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Title: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, fifth series, no. 126, vol. III, May 29, 1886

Author: Various

Release date: April 21, 2023 [eBook #70608]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: William and Robert Chambers, 1853

Credits: Susan Skinner, Eric Hutton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 126, VOL. III, MAY 29, 1886 ***





[Illustration:

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832

CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

NO. 126.—VOL. III.      SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1886.       PRICE 1½_d._]




CLAIMANTS TO ROYALTY.


Since the famous Tichborne trial brought ‘The Claimant’ so prominently
before the reading public, the general use of a term which accurately
described his position without seeming to prejudge his case has given
it universal currency as a convenient designation in similar cases
of disputed or doubtful identity. For instance, the newspapers have
recently announced a ‘Napoleonic Claimant,’ who makes his appearance in
the most unromantic manner, by presenting himself before a magistrate
at a police station in Paris, and asking for money to pay his passage
to England. He claimed to be the Prince Imperial, the legitimate son of
the Emperor Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugenie. The announcement of
his death in Zululand was a mistake: he was not killed, but captured
by the Zulus. After some time, he effected his escape, and having
traversed Africa from south to north, he crossed the Mediterranean and
landed at Marseilles. His poverty and his dignity prevented him from
presenting himself before his mother, and so he stayed and worked in
Marseilles incognito for several years. But he met the Empress once: it
was at Vienna, at the tomb of Maximilian. So violent was his emotion,
that he swooned away. The Empress herself raised him and tended him;
but when he became conscious, she had gone. He wished now to go to her,
but he was penniless. Would the magistrate grant him the sum necessary;
and his mother, the Empress, would repay the loan? When asked to show
his papers, he produced a book in which was entered the name of Pollak,
a journeyman clockmaker of Vienna. It had been lent to him to enable
him to maintain his incognito.

When he found that his story was not to be credited, he accused the
magistrate of yielding to pressure put upon him by the Princes Victor
and Louis, whose interest it was to supplant the rightful heir. He
spoke in the language of a well-educated man; and when examined with
a view to determine his mental condition, he betrayed no symptom of
derangement.

The methods of all Claimants have a certain similarity, though some
have been more audacious and successful than others. This is perhaps
the most audacious of modern instances. But there are many examples
of Claimants more or less notorious in the history of past times,
whose pretensions are quite as difficult to reconcile with recorded
facts. In most of these historical instances the Claimants have
advanced pretensions to the name and station of a deceased member of
some reigning family, and much obscurity has thus been thrown around
historical events, whose incidental details have been confused and
complicated by the conflicting statements of contemporary or nearly
contemporary records.

Perhaps the least known, but not the least curious and tragical
story of a Claimant is that of the woman who, in the first year of
the fourteenth century, attempted to personate the Maid of Norway,
heiress to the crown of Scotland, and presumptive heiress also to
that of Norway.—It had been given out that the Maid of Norway had
died on her voyage to Scotland; but that, it was now alleged, was a
mistake; she did not die; but she was ‘sold’ or betrayed by those
who had charge of her, and carried away to an obscure hiding-place
on the continent. She had at last found means to escape, and coming
from Lübeck to Bergen—the very same port from which she had sailed for
Scotland ten years before—she there presented herself to the people
of Norway as the Princess Margaret. Although her father, King Eirik,
was now dead, and her uncle Hakon possessed the throne, her right of
succession to the crowns of Norway and of Scotland had been secured by
the marriage contract of Norburgh, by which her father had espoused
her mother Margaret, the daughter of Alexander III., king of Scotland.
The Claimant appeared old for her years, and was white-haired; but
sorrow brings gray hairs more surely than age. She was a married woman;
and her husband came with her to Norway, and subsequently shared her
tragic fate. King Hakon himself was present at her trial in Bergen, of
which, unfortunately, no record exists. But we learn from the _Iceland
Annals_ that she was burned to death as an impostor at Nordness, and
her husband beheaded. When she was being taken through the Kongsgaard
Port to the place of execution, she said; ‘I remember well when I,
as a child, was taken through this self-same gate to be carried into
Scotland; there was then in the High Church of the Apostles an Iceland
priest, Haflidi by name, who was chaplain to my father, King Eirik;
and when the clergy ceased singing, Sir Haflidi began the hymn _Veni
Creator_, and that hymn was sung out to the end, just as I was taken on
board the ship.’

Haflidi Steinsson, the priest here mentioned, had long since gone
back to Iceland, where he died parish priest of Breidabolstad; and in
chronicling his death, the annalist adds that ‘he was King Eirik’s
chaplain at the time that his daughter Margaret was taken to Scotland,
as she herself afterwards bore witness when she was being carried to
execution at Nordness.’ Indeed, so prevalent was the belief in the
personal identity of the Claimant with the daughter of King Eirik who
died on the voyage to Orkney in 1290, that the place of her execution
became a resort of pilgrims; and many of the priesthood having
countenanced the popular belief in her martyrdom, a chapel was built on
the spot where she suffered; and though uncanonised, and reprobated by
the dignitaries of the church, her memory was held in reverence till
the Reformation as St Maritte (Margaret), the Martyr of Nordness. In
1320, the number of pilgrimages to this irregular shrine had become so
numerous that Bishop Audfinn of Bergen issued an official interdict
against them, an interference which was resented by his canons, some of
whom were bold enough to protest against its promulgation.

Nothing is known of the Claimant’s previous history, except that the
contemporary annalist states that she came to Bergen in a ship from
Lübeck. Absolom Pedersen asserts that she came from Scotland, but gives
no authority for the statement, and there is sufficient evidence in the
records to render this highly improbable. But it is a very remarkable
circumstance that Wyntoun, the popular historian of his time, gave
currency in Scotland to the statement—which we must assume to have been
then the popular belief—that the Maid of Norway was put to death in
her own country by martyrdom. After giving circumstantial details of
the sending of the Scottish embassy to Norway, consisting of Sir David
of the Wemyss and Michael Scot of Balwearie, he adds, that when they
arrived—

    Dead then was that Maiden fair,
    That of law suld have been heir,
    And appearëd til have been
    By the law of Norway Queen;
    But that Maiden sweet for-thi [_therefore_]
    Was put to death by martyry.

In accordance with the usage of the period, the expression of the
chronicler describing the manner of her death would be universally
understood to mean burning at the stake; and the evident anachronism,
as well as the inherent improbability of the narrative, is accounted
for by the fact that it quite accurately describes the death of the
Claimant, but assigns it to the time of the death of the Princess.
The reason given by Wyntoun for the ‘martyrdom’ is, that the
Norwegians—though their law allowed—could not brook the idea of a woman
succeeding to the crown; and this also may be accounted for by the fact
that the woman who suffered was a pretender to the crown.

No incident in Scottish history is more pathetic than that of the
untimely death of the young Princess on her voyage to Orkney; and
no single event in the whole course of that history has exercised a
more important influence on the destinies of the nation. In these
circumstances, we cannot cease to wonder how it came to pass that there
is no authentic record of its details in the contemporary or nearly
contemporary chronicles of Scottish or Norwegian history. The only
contemporary document in Scottish record which notices her death is
the letter of the Bishop of St Andrews to Edward I., dated at Leuchars
the 7th of October 1290, in which the bishop states that there was a
rumour of her death; but that he had heard subsequently that she ‘had
recovered of her sickness, but was still weak.’ It was plain, however,
that the bishop did not believe the rumour of her recovery, for he
concludes his letter by praying King Edward to approach the Borders
with his army to prevent bloodshed, seeing that Sir Robert Bruce had
come to Perth and Mar and Athole were collecting their forces. On the
Norwegian side, there is a total absence of authentic contemporary
record of the time and manner of the death of the Princess; and there
would have been absolutely nothing known of the details of her decease,
if it had not been for the appearance ten years later of the Claimant,
whom Munch, the historian of Norway, following Bishop Audfinn, has no
hesitation in designating ‘The False Margaret.’

