival of this almost forgotten entertainment of their youth. as the challenger; who would again start up and drink eight bumpers; and so on, in geometrical progression, till one or other of the heroes fell under the table; when of course the fair Delia of the survivor was declared the queen supreme of beauty by all present. I have seen a sonnet addressed on the morning after such a scene of contention to the lady concerned, by the unsuccessful hero, whose brains appear to have been wofully muddled by the claret he had drunk in her behalf. It was not merely in the evenings that taverns were then resorted to. There was a petty treat, called a meridian,' which no man of that day thought himself able to dispense with; and this was generally indulged in at a tavern. 'A cauld cock and a feather' was the metaphorical mode of calling for a glass of brandy and a bunch of raisins, which was the favourite regale of many. Others took a glass of whisky; some few a lunch. Scott very amusingly describes, from his own observation, the manner in which the affair of the meridian was gone about by the writers and clerks belonging to the Parliament House. If their proceedings were watched, they might be seen to turn fidgetty about the hour of noon, and exchange looks with each other from their separate desks, till at length some one of formal and dignified presence assumed the honour of leading the band; when away they went, threading the crowd like a string of wild-fowl, crossed the square or close, and following each other into the [John's] coffeehouse, drank the meridian, which was placed ready at the bar. This they did day by day; and though they did not speak to each other, they seemed to attach a certain degree of sociability to performing the cere It seems difficult to reconcile all these things with 'O'er draughts of wine the beau would moan his love, All the shops in the town were then shut at eight o'clock; and from that hour till ten-when the drum of the Town-Guard announced at once a sort of license for the deluging of the streets with nuisances, and a warning of the inhabitants home to their beds-unrestrained scope was given to the delights of the table. No tradesman thought of going home to his family till after he had spent an hour or two at his club. This was universal and unfailing. So lately as 1824, I knew something of an old-fashioned tradesman who nightly shut his shop at eight o'clock, and then adjourned with two old friends who called upon him at that hour to a quiet old public-house on the opposite side of the way, where they each drank precisely one bottle of Edinburgh ale, ate precisely one halfpenny roll, and got upon their legs precisely at the first stroke of ten o'clock. SERVANTS' HALL IN A FRENCH CHATEAU. BY AN ENGLISH OPERATIVE. Then was the time when men, despising and neglecting the company of women, always so civilising in its influence, would yet half kill themselves with bumpers, in order, as the phrase went, to save them. Drinking to save the ladies is said to have originated with a catch- ONE bright morning during the present summer, I left club, which issued tickets for gratuitous concerts. Paris by the Orleans railway to visit a relative, living Many tickets with the names of ladies being prepared, as nursery governess in the Château de Bretigny, some one was taken up, and the name announced. Any forty miles from the capital. The road passes through a member present was at liberty to toast the health of pleasant country, now touching some sharp bend of the this lady in a bumper, and this insured her ticket being Seine, presently cutting across the slopes of a sunny reserved for her use. If no one came forward to honour vineyard, or skirting level corn-fields, and then passing her name in this manner, the lady's chance was consi- within view of the solitary and famous ruin of the castle dered to be lost, and her ticket was thrown under the of Montlhery, on a hill a mile to the right. The place table. Whether from this origin or not, the practice is of my destination is in a quiet rural district, about two said to have ultimately had the following form. One miles from the station at which I left the train. On gentleman would give out the name of some lady as the each side of the road, which was without hedges, stretched most beautiful object in creation, and, by way of attest- an uninterrupted succession of the little patches of culing what he said, drink one bumper. Another champion tivated ground so common in France, presenting a sinwould then enter the field, and offer to prove that a gular appearance to an English eye accustomed to see certain other lady, whom he named, was a great deal farms of five hundred or a thousand acres. In most more beautiful than she just mentioned-supporting of them, apple-trees were growing in the midst of the his assertion by drinking two bumpers. Then the corn; and here and there the yellow expanse of wheat other would rise up, declare this to be false, and, in and barley was relieved by the patch of vines of some proof of his original statement, as well as by way of small proprietor. After passing through a dreary-lookturning the scale upon his opponent, drink four bump-ing village, I saw another equally unattractive in apNot deterred or repressed by this, the second pearance about a mile beyond, above the thatched roofs man would reiterate, and conclude by drinking as much of which rose the low square church tower. I walked