relative, a wife, or as, in many cases, some woman of the town will receive the cage and its occupant as a gift from the drunken Jack-Tar.

About five thousand parrots are imported and sold annually in London. They are chiefly brought from Africa, and a fine parrot will bring as high as a pound. Quite a number of these birds die on the homeward voyage, and this makes the price of parrots very high. Birds' nests are also sold in the streets by Italian and Savoyard boys in great numbers.

Squirrels, rabbits, and gold and silver fish may be also found for sale in the streets, the latter being bought to keep in glass globes as ornaments.

At every railroad station, in and outside of London, a person can be weighed for a penny. A man named Read has at least one hundred weighing chairs, which he rents out to men and boys at a certain rate of the gross receipts. On the different bridges cripples and retired soldiers may be found with brass instruments for testing the lungs and power of a man's arms, and also machines are to be found in front of well-known public houses, and in the parks and squares, for measuring the height of pedestrians.

There was one old fellow with whom I became acquainted, who kept a measuring and a weighing machine.

His station was on the Middlesex side of the Waterloo Bridge. He told me that he had been a pot-boy in a cheap eating house for five years, and then was a helper in a gentleman's stable for six years. One of his arms was rendered useless from an attack of paralysis, and finding that he could not any longer work as a helper, he borrowed enough money to purchase the weighing and measuring machines.

Having some curiosity to know the average weight and height of his many customers, I made a bargain with him, as he could read and write, to keep a record of his experience for three days of the physique of those who patronized his machines.

His patrons were chiefly laboring men on the new Thames Embankment, boatmen plying on the river, clerks going and coming to their business over Waterloo Bridge, and soldiers.

His largest income was on Saturday nights, when the laboring people were flush of copper pennies, and as nearly every third man was sure to be drunk going over the bridge on Saturday night, he was certain to reap a good harvest from their generous pockets.

In three days he had weighed one hundred and thirty-two persons of the male sex, and eight women. The average weight of each person I found was, including the women, one hundred and fifty-five pounds. The number of persons measured for their height was sixty-four, and the average tallness of each person, among which number was only one female, was five feet eight inches. The soldiers were of course the tallest. These figures speak well for the London Cockneys. One of the women, a cook, measured six feet, and weighed one hundred and ninety-eight lbs. I gave the venerable statistician a shilling and bade him goodbye, but not before I had received his blessing in fervent tones.

The consumption of coke purchased from the various gas houses of the city by peddlers and hawkers is enormous.

COKE PEDDLER.

There are about two thousand persons concerned in this street trade, one hundred of whom are women, and the aggregate includes boys. The various gas companies realize a yearly sum equal to six million of dollars from the sale of the coke. The peddlers distribute the coke to their customers in large vans, wheel

barrows, donkey carts, hand carts, and some of these strong limbed, broad chested fellows, carry the coke from door to door in large sacks. A few of the women own routes, and hire boys or men to sell the coke, giving them eight to twelve shillings a week, according to their merits and enterprise as hawkers. Coke is bought by these hawkers at the gas houses at from three to four pence per bushel, and is sold by them again at eight pence per bushel.

In giving the rates which I will have occasion to quote from time to time in this work, I shall generally give the prices in British money.

Salt is also vended in carts and wheel-barrows like coke, and some of the peddlers of that much desired article for seasoning and preserving food, sell in one day as much as five hundred pounds. The wholesale price to the hawkers is about 2s. 6d. per hundred pounds, and it is sold by them to the poor people in thickly populated districts, at a penny a pound, or sometimes cheaper.

Sand is sold in large quantities to the keepers of publics and small shops, and to those keeping stalls in the old markets, at twenty shillings a load, and the sand peddlers pay a license of two pounds per annum. In fact all the London peddlers pay a

tax or license of some kind or another.

One of the strangest sights in London is the "Bum Boat" of a "Purl," or warm beer seller, who may be found now and then of a dark foggy day plying his vocation on the Thames.

Formerly there were hundreds of these beer peddlers upon the river, but I believe that there are but a few, perhaps not more than five or six, who still follow this occupation.

One day while pulling around the shipping below London bridge in a small boat, I came across one of the "Bum Boat" men, who might, I believe, be taken as a very fair specimen of his class, or calling, once numerous, but now only a scattered remnant of their former numbers.

This fellow, a sun-browned-looking man of thirty years of age or thereabout, was impelling a craft, a strongly constructed, broad bottomed barge or yawl, in and out among the smoky

looking coal barges, fish and oyster craft and coasting steamers. He wore a dark blue guernsey shirt and a yellow oil-skin jacket, with heavy water boots which encased his large legs from the knees downward. An immense "Sou'-wester" shaded his broad face, and he was trying to drive the fog away by smoking a dreadful black clay pipe.

At the stern of the boat was a rough canvas awning, and under this the "Purl" man told me that he slept for weeks and months, while his boat lay at anchorage in some of the nooks of the busy river.

He seldom or ever went ashore, excepting when necessity compelled him to debark for the purpose of laying in beer and other stock for his customers.

In the bottom of the boat were heaps of fresh onions, a bag of potatoes, a couple of bushels of Swedish turnips, parsnips, carrots, some packages of tea and coffee in small square brown parcels, tied with white string, a tin box full of mutton

chops and beef steaks, cut ready for sale, and other articles of food that would be most relished by seafaring men on their return from a voyage.

There were also in the boat a small patent sheet-iron furnace, two little casks of beer, each containing about four gallons of that beverage, a can with a gallon of gin of the cheap and fiery brand, and two tin pannikins in which he warmed the beer, or "Purl," as it is called, upon the small sheet-iron stove. This he sold hot to the sailors, oystermen, and coal bargees, at four pence a pint. It was most wonderful to see the dexterous manner in which this Bum Boat man passed in and out between the numerous craft, paddling and ringing a hand bell the while, without any collision or trouble, and then to hear through the fog, the answering cries from the sailors who recognized his welcome bell:

"Boat ahoy!"

"Bell ah-o-o-y!"

"P-i-n-t o' P-u-r-1 a-h-o-o y !"

Then for an instant the bell would cease, and the dark shapes of the "Bum Boat" and its proprietor would be seen, as the latter stood up to reach a noggin of gin to a bargee, or a pewter pint of foaming hot "Purl" to some thirsty soul of a tar just arrived from Greenwich, Glasgow, or Cork.

The "Bum Boat" man is one of the most picturesque sights of that most picturesque of cities, London. The few who still ply their avocation on the river, are in pretty comfortable circumstances, and their lives are as happy as can be imagined, much more so, I have no doubt, than they were when there were hundreds of them paddling about the river and impoverishing themselves by a ruinous competition.

I have often noticed miserable, wan, and half naked looking little children, in and around the Regent's Circus, and in the neighborhood of the Cafés and Pall Mall, with small bags made from the material used in potato sacks, collecting cigar ends and crusts of bread from ash heaps and dust bins. Wondering what use could be made of these disgusting fragments, I one day accosted a lad of twelve years or thereabouts, who