In his official interdict of 1320, forbidding the people ‘any longer to
invoke that woman with great vows and worship as if she had been one
of God’s martyrs,’ the bishop states that he has deemed it his duty to
declare the truth as to her case; ‘She said, indeed, that she was the
child and lawful heir of King Eirik; but when she came from Lübeck to
Bergen she was gray-haired and white in the head, and was proved to be
twenty years older than the time of King Eirik’s marriage with Margaret
of Scotland. He was then only thirteen winters old, and consequently,
could not have been the father of a person of her years. And then he
had no other child than one daughter by Queen Margaret. This only
child of King Eirik and Queen Margaret was on her journey to Scotland,
when she died in Orkney between the hands of Bishop Narve of Bergen,
and in the presence of the best men of the land, who had attended her
from Norway; and the bishop and Herr Thore Hakonson and others brought
back her corpse to Bergen, where her father had the coffin opened and
narrowly examined the body, and himself acknowledged that it was his
daughter’s corpse, and buried her beside the queen her mother, in the
stone wall on the north side of the choir of the cathedral church of
Bergen.’

Although we owe these details of the Princess’s death and burial,
meagre as they are, to the bishop’s anxiety to confute the pretensions
of the Claimant, there can be no room for doubt as to their strict
truth. And yet it was possible, ten years after the event, for a
Claimant so to influence the popular belief, that, although burned
to death as a traitorous impostor, she was regarded by many of
the priesthood as a martyr; and by the common people was not only
worshipped as a saint in the church erected to her memory on the spot
where she suffered, but celebrated in songs which long continued to be
handed down among them. Even to this day, the precise date of the death
of the Princess Margaret remains unknown; and until quite recently, it
was generally believed that she had been buried in Kirkwall Cathedral,
as is indeed stated by the Danish archæologist Worsaae in his account
of that edifice given in his work on _The Danes and Northmen in
England_. No _History of Scotland_, until the issue of the last edition
of Dr John Hill Burton’s, has noticed the curious episode of the False
Margaret, a knowledge of which is necessary in order to account for the
fact that, in Wyntoun’s time, it was the popular belief in Scotland
that the Maid of Norway had suffered martyrdom at the hands of her own
countrymen.

It is curious that in connection with the history of Scotland, and
before the close of the fourteenth century, we find the story of
another Claimant not less audacious in his pretensions, but much more
fortunate in his patrons, by whom he was maintained till his death as
a state pensioner, and buried in one of the churches of Stirling under
the royal name and regal title to which he had laid claim. There was
this strange element in his case that he was the second personator
of the same dead king. Readers of English history are familiar with
the incidents of the revolution which placed Henry of Lancaster on
the throne, and consigned ‘the good King Richard’ to a perpetual
prison in Pontefract Castle. But the subsequent events in the life
of the imprisoned monarch, and the date and manner of his death,
are shrouded in an impenetrable obscurity. One of the ablest of our
Scottish historians, Patrick Fraser Tytler, has even declared, after
an elaborate investigation of the whole available evidence, that this
second Claimant, whose story we are about to notice, was Richard II. in
reality.

It is well known that shortly after the king’s imprisonment, there was
a conspiracy to replace him on the throne. The conspirators attempted
to attract the people to their cause by spreading abroad the rumour
of his escape from Pontefract; and, as is stated by a contemporary
chronicler, ‘to make this the more credible, they brought into the
field with them a chaplain called Father Maudelain, who so exactly
resembled good King Richard in face and person, in form and speech,
that every one who saw him declared that he was their former king.’ The
conspiracy failed; and those most deeply concerned in it, among whom
was the first personator, Father Maudelain, were beheaded.

Shortly afterwards, it was given out that King Richard had died in
Pontefract Castle, on or about the 14th of February 1399. Rumour,
indeed, spoke freely of the suspicion, that if he were dead, he had
surely been murdered by his enemies, and with the connivance of the
reigning king. It was not till nearly a month after the alleged date
of his death that, in order to silence the popular rumours, King
Henry caused the body to be brought publicly to London ‘with the face
exposed,’ and laid in state for two days in the church of St Paul,
‘that the people might believe for certain that he was dead.’ ‘But,’
says the old chronicler formerly quoted, ‘I certainly do not believe
that it was the king, but I think it was Maudelain, his chaplain,’ who
had been beheaded little more than a month previously.

There were many who shared this unbelief; and in 1402, the rumours that
King Richard was yet alive became so persistent and circumstantial,
that King Henry dealt with them by putting to death a number of
persons, principally priests and friars, for spreading such treasonable
reports. The cause of the revival of these rumours at this time is
revealed in a document issued by King Henry, requiring the sheriffs to
arrest all persons guilty of spreading the report that King Richard
was alive, which had arisen from a person calling himself King Richard
having appeared in Scotland in company with one William Serle, who had
been groom of the robes to Richard, and had possessed himself of his
signet.

As the scene thus shifts to Scotland, we naturally turn to the Scottish
chronicles and records for the further elucidation of the mystery.
Wyntoun and Bower—each writing of events which happened within his
own lifetime—narrate the story of this second Claimant in much the
same manner. He came from the out-isles of Scotland, having been
discovered in the kitchen of Donald, Lord of the Isles, by persons
who had seen King Richard, and recognised his likeness. He was sent
in charge of Lord Montgomery to Robert III. of Scotland, by whom
he was well received, and assigned a pension of one hundred merks
yearly. After King Robert’s death, the pension was continued by the
Regent Albany. The Scottish Chamberlain, in charging his accounts with
these annual payments, has entered them as paid to ‘King Richard of
England.’ Finally, we learn from an old Scottish chronicle that when
he died at Stirling in 1419, his body was buried on the north side
of the high-altar of the Church of the Preaching Friars, and a long
Latin epitaph graven over his tomb informed the reader that ‘Here lies
buried King Richard of England.’ Yet it has been established as clearly
as any such question can now be established by evidence, that this
second personator of King Richard was an adventurer named Thomas Ward,
or Thomas of Trumpington, who, with his confederate William Serle,
is exempted by name from the general amnesty granted to political
offenders by Henry IV. in 1403.




IN ALL SHADES.


CHAPTER XXVIII.

Meanwhile, Harry Noel himself was quite unconsciously riding round to
the Hawthorns’ cottage, to perform the whole social duty of man by
Edward and Marian.

‘So you’ve come out to look after your father’s estates in Barbadoes,
have you, Mr Noel?’ Marian inquired with a quiet smile, after the first
greetings and talk about the voyage were well over.

Harry laughed. ‘Well, Mrs Hawthorn,’ he said confidentially, ‘my
father’s estates there seem to have looked after themselves pretty
comfortably for the last twenty years, or at least been looked after
vicariously by a rascally local Scotch agent; and I’ve no doubt they’d
have continued to look after themselves for the next twenty years
without my intervention, if nothing particular had occurred otherwise
to bring me out here.’

‘But something particular did occur—eh, Mr Noel?’

‘No, nothing occurred,’ Harry Noel answered, with a distinct stress
upon the significant verb. ‘But I had reasons of my own which made
me anxious to visit Trinidad; and I thought Barbadoes would be an
excellent excuse to supply to Sir Walter for the expenses of the
journey. The old gentleman jumped at it—positively jumped at it.
There’s nothing loosens Sir Walter’s pursestrings like a devotion to
business; and he declared to me on leaving, with tears in his eyes
almost, that it was the first time he ever remembered to have seen me
show any proper interest whatsoever in the family property.’