ers. through the straggling streets of the latter without seeing any building that came up to my ideas of a château, and began to think I had mistaken the path, when, turning a corner, there stood before me at one side of the church a long low edifice of two storeys, possessing no pretensions whatever to architectural beauty or proportion, reminding one of the huge straggling inns in the south and west of England, ruined by the railway; once cheerful and busy, now weather-stained and melancholy. The windows, above as well as below, were protected by outside Venetian shutters, which, with the whole front of the building, were of a dingy white hue. The front door was to match, and in common with the windows, had rather the appearance of an accidental opening in the wall, than of an aperture designed for use. The house was separated from the road by a plot of grass, traversed by a rough sandy road that led to the door; and a few noble acacias rose high above the clumps of shrubs that bordered the road. The appearance of the building was so little in accordance with its name, that I inquired of a man who was passing if it were really the Château de Bretigny; and receiving an answer in the affirmative, I walked across the lawn, wondering at the absence of neatness and finish presenting so striking a contrast to country seats on this side the Channel. The front door offered no means of communication with the interior; and I went to a side entrance which stood open, and passing along a passage running the whole length of the building, without meeting any one, knocked at a half-open door. Entrez,' said a voice; in obedience to which I entered the apartment, where a footman was preparing breakfast for the family. Having introduced myself, he replied, 'Ah, monsieur, madame votre cousine will be delighted to see you; you are the first friend that has called upon her from England in all the years she has lived here.' He ran away to summon her, while I looked round the apartment. The floor was of stone. In one corner, on a low shelf, was a knifeboard, on which the knives were being cleaned; a few chairs and stools, with seats of worsted-work, and one or two occasional tables, stood round by the walls of oaken wainscot; and the middle of the room was occupied by a round table, on which the preparations for breakfast were going on. No cups and saucers were to be seen; plates and knives and forks were placed for four; by the side of each plate stood a bottle of wine, a decanter of water, and a large drinking-glass. The eatables consisted of poultry, meat stewed with French beans, eggs, bread and butter, salad, and fruit. The polished panels of the walls were quite bare of pictures, and every other decoration, save muslin curtains to the windows, which looked out upon what I afterwards learned was called the 'Park;' but this also, notwithstanding its capabilities and fine trees, presented the same neglected appearance that I had remarked in front; similar to what we are accustomed to read of family establishments in Ireland. I was cogitating on the peculiarities which struck me, when Monsieur de Bretigny entered, and welcoming me to the château, expressed a hope that I should enjoy my visit. As he left the room, my cousin came in. After an interchange of the kind welcomings and warm wishes natural between relatives who meet for the first time, she led me away to the servants' hall to breakfast. It yet wanted an hour and a-half to the time of the morning meal for the household; but in consideration of my ride, some café au lait, such as can only be drunk in France, with bread, butter, and eggs, were placed before me. Monsieur de Bretigny himself brought me a bottle of wine, and a teaspoon and table-knife were fetched from the parlour for my use; nothing but large pewter-spoons and forks being allowed to the servants, who, when they eat eggs, use the flat end of the handles of these instruments, and at each meal produce large claspknives from their pocket. I was soon left alone, and at leisure to look about me. The room was of the most comfortless description: to all appearance the walls and ceiling had not been whitewashed for a dozen years; there was no fireplace, and no means of warming it in winter; the window, a huge grated aperture, was placed so high, that only the tops of the trees were visible through it. Under the window stood a long narrow table, with a miscellaneous assemblage of seats on either side. A shallow tub, half-filled with water, and containing a number of bottles, stood under the opposite wall, serving as a cooler for the servants' wine the allowance being a bottle for two days. At one end was fixed a stained and dingy dresser, on which were ranged a dozen or two of plates and dishes of the coarsest ware, a row of glass tumblers, and salt-cellars filled with gray salt. In consequence of the high tax upon the article in France, white salt is seldom seen on servants' tables, or in the houses of the poorer classes. When compared with the neat and comfortable arrangements at country seats in England, the difference was most striking. Soon after the completion of my repast and my survey, a valet, or domestique, as they prefer to be called, came in to lay the cloth for the servants' breakfast-the hour for which, eleven o'clock, had arrived. The spoons, forks, and plates were quickly arranged; the bottles of wine, lifted from their bath, were duly marshalled; and then the bell was rung. First