‘And what were the reasons that made you so very anxious, then, to
visit Trinidad?’

‘Why, Mrs Hawthorn, how can you ask me? Wasn’t I naturally desirous of
seeing you and Edward once more after a year’s absence?’

Marian coughed a little dry cough. ‘Friendship is a very powerfully
attractive magnet, isn’t it, Edward?’ she said with an arch smile to
her husband. ‘It was very good of Mr Noel to have thought of coming
four thousand miles across the Atlantic just to visit you and me,
dear—now, wasn’t it?’

‘So very good,’ Edward answered, laughing, ‘that I should almost be
inclined myself (as a lawyer) to suspect some other underlying motive.’

‘Well, she _is_ a very dear little girl,’ Marian went on reflectively.

‘She is, certainly,’ her husband echoed.

Harry laughed. ‘I see you’ve found me out,’ he answered, not altogether
unpleased. ‘Well, yes, I may as well make a clean breast of it, Mrs
Hawthorn. I’ve come across on purpose to ask her; and I won’t go back
either, till I can take her with me. I’ve waited for twelve months, to
make quite sure I knew my own heart and wasn’t mistaken about it. Every
day, her image has remained there clearer and clearer than before, and
I _will_ win her, or else stop here for ever.’

‘When a man says that and really means it,’ Marian replied
encouragingly, ‘I believe in the end he can always win the girl he has
set his heart upon.’

‘But I suppose you know,’ Edward interrupted, ‘that her father has
already made up his mind that she’s to marry a cousin of hers at
Pimento Valley, a planter in the island, and has announced the fact
publicly to half Trinidad?’

‘Not Mr Tom Dupuy?’ Harry cried in amazement.

‘Yes, Tom Dupuy—the very man. Then you’ve met him already?’

‘He lunched with us to-day at Orange Grove!’ Harry answered, puckering
his brow a little. ‘And her father actually wants her to marry that
fellow! By Jove, what a desecration!’

‘Then you don’t like what you’ve seen so far of Mr Tom?’ Marian asked
with a smile.

Harry rose and leaned against the piazza pillar with his hands behind
him. ‘The man’s a cad,’ he answered briefly.

‘If we were in Piccadilly again,’ Edward Hawthorn said quietly, ‘I
should say that was probably a piece of pure class prejudice, Noel; but
as we are in Trinidad, and as I happen to know Mr Tom Dupuy by two or
three pieces of personal adventure, I don’t mind telling you in strict
confidence, I cordially agree with you.’

‘Ah!’ Harry Noel cried with much amusement, clapping him heartily on
his broad shoulder. ‘So coming to Trinidad has knocked some of that
radical humbug and nonsense clean out of you, has it, Teddy? I knew it
would, my dear fellow; I knew you’d get rid of it!’

‘On the contrary, Mr Noel,’ Marian answered with quiet dignity, ‘I
think it has really made us a great deal more confirmed in our own
opinions than we were to begin with. We have suffered a great deal
ourselves, you know, since we came to Trinidad.’

Harry flushed in the face a little. ‘You needn’t tell me all about it,
Mrs Hawthorn,’ he said uneasily. ‘I’ve heard something about the matter
already from the two Dupuys, and all I can say is, I never heard before
such a foolish, ridiculous, nonsensical, cock-and-bull prejudice as the
one they told me about, in the whole course of my precious existence.
If it hadn’t been for Nora’s sake—I mean for Miss Dupuy’s’—and he
checked himself suddenly—‘upon my word, I really think I should have
knocked the fellow down in his uncle’s dining-room the very first
moment he began to speak about it.’

‘Mr Noel,’ Marian said, ‘I know how absurd it must seem to you, but you
can’t imagine how much Edward and I have suffered about it since we’ve
been in this island.’

‘I can,’ Harry answered. ‘I can understand it easily. I had a specimen
of it myself from those fellows at lunch this morning. I kept as calm
as I could outwardly; but, by Jove, Mrs Hawthorn, it made my blood boil
over within me to hear the way they spoke of your husband.—Upon my
honour, if it weren’t for—for Miss Dupuy,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘I
wouldn’t stop now a single night to accept that man’s hospitality after
the way he spoke about you.’

‘No, no; do stop,’ Marian answered simply. ‘We want you so much to
marry Nora; and we want to save her from that horrid man her father has
chosen for her.’

And then they began unburdening their hearts to Harry Noel with the
long arrears of twelve months’ continuous confidences. It was such a
relief to get a little fresh external sympathy, to be able to talk
about it all to somebody just come from England, and entirely free from
the taint of West Indian prejudice. They told Harry everything, without
reserve; and Harry listened, growing more and more indignant every
minute, to the long story of petty slights and undeserved insults. At
last he could restrain his wrath no longer. ‘It’s preposterous,’ he
cried, walking up and down the piazza angrily, by way of giving vent
to his suppressed emotion; ‘it’s abominable! it’s outrageous! it’s
not to be borne with! The idea of these people, these hole-and-corner
nobodies, these miserable, stupid, ignorant noodles, with no more
education or manners than an English ploughboy—O yes, my dear fellow,
I know what they are—I’ve seen them in Barbadoes—setting themselves up
to be better than you are—there, upon my word I’ve really no patience
with it. I shall flog some of them soundly, some day, before I’ve done
with them; I know I shall. I can’t avoid it. But what on earth can have
induced you to stop here, my dear Teddy, when you might have gone back
again comfortably to England, and have mixed properly in the sort of
society you’re naturally fitted for?’

‘_I_ did,’ Marian answered firmly; ‘I induced him, Mr Noel. I wouldn’t
let him run away from these miserable people. And besides, you know,
he’s been able to do such a lot of good here. All the negroes love him
dearly, because he’s protected them from so much injustice. He’s the
most popular man in the island with the black people; he’s been so good
to them, and so useful to them, and such a help against the planters,
who are always trying their hardest to oppress them. And isn’t that
something worth staying for, in spite of everything?’

Harry Noel paused and hesitated. ‘Tastes differ, Mrs Hawthorn,’ he
answered more soberly. ‘For my part, I can’t say I feel myself very
profoundly interested in the eternal nigger question; though, if a man
feels it’s his duty to stop and see the thing out to the bitter end,
why, of course he ought in that case to stop and see it. But what does
rile me is the idea that these wretched Dupuy people should venture to
talk in the way they do about such a man as your husband—confound them!’

Tea interrupted his flow of indignation.

But when Harry Noel had ridden away again towards Orange Grove on Mr
Dupuy’s pony, Hawthorn and his wife stood looking at one another in
dubious silence for a few minutes. Neither of them liked to utter the
thought that had been uppermost in both their minds from the first
moment they saw him in Trinidad.

At last Edward broke the ominous stillness. ‘Harry Noel’s awfully
dark, isn’t he, Marian?’ he said uneasily.

‘Very,’ Marian answered in as unconcerned a voice as she could well
summon up. ‘And so extremely handsome, too, Edward,’ she added after a
moment’s faint pause, as if to turn the current of the conversation.

Neither of them had ever observed in England how exceedingly
olive-coloured Harry Noel’s complexion really was—in England, to be as
dark as a gipsy is of no importance; but now in Trinidad, girt round
by all that curiously suspicious and genealogically inquiring society,
they couldn’t help noticing to themselves what a very dark skin and
what curly hair he happened to have inherited.

‘And his mother’s a Barbadian lady,’ Edward went on uncomfortably,
pretending to play with a book and a paper-knife.

‘She is,’ Marian answered, hardly daring to look up at her husband’s
face in her natural confusion. ‘He—he always seems so very fond of his
mother, Edward, darling.’

Edward went on cutting the pages of his newly-arrived magazine in grim
silence for a few minutes longer; then he said: ‘I wish to goodness he
could get engaged and married offhand to Nora Dupuy very soon, Marian,
and then clear out at once and for ever from this detestable island as
quickly as possible.’

‘It would be better if he could, perhaps,’ Marian answered, sighing
deeply. ‘Poor dear Nora! I wish she’d take him. She could never be
happy with that horrid Dupuy man.’

They didn’t dare to speak, one to the other, the doubt that was
agitating them; but they both agreed in that half-unspoken fashion that
it would be well if Harry pressed his suit soon, before any sudden
thunderbolt had time to fall unexpectedly upon his head and mar his
chance with poor little Nora.

As Harry Noel rode back to Orange Grove alone, along the level
bridle-path, he chanced to drop his short riding-whip at a turn of the
road by a broad canepiece. A tall negro was hoeing vigorously among the
luxuriant rows of cane close by. The young Englishman called out to him
carelessly, as he would have done to a labourer at home: ‘Here you, hi,
sir, come and pick up my whip, will you!’

The tall negro turned and stared at him. ‘Who you callin’ to come an’
pick up your whip, me fren’?’ he answered somewhat savagely.

Noel glanced back at the man with an angry glare. ‘You!’ he said,
pointing with an imperious gesture to the whip on the ground. ‘I called
you to pick it up for me. Don’t you understand English?’

‘You is rude gentleman for true,’ the old negro responded quietly,
continuing his task of hoeing in the canepiece, without any attempt to
pick up the whip for the unrecognised stranger. ‘If you want de whip
picked up, what for you doan’t speak to naygur decently? Ole-time folk
has proverb, “Please am a good dog, an’ him keep doan’t cost nuffin.”
Get down yourself, sah, an’ pick up your own whip for you-self if you
want him.’

Harry was just on the point of dismounting and following the old
negro’s advice, with some remote idea of applying the whip immediately
after to the back of his adviser, when a younger black man, stepping
out hastily from behind a row of canes that had hitherto concealed
him, took up the whip and handed it back to him with a respectful
salutation. The old man looked on disdainfully while Harry took it;
then, as the rider went on with a parting angry glance, he muttered
sulkily: ‘Who dat man dat you gib de whip to? An’ what for you want to
gib it him dere, Peter?’

The younger man answered apologetically: ‘Dat Mr Noel, buckra from
Englan’; him come to stop at Orange Grobe along ob de massa.’

‘Buckra from Englan’!’ Louis Delgado cried incredulously. ‘Him doan’t
no buckra from Englan’, I tellin’ you, me brudder; him Trinidad brown
man as sure as de gospel. You doan’t see him is brown man, Peter, de
minnit you look at him?’

Peter shook his head and grinned solemnly. ‘No, Mistah Delgado, him
doan’t no brown man,’ he answered, laughing. ‘Him is dark for true, but
still him real buckra. Him stoppin’ up at house along ob de massa!’

Delgado turned to his work once more, doggedly. ‘If him buckra, an’ if
him stoppin’ up wit dem Dupuy,’ he said half aloud, but so that the
wondering Peter could easily overhear it, ‘when de great an’ terrible
day come, he will be cut off wit all de household. An’ de day doan’t
gwine to be delayed long now, neider.’ A mumbled Arabic sentence, which
Peter of course could not understand, gave point and terror to this
last prediction. Peter turned away, thinking to himself that Louis
Delgado was a terrible obeah man and sorcerer for certain, and that
whoever crossed his path, had better think twice before he offended so
powerful an antagonist.

Meanwhile, Harry Noel was still riding on to Orange Grove. As he
reached the garden gate, Tom Dupuy met him, out for a walk in the cool
of the evening with big Slot, his great Cuban bloodhound. As Harry
drew near, Slot burst away suddenly with a leap from his master, and
before Harry could foresee what was going to happen, the huge brute
had sprung up at him fiercely, and was attacking him with his mighty
teeth and paws, as though about to drag him from his seat forcibly with
his slobbering canines. Harry hit out at the beast a vicious blow from
the butt-end of his riding-whip, and at the same moment Tom Dupuy,
sauntering up somewhat more lazily than politeness or even common
humanity perhaps demanded, caught the dog steadily by the neck and held
him back by main force, still struggling vehemently and pulling at the
collar. His great slobbering jaws opened hungrily towards the angry
Englishman, and his eyes gleamed with the fierce light of a starving
carnivore in sight and smell of his natural prey.

‘Precious vicious dog you keep, Mr Dupuy,’ Harry exclaimed, not over
good-humouredly, for the brute had made its teeth meet through the flap
of his coat lappets: ‘you oughtn’t to let him go at large, I fancy.’

Tom Dupuy stooped and patted his huge favourite lovingly on the head
with very little hypocritical show of penitence or apology. ‘He don’t
often go off this way,’ he answered coolly. ‘He’s a Cuban bloodhound,
Slot is; pure-blooded—the same kind we used to train in the good old
days to hunt up the runaway niggers; and they often go at a black man
or a brown man—that’s what they’re meant for. The moment they smell
African blood, they’re after it, like a greyhound after a hare, as
quick as lightning. But I never knew Slot before go for a white man!
It’s very singular—ex-cessively singular. I never before knew him go
for a real white man.’

‘If he was my dog,’ Harry Noel answered, walking his pony up to the
door with a sharp lookout on the ugly mouth of the straining and
quivering bloodhound, ‘he’d never have the chance again, I can tell
you, to go for another. The brute’s most dangerous—a most bloodthirsty
creature. And indeed, I’m not sentimental myself on the matter of
niggers; but I don’t know that in a country where there are so many
niggers knocking about casually everywhere, any man has got a right to
keep a dog that darts straight at them as a greyhound darts at a hare,
according to your own confession. It doesn’t seem to me exactly right
or proper somehow.’

Tom Dupuy glanced carelessly at the struggling brute and answered with
a coarse laugh: ‘I see, Mr Noel, you’ve been taking counsel already
with your friend Hawthorn. Well, well, in my opinion, I expect there’s
just about a pair of you!’

(_To be continued._)




TOBACCO CULTIVATION.


The question of the cultivation of tobacco has recently been brought
within the range of practical agriculture. In both Houses of Parliament
the government has announced that permission will be given to grow
this plant, and cure it in proper manner, as experiments, in various
parts of the country, and more especially in Ireland. The Council of
the Royal Agricultural Society of England, with His Royal Highness the
Prince of Wales in the chair, determined to help the government in the
matter, provided the government gave a grant towards the experiments.
The subject thus becomes one of special moment. It is very doubtful,
however, whether any experiments that can be made will give us much
more information than we at present have regarding this crop. That it
can be grown in this country is certain. To take up the first seed
catalogue that comes to our hand—that of Messrs Carter & Co.—we find
that for a long series of years past, the seed of no fewer than seven
varieties of Nicotiana is announced as for sale. The plants are grown
in many gardens, and the leaves are dried and used as fumigants against
insects. In fact, so simple is the growth of the plant, that the only
directions given are to ‘Sow on heat, and transplant to good, rich,
loamy soil, or sow out of doors in May.’ That the plant can be grown
is certain; but if grown on an agricultural scale, it will have to
bear with the usual effects of climate, injurious insects, and the
thousand-and-one ills which plant-life is heir to. That is, so far as
the plant is concerned. The great difficulty in every country will
begin with the curing, and is the cause of the tobacco crop being
gradually given up.