came the housekeeper or head-laundress, a good-humoured and portly dame, followed by the lady's-maid, the two men-servants, and the cook, a hale and hearty garçon of sixty-four, who had cooked all through Napoleon's campaigns in the service of one of his generals. The rear was brought up by an assistant laundress; a boy, whose chief business seemed to be to amuse himself; and last, my cousin, the governess. Cheerful salutations awaited me from all, as, with an interchange of lively badinage, they took their scats. The breakfast, of which I was only a spectator, comprised beef stewed with cabbage, some remains of cold meat, and a salad, with each one's portion of bread that had been taken from the closet beneath the dresser. The conversation, which never ceased, was intermingled with inquiries as to the mode in which servants live in England. As is usual throughout France, the most extravagant notions were entertained of the wealth of all classes on the British side of the Channel; and the inference was, that English servants were much better off than French servants. The chief topic, however, seemed to lie in the expression of regret at the absence of a joint of meat, with which to make a roti for dinner, and from which I was to have judged of the French cuisine. The butcher had brought meat early in the morning, but of so bad a quality, owing to the heat of the weather, that it was rejected. The cook started for the neighbouring village in quest of meat, but succeeded only in obtaining a few scraps of beef, which, however, as will afterwards appear, did good service. Breakfast over, I walked about the grounds at the back of the house. At one side was an extensive plantation of oak, ash, and elm trees, through which many beautifully cool and shady paths led to a kiosk in one corner, commanding a view over the level fields in the neighbourhood, and of the hill on which stands the government telegraph, one of the series between Paris and Bordeaux. But the paths, though pleasant, were rough and overgrown with weeds, and the wood was suffering for want of thinning. At the opposite side of the grounds were large gardens, in which fruit, flowers, and vegetables were intermixed. I was at a loss to account for the want of order, the apparent non-appreciation of the beautiful in natural and artificial landscape, and the absence of a taste for rural pleasures. There were fertile grounds, an extensive estate, embracing many of the adjacent farms, ample wealth, but all deadened by the spirit of laissez aller. I afterwards found, however, that this is a characteristic of the châteaux of France. Among the plants that were new to me were two mallows: one similar in appearance to a standard rose, six feet high, growing with a tall straight stem; the other of the dwarf species, but with the pale-green leaves most exquisitely curled, the three months that he is with the family in Paris, and thirty francs for the annual cleaning of the house, which was going on at the time of my visit, in addition to which a New-Year's gift, a sort of retaining fee for good behaviour, the giving of which is general in France. Such servants, however, make themselves more generally useful than those of a similar class in England-they make the beds, and sweep and clean both the bed and sitting rooms. The one in question, it will be rememhe assists the second domestique in bringing in firewooda daily recurring and laborious task, as nothing but wood is burned in the large open fireplaces. The laundress is paid four hundred francs; she has the care of all the linen of the château, to keep it washed, repaired, and in perfect order-a post of some responsibility, as the linen in a French country-house is provided in the greatest abundance; so much so, that in some places they wash but twice in the year. At the château, washing-day comes once in two months. The washing is not done with hot water, as is considered essential in this country. On the day appointed, eighteen women come from the village, and carry the linen to the river, under the superintendence of Madame Leleu, the laundress. The first day's work is to decrasser (to loosen the dirt), which is done by dipping the linen into the river, rubbing with soap, and beating with a wooden instrument, similar in shape to a large battledore-a process which, although it may be destructive to the linen, has the effect of making it very clean. The second day's work is the couler, in which the whole of the linen is soaked in water that has been passed through wood ashes. On the third day, the rincer, or rinsing at the river, finishes the washing, when the whole is carefully dried, mended, and put away in the presses. The linen of the servants is included in this arrangement, and they are obliged to provide themselves with a sufficient quantity for proper cleanliness in the intervals of the wash. or crispée. The watering-pots, I observed, were all made of copper-a much more durable material than tin or zinc. One of them, the gardener informed me, he had himself used for thirty years; it had been in the service of his predecessor for a similar period, and he expected it to last the century. There was an abundant crop of melons, and every variety of fruit; but vegetables, constituting the chief food of the household, were most largely cultivated. The eye could not take in at one view the beds of sorrel, chickory, arti-bered, was cleaning knives on my arrival: in the