So far as Europe is concerned, there has been a great decrease in
tobacco cultivation during recent years. In the Netherlands, the
acreage is at present something like half what it was ten or twelve
years ago. In Belgium, the decrease in area has been considerable, but
not to so great an extent. In Austro-Hungary the acreage under tobacco
was in 1884 less by 8768 acres than two years previously. In Germany,
the area of the crop fell from 1881 to 1883 by over 12,000 acres.
Italy, with its magnificent climate, grows only 8202 acres; while in
France, where the government purchase the crop, only 32,800 acres were
grown last year. It is to America, however, that we must turn for our
best information as to the growth of tobacco. In the last four census
years, this crop was grown to the following extent: 1850, crop of
199,752,655 pounds; 1860, crop of 434,209,461 pounds; 1870, 262,735,341
pounds; and 1880, crop of 472,661,117 pounds, grown on 638,841 acres.
Here we find that although there was a great decrease in the growth of
this crop after the war, it gradually picked up again, and the crop is
now as large as ever. In 1883, 451,545,641 pounds were grown on an area
of 638,739 acres. Its total value was £8,091,072.

The method of cultivation adopted in the United States cannot fail
to be of use to the English or Irish grower. In the first place, a
word should be said upon the position of tobacco in crop rotations.
Travellers in South America have often noticed the desolate appearance
of some portions of the country. This is due to the exhaustion of the
soil by continuous tobacco-growing. A very large proportion of what
was known as tobacco land has thus been reduced to a condition of
poverty, and has been left to itself, and is covered with weeds. A good
authority declares that this fault can be easily remedied, and that by
growing tobacco as a rotation crop. After two crops of tobacco have
been taken from the land, and after this a crop of corn, and then a
crop of clover or vetches, after the latter have been cut or fed off,
the land may be again prepared for another crop of tobacco. A word may
be said here also on manures. In the best tobacco plantations, two
hundred pounds of nitrate of soda and two hundred and fifty pounds of
superphosphate per acre are used—the former bringing up a heavier crop,
and the latter improving its quality. Besides these, large applications
of farmyard manure are made. Taking Wisconsin as the State more
particularly to be treated of, we find that the seed-beds are burned
lightly, and a liberal allowance of manure worked in, to the depth of
six inches, with a hoe or spade. This work of preparation begins in
July, when the manure is applied. The bed is reworked in August, and
again in September, for the purpose of keeping down any weeds or grass
that may spring up; and finally, in November, it is hoed and raked
and prepared to receive the seed, which is either sown in the Fall or
early in the succeeding spring. When sown in the Fall, the seed is not
previously sprouted. After sowing, the bed is compacted by rolling,
tramping, or clapping with a board. The plants are carefully nursed by
liquid manuring and by weeding. The young plants are generally large
enough for transplanting by the 1st of June.

The land for the main crop—that is, into which the plants are
transplanted from the seed-bed—is ploughed in the Fall after the
crop of the previous year, and twice in the spring—in May, and just
before the 1st of June. Coarse and rough manures are applied with the
autumn ploughing, and finer well-rotted sorts in May. After the last
ploughing, the land is thoroughly pulverised by harrows or drags, and
marked off for the plant. The varieties of tobacco grown are either
the seed-leaf or the Spanish. If the former, the plants are placed two
and a half feet by three feet apart; but if the latter, three feet by
a foot and a half. Thus, if the seed-leaf variety, some five thousand
five hundred plants are used to the acre; and if the Spanish, nine
thousand six hundred. As soon as the soil is in proper condition to
work after the plants have been set out, a cultivator with five teeth
is run between the rows, and this is kept up once or twice a week,
until the field has been gone over five or six times. The crop is hoed
twice—once after the cultivator has been run through the first time.
Very little earth is put round the plant, level cultivation being
preferred. In some portions of the district, a horse-hoe is used in
cultivating the crop; this implement, from its peculiar construction,
enables the operator to go very near each plant and stir every portion
of the soil. In very small patches, the cultivation is done entirely
with the hoe, which is kept up every week until the plants are so large
that they cannot be worked without breaking the leaves.

The next operations are termed ‘topping’ and ‘suckering.’ In about
forty-eight or fifty days after the plants are set, if the crop has
been well cultivated and the weather seasonable, the flower-buds make
their appearance, and are pinched out, leaving from fourteen to sixteen
leaves on each plant. None of the bottom leaves are taken off, but
all are left to mature, or dry up, serving as a protection against
the dirt. Fields, however, are often seen in full blossom before the
tobacco is topped, and this results in great damage to the crop.
Tobacco is suckered twice—once in about a week after it is topped, and
again just before it is cut, which is generally about two weeks after
topping. ‘Suckering’ consists in the removal of young suckers, which at
this time make their appearance in large numbers. As has been noted,
tobacco is generally ready for harvesting in two weeks after being
topped; but there is considerable variation in the time on various
soils. On warm sandy loams, the plant will be as ripe in twelve days as
it will be on heavy clayey soils in eighteen days. This is one of the
reasons why sandy loams are preferred.

Harvesting commences early in August, and continues without
intermission into September. The time preferred for cutting is from
two o’clock in the afternoon until nearly sundown, because at that
time tobacco is less liable to be blistered by the heat of the sun.
The instrument used for cutting is a hatchet, the plants being cut
off nearly on a level with the ground, and laid back on the rows
to ‘wilt.’ After wilting, they are speared on laths. Of the large
seed-leaf variety, only about six plants are put on a lath, but of
the smaller Spanish (or Havana) variety, ten are not considered too
many. After being speared on the laths, the latter are carefully put
on a long wagon-frame, made for the purpose, and carried to the sheds,
where they are arranged on the tier poles or racks, from six to ten
inches apart, according to the size of the plant, but never so close
as to permit them to touch each other. It requires six weeks to cure
the Spanish variety perfectly, and two months to cure the seed-leaf.
If the weather is dry, after the crop is out, the doors are kept
closed during the day and opened at night; but extreme care must be
taken not to cure too rapidly. In muggy, sultry weather, as much air
as possible should be given, thorough ventilation being indispensable,
to prevent ‘pole-sweat.’ Continuous damp weather and continuous dry
weather are both to be feared. It is believed by many good growers that
white veins are the result of a drought after the tobacco has been
harvested, and it is said that no crop cured when there is plenty of
rain is ever affected with them. Inferences of this kind, however, are
too often drawn without considering a sufficient number of cases to
warrant the enunciation of a general law. This is the view put forth
by Mr Killebrew, in an able paper on Tobacco-culture written for the
American government. He, however, further points out that it is a
well-established truth, deduced from the universal experience of the
cultivation of seed-leaf tobacco in every State, that a crop cannot be
cured without the alternations of moist and dry atmospheres.

A few words may be said on the curing of tobacco generally. Three
systems are adopted in the United States. It may be (1) air-dried; (2)
dried by open-fire heat from charcoal or wood fires in the barn; or
(3) by flues which convey heat from ovens and heaters built outside
the barn. The last method is said to be the best, as a better control
can be had over the temperature. No regular rule can be given, as the
heat must be regulated according to circumstances, and must change
with the weather. The main thing is to dry the tobacco gradually to
secure a good colour, and to prevent mould. When the tobacco is dry,
it must be kept so by gentle fires in wet or damp weather, and it is
not touched for the purpose of ‘bulking’ until it has become soft and
pliable. Artificial sweating is believed by some to be accompanied with
less risk than sweating by the natural process; and second stories of
warehouses are sometimes prepared as sweating chambers by being closely
ceiled or plastered. These are heated by furnaces, and the temperature
maintained at from one hundred and ten to one hundred and forty degrees.

After curing, the tobacco is prepared for market. This consists of
stripping the leaves from the stalks, tying them up in large bundles,
and afterwards sorting them. After being sorted in ‘grades,’ these
are tied up in ‘hands’ of from eighteen to twenty leaves, securely
wrapped with a leaf at the butt-end, and ‘bulked’ in piles, with the
heads out and the tails overlapping in the centre of the bulk. Here it
remains until the ‘fatty stems’ are thoroughly cured, when it is sold
to the dealers. These latter pack it in barrels and sweat the leaves
still further; but into this subject we need not go, as it can have
but little interest to the farmer who intends growing tobacco in this
country.

So far as the cost of growing tobacco is concerned, a large and
successful grower in Pennsylvania, some two years ago, published the
following statement of cost and returns from a field of nine and a
half acres: 215¾ days’ labour of men from preparing the seed-bed up to
the hanging in the barn, £43; team-work, 38½ days, with feed for 42½
days, £30; curing, stripping, and marketing, £15: total, £88. The net
receipts were £174; thus showing a profit of £86. This was in a fairly
good year.

These few notes show us that tobacco is a crop requiring a great
expenditure of labour and care, and that even in America the profits
of thirty pounds per acre, about which we have heard so much, are not
always realised. The probabilities, however, are so much against our
getting really fine qualities of tobacco, that it is doubtful if the
necessary capital will be put into the business.




‘WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS.’


I write these pages as a warning. I don’t suppose any one will profit
by it. From the time of Cassandra downwards, nobody has ever paid
attention to warnings. But that is not my affair.

A London newspaper, some years ago, gave up several columns of its
valuable space to the question: ‘What shall we do with our Boys?’ I
perused the correspondence with a strong personal interest, for I
myself am the proprietor of a boy—several boys, in point of fact; but I
refer more particularly to my eldest, aged nineteen, as to whom I felt
that it was time something was settled. I have a great belief—partly
derived from the before-mentioned correspondence, and partly from my
own observation—in studying a boy’s natural bent, and finding him an
occupation in accordance with it. Such being the case, I began to
study Augustus with a view to finding out his special aptitude; but,
unless a really remarkable faculty of outgrowing his trousers may be so
regarded, I could not for some time discover that he had any. By dint,
however, of careful observation and cross-examination of the household,
I elicited that he was addicted to making extremely offensive smells
in the back kitchen with chemicals, and that he had what he called a
‘collection’ of beetles and other unpleasant insects stuck on pins in
a box in his bedroom. It appeared, therefore, that his proclivities
were scientific, and I ultimately decided to make an analyst of
him. Accordingly, after disposing of sundry painful but presumably
necessary arrangements as to premium, Augustus was duly articled to
a Public Analyst. I use capital letters, because I observed that Mr
Scrutin himself always did so. Why, I cannot say. Possibly, a public
analyst—without capitals—would not command the same amount of public
confidence. On consideration, I don’t suppose he would.

Augustus’ first demand on taking up his new occupation was a
microscope. ‘And while you’re about it,’ he suggested, ‘it had better
be a good one.’ At first, I was inclined to suspect that this was an
artful device for the further indulgence of his entomological vices,
and that the implement would be devoted to post-mortem examinations
of deceased caterpillars or other kindred abominations. He assured
me, however, that such was not the case, and that the microscope
was nowadays ‘the very sheet-anchor of analytical science.’ The
‘sheet-anchor’ completely took the wind out of my sails. (I feel that
there is rather a confusion of metaphor here, but, not being a nautical
person, I don’t feel competent to set it right.) I surrendered,
humbly remarking that I supposed a five-pound note would cover it.
The youthful analyst laughed me to scorn. The very least, he assured
me, that a good working microscope could be got for would be ten or
twelve pounds. Ultimately, I agreed to purchase one at ten guineas,
and congratulated myself that at anyrate _that_ was done with. On the
contrary, it was only just begun. No sooner had my analyst secured his
microscope, than he began to insist upon the purchase of a number of
auxiliary appliances, which, it appeared, no respectable microscope
would be seen without. He broke them to me by degrees. At first he
only mentioned, if I remember right, an ‘achromatic condenser,’ at two
guineas. Next came a ‘double nosepiece’ (why ‘double,’ I don’t know);
then a polarising apparatus and a camera lucida (four pounds ten); then
a micrometer and a microtome (three guineas more); then somebody’s
prism, at one pound five; and somebody else’s microspectroscope, at
I don’t know how much. Here, however, I put my foot down. _I_ am
compelled to regard the sordid consideration of price, though science
doesn’t.

The microscope and its subsidiary apparatus were duly delivered; but
my analyst appeared to be in no particular hurry to convey them to the
laboratory where he was studying. On my making a remark to this effect,
he replied: ‘Haven’t taken them to the laboratory? No; and I’m not
going to. Mr Scrutin has got a precious sight better microscope than
mine—cost sixty guineas without the little extra articles, and they
were about thirty more. _He_’s got a microspectroscope, if you like!’

I refrained from arguing the point, and mildly remarked that in that
case he might have used Mr Scrutin’s microscope, and saved me some
twenty guineas. But he rejected the idea with scorn, and explained that
_his_ microscope was not for laboratory use, but for ‘private study.’

So far as my observation went, my analyst’s private study had hitherto
been confined to a short pipe and the last number of some penny
dreadful; but I did not think it wise to check his new-born ardour; I
contented myself by observing that I only hoped he would ‘stick to it.’

‘No fear of that,’ he rejoined, as indignantly as a limpet might have
done in answer to the same observation. ‘Why, microscopy is the most
fascinating study out.—Just take a squint at _that_, now.’

I looked down the tube, but couldn’t see anything at all, and made a
remark to that effect.

‘Oh, that’s because you haven’t got the focus.—_Now_, try again.’

I tried again, and saw a sort of network of red fibre.

‘I’ll bet sixpence you can’t tell me what _that_ is!’ he exclaimed
triumphantly.

I owned the soft impeachment.

‘That’s the maxillary gland of a rat.’

‘Dear me!’ I said.

‘Yes. Isn’t it lovely? Here’s another.—Now, just look at that.’ (A
queer granular-looking object.) ‘You don’t know what that is?’

‘Give it up,’ I said.

‘That’s a section of the epidermis of the great toe.’

‘Great toe!’ I exclaimed in disgust. ‘What on earth have analysts got
to do with great toes?’

‘Oh, nothing particular,’ he said airily. ‘But we like to have as much
variety as possible. I should like to have a section of everything, if
I could get it.—Here’s another pretty slide; that is the section of a
diseased potato; and this one is a bit of a frog’s leg.’

‘Very instructive, I daresay,’ I remarked; ‘but I hope you haven’t made
me spend twenty pounds merely to improve your acquaintance with frogs’
legs and diseased potatoes. Mr Scrutin surely doesn’t analyse such
things as these?’

‘I can’t say we do much in frogs’ legs,’ he said; ‘but there are lots
of things adulterated with potato. Flour and arrowroot, and butter, and
cocoa, and—and—a heap of things. And the potato’s just as likely to be
diseased as not. It _may_ be, anyhow, and there you are! If you don’t
know what diseased potato looks like, you’re done.’

‘A pleasant lookout,’ I replied, ‘if half-a-dozen of the commonest
articles of food are habitually adulterated.’

‘Bless you, that’s nothing,’ he replied. ‘If _that_ was all, there
wouldn’t be much harm done. There are a jolly sight worse adulterations
than that. In fact, pretty nearly everything’s adulterated, and some of
’em with rank poisons.’

‘Rank poisons! That’s manslaughter!’