winter, chokes, cabbages, carrots, turnips, lettuce, and onions. Seven o'clock struck while I was talking to the gardener: the bell rang for dinner; and the same party that had met to breakfast, assembled once more in the servants' hall. The cook still lamented the absence of roti: but he had made a delicious stew with his scraps of beef and various kinds of vegetables; and besides, there were a dish of new haricots with parsley sauce, a salad, and a large dish of currants, mixed with strawberries, for the dessert. On festival days, a better sort of wine than usual is allowed; and in honour of my visit, the dame jeanne (demi-john), filled to the neck, was placed upon the table. In the intervals of eating, the cook told us several amusing stories of his cooking campaigns under the Emperor in Germany and Spain, and twitted the under-domestique, who was from Brittany, on the uncouthness of his dialect. After dinner, I was conducted over the whole of the house in addition to what I had already seen, there were the billiard and drawing rooms, the latter plainly furnished, and unprovided with any of those little elegant trifles which are considered the necessary complement of such apartments in England. Beyond these were the bath-room, and a boudoir, and other small apartments, occupied by the mother of Madame de Bretigny. I lost the pleasure of seeing these ladies, from their having gone to the coast for sea-bathing. In these little rooms there were several family portraits and books, chiefly of a religious character. Above were the sleeping apartments, the doors into which opened from the corridor that ran from one extremity The question often recurred to my mind, whether of the building to the other. The whole of this upper the contentment of the French arises from really modefloor was paved with hexagonal red tiles, polished with rate desires, or from a disposition to take it easy.' The fitting-up of the bedrooms seemed to com- From what I saw in my rambles through the country, pensate for the nakedness below: they were furnished the latter seems to be the prevalent motive. It is, howwith well-filled bookcases, and a variety of furniture ever, impossible not to be struck with the kind and not usually seen in sleeping-rooms-ottomans, lounging- conciliatory manner of the wealthy towards their depenchairs, work-tables, &c.; and, as I was informed, the dents and inferiors in social privileges, from which a family pass most of their time in these apartments. useful lesson might be learned. In the afternoon of the There was not that variety of books which might have next day I took my departure to return to Paris, and been expected, except in Monsieur de Bretigny's cham- received the adieux of the whole establishment, from ber. He had been an officer of engineers in Algiers, and Monsieur down to the garçon. I took off my hat to had a selection of mathematical and philosophical works. the housekeeper and lady's-maid, who were seated at an Once a-week the family spend a day at a neigh- upper window; but a civil farewell was not in accordbouring château. Friday is the fast-day; and on Sun-ance with their notions. Attendez,' they said, nous day they attend the little church which stands half- allons descendre.' On coming down, the housekeeper hidden by the trees at the entrance of the grounds. continued, Ou ne part pas comme ça,' and presented This is the ordinary routine, interrupted occasionally by each of her rosy cheeks in succession for a kiss: the rides on horseback or drives in the family-coach into the lady's-maid followed her example: and with this chaneighbourhood, or by the arrival of visitors, and a resi-racteristic adieu, I left the Château of Bretigny. dence of three months in the year, towards the end of the season, in Paris. During Lent, as my cousin informed me, she suffers so much from want of proper nourishment, as often to become seriously indisposed. It does not appear, however, that so much attention is paid to the real comfort of servants as in England. In France, they work harder, and have fewer intervals of repose, yet they seem to be lighter of heart, and to be more easily contented than their compeers in this country. At the château, the cook's wages are six hundred francs a-year he prepares food, without any assistant, for the whole household; breakfast for the parlour at ten o'clock, for the servants at eleven; dinner for the parlour at five, for the servants at seven-two meals aday being the rule, with a gouter or lunch in the interval. The servants may take their gouter when they please, from the portion of bread allotted to them. The headfootman (premier domestique) receives four hundred and fifty francs, with fifteen sous a-day additional during wax. TURTLE CATCHING. We are told by Pliny, in his Natural History, that the turtle is so large an animal, that its shell serves as a boat to the islanders of the Red Sea, and that a single one suffices for the roof of a dwelling-house. This, however, is not so enormous an exaggeration as one might suppose, since Dampier mentions a turtle that was four feet thick, and six feet from side to side. The shell of this magnificent animal was used as a boat, in which a child of nine or ten years of age embarked to join his father, who was then on board his ship, at a distance of a quarter of a mile. In 1752, a turtle was shipwrecked (supposing him to be his own vessel), and came on shore at Dieppe: he measured six feet long by four in width, and