‘O no; it isn’t,’ he calmly rejoined. ‘Of course, they don’t put in
enough to kill you right off. And if you find something disagreeing
with you, you can’t swear what it is. It _may_ be the nux vomica in the
beer; but it’s just as likely to be entozoa in the water, or copper
in the last bottle of pickles. However, you’re all right _now_. With
an analyst in the family, at anyrate you shan’t be poisoned without
knowing it. _I_’ll let you know what you are eating and drinking.—This
fellow’—and he patted the microscope affectionately—‘will tell you all
about that.’

       *       *       *       *       *

And it did. From that day forth I have never enjoyed a meal, and I
never expect to do so again. I have always been particular to deal at
respectable establishments, and to pay a fair price, in the hope of
insuring a good article. I have, or had, a very tolerable appetite,
and till that dreadful microscope came into the house, I used to get a
good deal of enjoyment out of life. But now all is changed. My analyst
began by undermining my faith in our baker. Now, if there was one of
our tradesmen in whom, more than another, I had confidence, it was
the baker, who supplied what seemed to me a good, solid, satisfying
article, with no nonsense about it. But one day, shortly after the
conversation I have recorded, my analyst remarked at breakfast-time:
‘We had a turn at bread yesterday at the laboratory—examined five
samples; and found three of ’em adulterated. And do you know’—holding
up a piece of our own bread and smelling it critically—‘I rather fancy
this of ours is rather dicky.’

‘Nonsense!’ I cried. ‘It’s very good bread—capital bread!’

‘_You_ may think so,’ he continued calmly; ‘but you’re not an analyst.
I shall take a sample of this to the laboratory, and you shall have my
report upon it.’

‘Take it, by all means. But if you find anything wrong about that
bread, I’ll eat my hat!’

‘Better not make rash promises. I’ll take a good big sample, and you
shall have my report on it to-night.’

On his return home in the evening, he began: ‘I’ve been having a go-in
at your bread. It’s not pure, of course; but there isn’t very much
the matter with it. There’s a little potato, and a little rice, and a
little alum; and with those additions, it takes up a good deal more
water than it ought, so you don’t get your proper weight.’

‘Ahem!’ I said, ‘if that’s the case, we’ll change our baker. I’m not
going to pay for a mixture of potatoes and water, and call it bread.
But as for alum, that’s all nonsense. If they put _that_ in, we should
taste it.’

‘O no; you wouldn’t. When alum is put in bread, it decomposes and forms
sulphate of potash, an aperient salt. It disagrees with you, of course,
but you don’t taste it. As for changing your baker, the next fellow
you tried might be a jolly sight worse; _he_ might put in bone-dust,
or plaster of Paris, or sulphate of copper. And besides, half the
adulterations are in the flour already, before it reaches the baker.
Of course, that doesn’t prevent his doing a little more on his own
account.’

And with that the matter dropped, so far as the bread was concerned;
but my confidence was rudely shaken.

A few days later, my analyst remarked: ‘I don’t think much of this
milk;’ and he forthwith appropriated a sample for analytical purposes;
but, happily, was compelled to own that it wasn’t quite so bad as he
expected. It had more than its proper proportion of water; but that
_might_ arise—he charitably suggested—from the cow being unwell.
To make up the deficiency, it had been fortified with treacle and
coloured with arnatto, but these my analyst appeared to regard as quite
every-day falsifications.

‘It’s a rascally shame,’ I said. ‘If one can’t put faith in the
milk-jug, it’s a bad lookout for the Blue Ribbon gentlemen. However,
let us hope that the tea and coffee are all right.’

‘Not likely!’ he rejoined. ‘Nearly all tea is “faced,” as they call it,
more or less, and the facing is itself an adulteration. As for coffee,
you don’t expect to get _that_ pure, do you? It’s sure to be mixed with
chicory, anyhow, and very probably with roasted acorns, beans, mahogany
sawdust, or old tan. Baked horse-liver occasionally; but that’s an
extreme case. If by any remote chance there wasn’t anything wrong in
the original coffee, you get it in the chicory; and very often there
are adulterations in both; so you get ’em twice over.’

‘If that’s the case, no more ground coffee for me. We’ll grind our own,
and then we are sure to be safe.’

‘You mustn’t make too cocksure of that. Some years ago, an ingenious
firm took out a patent for a machine to mould chicory into the shape of
coffee-berries. Smart chaps those! And of course they can put anything
they like into the chicory before they work it up.’

‘That’s pleasant, certainly. Then how is one to secure pure coffee?’

‘You can’t secure it, except by sending a sample to us, or some
other shop of the same sort, to have it analysed; and if it’s wrong,
prosecute your grocer for adulteration. After doing that a few times,
he might find it didn’t pay, and give it up.’

‘And how much would that cost?’

‘Analysis of a sample of coffee, one guinea; analysis of butter, five
guineas; analysis of milk, one guinea; analysis of tea, one guinea.
Those are the regular charges for private analyses.’

‘Rather expensive, it seems.—And how much would it cost to prosecute?’

‘Ah, that I can’t tell you,’ said my analyst. ‘Another fiver, or more,
I daresay.—But look at the satisfaction.’

I did look at it, but ultimately decided to give my grocer the benefit
of the doubt, and cherish a fond hope that he was better than his
fellows. The subject dropped. But a few days later, there chanced to
be apple-pudding on the table. With the dish in question my analyst
had always been in the habit of consuming brown sugar, and a good deal
of it. Now, however, on the sugar-basin—best Demerara—being offered to
him, he put on an expression as if he had been invited to partake of
black draught.

‘Raw sugar! No, thank you.’

‘Hillo, what’s wrong with the sugar? Is that adulterated too?’

‘Very probably,’ he loftily replied. ‘But that’s a small matter. The
genuine article is bad enough.’

‘Bad enough!’ indignantly interposed my analyst’s mamma. ‘That’s Mr
Grittles’s very best moist—threepence-three-farthings a pound!’

‘I daresay it is. If it was fourpence, it wouldn’t make any
difference.—Did you ever hear of the sugar-mite, _Acarus sacchari_’——

‘No; I can’t say I ever did,’ I said, ‘and I don’t want to, either. We
have had enough of this sort of thing, and I am not going to have any
more agonies over every article we eat.’

I had again put my foot down. But it was too late. I had even forbidden
my analyst, under penalty of forfeiture of his pocket-money for
several months to come, telling us anything whatever about the food
we eat or the drink we imbibe; but the mischief was done. I have lost
my confidence in my fellow-man, and still more in my fellow-man’s
productions. I may try in an imperfect way to protect our household.
I may give the strictest orders that none but the refinedest of sugar
shall be admitted into our store-cupboard; but who is to answer for the
man who makes the jam and the marmalade, or the other man who makes the
Madeira cakes and the three-cornered tarts? And how much is there that
we have _not_ heard? I have silenced my analyst’s lips, it is true;
but there is also a language of the eyes, and still more a language of
the nose, and when, with a scornful tip-tilt of the latter, he says,
‘No, thank you,’ to anything, my appetite is destroyed for that meal. I
can’t take a pill or a black draught without my disordered imagination
picturing my chemist ‘pestling a poisoned poison’ behind his counter. I
can’t even eat a new-laid egg or crack a nut without wondering what it
is adulterated with. This is morbid, no doubt. I am quite aware that it
is morbid, but I can’t help it. I am like Governor Sancho in the island
of Barataria: my choicest dishes are whisked away from me—or rendered
nauseous, which is as bad—at the bidding of a grim being who calls
himself Analytical Science. He may not know anything about it, or he
may be lying; but meanwhile he has spoilt my appetite, and the dish may
go away untasted for me.