weighed nine quintals. Two years after, another animal of the same weight was captured in the Greek Archipelago, whose liver sufficed for the abundant dinner of more than a hundred Now commences a scene resembling, on a smaller scale, persons, while its fat weighed more than a hundred that presented by the struggles of a whale. The shaft pounds. This creature, from a peculiarity in the flavour of the harpoon is recovered by its thrower, and the of its flesh, was supposed to have voyaged from Southpoint, which is attached by a rope to the bow of the America, transported by the vast current which issues boat, secures effectually the terrified animal, who, in from the Gulf of Mexico, passes by the United States, his flight, may drag the whole cortège with him a conand is even felt on the coasts of Great Britain. siderable distance; but yields in the end, either dying of his wound, or suffocated in the water, from which he dares not, or cannot rise. There are four different species of marine turtle-the Green, the Hawk-billed, the Loggerhead, and the Trunk turtle. The first is the aldermanic turtle, well known to the epicures of the City; the second furnishes the article so valuable in commerce under the name of tortoise-shell; the third is a strong and fierce creature, which has been known to bite a thick walking-stick in two in an instant; the fourth is of an enormous size, and pouched like a pelican, and its shell and flesh are so soft, that one may push his finger into them,' as Audubon says, 'almost as into a lump of butter.' The marine turtle inhabits the bottom of the sea, though probably at no great distance from the land, and there pastures, in these solitary depths, on algæ and other sea-weeds. But in case of need, he is supposed to have recourse to animal food, being able to crush with his horny jaws the substance of fishes less monstrous than himself. He is not fond, apparently, of the flavour of fresh water, keeping at some distance from the mouths of rivers, except at a certain time of the year, when the eggs are to be buried in the sand. On this occasion the tribe seek the embouchure of the most considerable stream they can find, and there they are taken by their human enemies in the greatest numbers. On nearing the shore, which is usually on a calm moonlight night, the turtle raises her head from the water to reconnoitre. If all is quiet, she emits a loud hissing sound, and landing upon the beach, creeps along the sand till she finds a feasible place. Here she again looks round, but this time in profound silence; and if convinced of her security, she sets to work to scoop out a hole in the sand with her hind-flippers, sometimes to the depth of more than two feet. The eggs are dropped one by one, it may be to the number of two hundred, and the loose sand then scraped over them in such a way, that a passer-by would not suspect the mystery. Although the eggs are deposited during the night, the turtle-hunters, when sure of the haunt, have little difficulty in falling in with stragglers, whom they have merely to turn on their backs, on which they lie helplessly till their captors have time to carry them off. This applies, however, only to the green species; for another kind, with rounder back, and more active movements, require to be anchored with a stone, if not killed on the spot. A more wholesale mode of capture is to set nets in the water, with strong but wide meshes, along the place where they are expected to land; and when the animals are on their nightly journey to deposit their eggs, they are entangled by the head or paddles, and being thus prevented from rising to breathe, are drowned. The harpoon is a more sportsmanlike instrument of death. It has not the barb of the common harpoon; but when darted into the shell, when the victim rises to breathe, or is lying asleep on the surface, it remains fixed, like a nail driven into a board. A calm, still night is chosen for this purpose-the enemy having previously ascertained, by the fragments of sea-weeds scattered on the surface, the spot where their prey are peacefully pasturing beneath. The boat creeps to its work through the sluggish waters, with no other noise than the dip of the muffled oars; and the leader standing on the bow, harpoon in hand, and bending his eager eyes upon the water, makes signals how to steer, like the master of a steamer, without turning his head. A bubbling of the water by and by leads him to the spot where a turtle is about to rise; and as soon as the unhappy denizen of the deep, which cannot live without atmospheric air, shows himself above the surface, the iron messenger of fate flashes through the air, and quivers in his back. | The following account, referring to these modes of fishing in Brazil, is given by Mr Edwards:- The turtles are a still greater blessing to the dwellers upon the upper rivers. In the early part of the dry season these animals ascend the Amazon, probably from the sea, and assemble upon the sandy islands and beaches left dry by the retiring waters in the Japúra and other tributaries. They deposit their eggs in the sand, and at this season all the people, for hundreds of miles round about, resort to the river-banks as regularly as to a fair. The eggs are collected into montarias, or other proper receptacles, and broken. The oil floating upon the surface is skimmed off with the valves of the large shells found in the river, and is poured into pots, each holding about six gallons. It is computed that a turtle lays one hundred and fifty eggs in a season. Twelve thousand eggs make one pot of oil, and six thousand pots are annually sent from the most noted localities: consequently seventy-two millions of eggs are destroyed, which require four hundred and eighty thousand turtles to produce them. And yet but a small portion of the whole number of eggs are broken. When fifty days have expired, the young cover the ground, and march in millions to the water, where swarms of enemies more destructive than man await their coming. Every branch of the Amazon is resorted to, more or less, in the same manner; and the whole number of turtles is beyond all conjecture. Those upon the Madeira are little molested, on account of the unhealthiness of the locality in which they breed. They are said to be of a different and smaller variety from those upon the Amazon. We received a different variety still from the Branco, and there may be many more yet undistinguished. The turtles are turned upon their backs when found upon the shore, picked up at leisure, and carried to different places upon the river. quently they are kept the year round in pens properly constructed, and one such that we saw at Villa Nova contained nearly one hundred. During the summer months they constitute a great proportion of the food of the people; but when we consider their vast numbers, a long period must elapse before they sensibly diminish. Their average weight when taken is from fifty to seventy-five pounds, but many are much larger. Where they go after the breeding season no one knows, for they are never observed descending the river; but from below Pará, more or less are seen ascending every season. They are mostly caught at this time in the lakes of clear water which so plentifully skirt either shore, and generally are taken with lances or small harpoons as they are sleeping on the surface. But the Muras have a way of capturing them peculiar to themselves; shooting them with arrows from a little distance, the arrow being so elevated, that in falling, it strikes and penetrates the shell. In this, even long practice can scarcely make perfect; and fifty arrows may be shot at the unconscious sleeper before he is secured.' Fre The muscular power of the turtle is so great, that, when unwounded, he is a first-rate tug. A rather curious proof of this was received, in the year 1696, by a slave, who was fishing alone in his little canoe off the island of Martinique. The man fell in with an immense turtle lying fast asleep on the surface of the water; and conceiving that he had stumbled upon a prize, he drew near cautiously, and passed the boat's painter, with a running knot, round one of the creature's flippers. The sleeper awoke, and seeing something near him that was not an honest-looking turtle like himself, he took to flight, drawing canoe and man in his wake, without seeming to feel that he had any burden at all. The slave was nothing daunted by a proceeding which he of course had expected, and he sat very quietly in the stern of his skiff, steering with his paddle, and hoping every now and then that the turtle was getting tired, or was near the drowning. But the courser, whose services he had thus treacherously impressed, was restive, and in one of his vagaries the canoe was capsized. This was too common an accident to be thought anything of; and after some trouble, he righted his boat, and took his seat in her as before, but with the loss of paddle, knife, fishing-lines-everything, in short, it had contained. Having now no paddle to steer with, he was at the mercy of circumstances, and the capsize occurred again, again, and again, the turtle always taking advantage of his fare being engaged in turning up the canoe to rest himself on the surface of the water, and get into wind for a new career. On they skimmed along the liquid plain, till the sudden night of the tropics came down upon that desert sea, and the slave found himself whirling in the dark at the tail of what must now have seemed a marine demon. The sun rose again upon his fate, and seemed to lend fresh vigour to his ravisher. Fain would he have dispensed with the services he had of his own will enlisted; but without paddle, without knife, he felt himself even too happy in being able to cling to the boat at all. On, therefore, they hurried, on a journey that seemed to have no end, and which was diversified only by the occasional capsize of the canoe, and the simultaneous halt and refreshment of the turtle. Incredible as it may appear, the second night arrived, and was passed in the same manner; and it was not till the next morning that the animal exhibited symptoms of weariness and stupefaction, and allowed himself to be stranded on a shoal. The slave by this time was half dead with hunger, thirst, and fatigue; but yet he had energy enough left to kill his enemy, and feast on his spoils. In Dr Lang's recent account of north-eastern Australia, we have the following description of the mode of capturing turtles in Moreton Bay:The greatest excitement prevails in hunting the turtle (for it can scarcely be called fishing), black natives being always of the party, and uniformly the principal performers. The deepest silence must prevail; and if the slightest noise is made by any European of the party, the natives, who assume the direction of affairs, frown the offender into silence. They are constantly looking all around them for the game, and their keen eye detects the turtle in the deep water when invisible to Europeans. Suddenly, and without intimation of any kind, one of them leaps over the gunwale of the boat, and dives down in the deep water between the oars, and perhaps, after an interval of three minutes, reappears on the surface with a large turtle. As soon as he appears with his prey, three or four other black fellows leap overboard to his assistance, and the helpless creature is immediately transferred into the boat. A black fellow has in this way not unfrequently brought up a turtle weighing five hundredweight. Great personal courage, as well as great agility, is required in this hazardous employment, the black fellows being frequently wounded by the powerful stroke of the animal's flippers.' In the Indian Ocean, the plan is somewhat different. When Mr Darwin visited Keeling, one of the lagoon islands of coral formation, he had an opportunity of witnessing the sport, which appears to afford a still more picturesque and exciting scene. The shallow, clear, and still water of the lagoon,' he tells us, 'resting in its greater part on white sand, is, when illumined by a vertical sun, of the most vivid green.' It is girdled round by a line of snow-white breakers from the darklyheaving waters of the ocean; while the strips of land, forming the island circle, are crowned by the level tops of the cocoa-nut trees. On the inner side of the circle, a white calcareous beach slopes into the lagoon, contrasting strangely with the rocky coast without that receives the ceaseless roll of the sea-as strangely as the lagoon itself with that wild and seemingly illimitable ocean in the midst of which it sleeps so tranquilly. The channels that lead from the sea into the lagoon are frequented by turtles, and are so clear, and comparatively so shallow, that the white sand at the bottom is distinctly visible. When the animal, therefore, dives on seeing its pursuers, the latter have no difficulty in ascertaining the spot where it will reappear to breathe; and a native, standing on the bow of the boat, watches eagerly the event, stooping forward over the water like a bird of prey. Presently, the huge creature, which cannot live in the element where he has his being, rises to the surface in search of vital air; and on the instant, the hunter springs from the boat, dashes upon the back of his prey, and clasps his arms round his neck. Away goes the terrified turtle, ridden by this man of the sea. He cannot sink, or there would soon be an end of the contest. His head, in the steady grasp of his enemy, is directed upwards; and away therefore he rushes, over the clear smooth surface of the water--over the white sands below where he had lain so lately basking in the light-over his algæ fields where he was wont to browse in peace and happiness. And away with him goes the rider, rejoicing in the race of which he knows the issue, and yelling with excitement caught from the motion, the clear air, the waving woods, the azure sky, the cool water, as green and bright as liquid emerald. But by degrees the animal becomes more and more feeble. Unable to contend with the unimaginable fate that has befallen him, he knows not why or how, he at length ceases to fly, and lies like a log upon the sea, and in due time is transferred to the boat, which has followed tranquilly their headlong career. Such are the various modes of capturing turtles. We little think, when seeing a porter staggering along the streets of London with one of those ponderous, lazylooking creatures on his shoulders-and still less, when quietly indulging in a plate of turtle-soup, with a bottle of iced-punch by our side of the history of wild vicissitude and romantic adventure therewith connected! CURIOSITIES OF ARITHMETIC. AN eastern prince was so much delighted with the game of chess, which had been devised for his amusement, that he desired the inventor to name his own reward. The philosopher, however, was too modest to seize the opportunity of enriching himself: he merely begged of his royal master a grain of corn for each square on the chess table, doubling the number in proceeding from the first to the sixty-fourth square. The king, honouring his moderation, made no scruple of consenting to the demand; but on his treasurer making the necessary calculations, he was somewhat surprised to find that he had engaged to give away the impossible quantity of 87,076,425,546,692,656 grains of corn, equal to the whole contained in 16,384 towns, each having 1024 granaries of 174,762 measures each consisting of 32,768 grains. The story of the horse-shoe is of the same kind, and, like the above, is usually met with in books of scientific recreation. A man selling a fine horse is to receive for it nothing more than the value of the twenty-fourth nail of the animal's shoes, supposing that the first nail is worth a farthing, the second two, and so on, doubling each time. The bargain is a tolerably good one, since the twenty-fourth nail at this rate proves to be worth L.17,000. Suppose that of all the prodigious number of eggs in a female herring, only 2000 come to maturity, and that each of them in its turn gives birth to the same number, half males, and half females. In the second year, we should have a family of 12,000,000; in the third, of 2,000,000,000; and in the eighth, the number would be expressed by the figure 2 followed by 24 ciphers. This number of herrings would not find room even if the |