Truly, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The moral of my painful
story is obvious. I intend to bring up the rest of my family, if
possible, to occupations involving no knowledge whatever.




THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.


About two years ago, we recorded an interesting discovery which had
been made on the coast of Norway, that of a viking war-ship, which had
formed the tomb of some forgotten Danish freebooter. We have now to
chronicle a somewhat similar find, which has recently been unearthed at
Brigg, in Lincolnshire. While the workmen were excavating the ground
for a new gas-holder, they came upon a block of oak, which ultimately
proved to be an ancient British vessel of extraordinary size. It is cut
out of a solid piece of wood, and measures forty-eight feet in length,
fifty-two inches in width, and thirty-three inches in depth. The boat
is in a wonderfully good state of preservation, owing, no doubt, to the
clayey nature of the soil in which it lies, and which has effectually
sealed up every cranny against the intrusion of the air. The discovery
of this prehistoric relic is of such interest, that it is to be hoped
some way of preserving it from the action of the weather will be found
before it is too late.

Only a few years ago, an ancient wooden causeway was discovered in the
same neighbourhood—a causeway made of squared balks of timber fifteen
feet long and ten inches square. The ends of these logs were bored
with holes for the reception of pegs, so that the whole structure
could be firmly fastened to the earth. This was evidently a necessary
precaution; for the causeway crosses the valley of the river Ancholme,
and would be subject to removal by the action of the tidal waters.
It is believed that an extensive shallow lagoon once existed in the
Ancholme valley, and that this was slowly filled up with alluvium. It
is to this silting up with a non-porous soil that the preservation of
both the boat and the causeway is due.

The _Times of India_ raises a curious point about a certain meteor
of unusual brilliancy which was seen in India on a certain night
in January last. Curiously enough, a meteor which was described by
eye-witnesses in almost the same language which was used by the Indian
observers, passed over London on the same evening. It was travelling
in an easterly direction, and appeared about two hours and a half
before the meteor noted in India. The question raised by this double
appearance is: Are these two meteors really one and the same? The
distance between the two points of observation is between five and six
thousand miles, which would give a rate of movement for the meteor of
thirty-five and a half miles per minute. The question is a startling
one, which we should think could be easily answered by consulting the
logs of various vessels which were near the presumed track of the
meteor on the night of its occurrence. Such an unusual appearance could
not fail to have been recorded.

The celebrated Christy Ethnographical Collection has now been added
to the British Museum, and for the first time it may be said that the
country which has the best opportunities of studying prehistoric and
semi-barbarous peoples in all the countries of the world, is not behind
its neighbours in its collection of objects for promoting that study.
Mr Henry Christy, who died in 1865, left his wonderful collection to
four trustees, to deal with it as they might think fit in the best
interests of science. These trustees offered the collection to the
national Museum on the very wise condition, that it was not to become
the property of the Museum until it should be publicly exhibited there.
This proviso has prevented the collection being packed away into
cellars for an indefinite time, a fate which has befallen too many
treasures intrusted to the national Museum.

The delegates of the French Chambers of Commerce who accompanied M.
de Lesseps during the late survey of the Panama Canal works, have
now returned with hopeful tales of the ultimate success of the grand
project for uniting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Briefly put, the
matter stands thus: let money be supplied, and the work can be brought
to a glorious termination. M. de Lesseps affirms that the canal can be
opened for traffic as soon as 1889; and he points to the circumstance
that all contracts expire in 1888. But contractors are but mortal, and
it is believed by experts that the hard Culebra rocks, which present
the most formidable obstacle to the prosecution of the work, cannot be
cut through in less than five years. These rocks are more than a mile
in length, and in some spots they rise to a height of more than one
hundred and fifty feet above the canal level.

In a recent article on ‘The National Egg-supply,’ a contemporary
gives some interesting particulars regarding the productiveness of
different kinds of fowls. The laying power of each hen is said to be
on an average one hundred eggs per annum. This seems a small average.
Some fowls will lay as many as two hundred and twenty per annum, but
the larger proportion yield not more than from sixty-five to one
hundred and twenty per annum. Care and proper food have much to do with
productiveness, as all keepers of fowls know well. A large portion
of our egg-supply comes from Ireland, where the birds are not nearly
so well tended as they are in England and Scotland. A score of Irish
eggs selected at random from a large crate weighed a little under two
pounds. The eggs from good Dorkings will weigh six ounces more than
this. The eggs from Spanish fowls weigh two pounds fourteen ounces per
score; while those from Leghorns weigh as much as three pounds for the
same quantity. The total cost of our annual egg-supply is calculated to
be nearly seven millions sterling.

Mr W. K. Brooks, of the John Hopkins University of America, has put
forward a new observation regarding oyster spat, which may account for
the failure of the fisheries in many parts of this country. He remarks
that the young oyster as it settles upon the bottom of the sea is in
some localities so covered with sediment that it is killed at a very
early stage of existence. He holds that the tender oyster should find
a resting-place which must be clean as well as free from destructive
pests. He recommends the employment of floating frames furnished with a
bottom of galvanised wire-netting for the reception of the fry. Under
such conditions, it is found that oysters grow with wonderful rapidity.

Anglers know well that the voracious pike is a fish most tenacious of
life, and that hours after he has lain in the fishing-creel apparently
dead, he is quite capable of giving a snap with his sharp teeth. But
few are aware how long a pike will live out of his proper element. A
Paris fishmonger recently received a quantity of fish from Rotterdam
which were packed in ice. Among these was a pike over two feet long,
which, on unpacking, was seen slightly to move its gills. The fish was
placed in fresh water, with the result that in a few hours it was fully
alive and very active. This fish, as far as can be learnt, was actually
out of the water for three days, during which time it travelled nearly
three hundred miles. It is now in the Trocadero Aquarium, and seems to
have fully recovered from its curious experience.

The _Sanitary Record_ informs metropolitan householders that their
peace is threatened with a new danger. A London resident found that
each time the water was turned on to his house, a plentiful supply of
coal-gas was delivered gratis at the same time and through the same
pipes. The explanation of the matter is as follows: in the particular
street where this strange thing happened, the soil round the water main
is completely saturated with gas from leaky pipes. When the water is
turned off, there is a vacuum formed in the main, and gas is sucked in
through imperfect joints, to be delivered to the unfortunate residents
directly the water is again turned on. The matter can of course be
easily remedied; but the serious lesson taught by the incident is that
gas can find its way to water-pipes, and that sewer-gas may as easily
do so as coal-gas.

The last application of rock-oil is a petroleum engine, which we saw
working lately in London. In general appearance, it is like a gas
engine; but it has a tank fixed above the cylinder which contains a
supply of petroleum. This liquid is conveyed by a small pipe and pump
to the cylinder at the rate of about four drops per stroke of the
piston rod. It is ignited by a spirit-lamp after having been mingled
with sufficient air to form an explosive mixture. The working cost of
the engine is calculated at three-halfpence per horse-power per hour
for petroleum, and one-sixth of that sum for lubricating. The engine
will be valuable where gas is not to be obtained and where steam is
inadmissible.

Mr William Anderson lately delivered an interesting lecture before the
Royal Institution ‘On New Applications of the Mechanical Properties
of Cork to the Arts.’ He showed that cork was unique among solid
substances in being capable of cubical compression both from forces
applied in opposite directions and from pressure from all sides. This
is shown when cork is immersed in water and is subjected to hydraulic
pressure. The phenomenon in question is due to the peculiar cellular
structure of the material, which causes it to behave more like a gas
when under pressure than like a solid. Mr Anderson proposes to use
cork instead of air in the air-vessels of water-raising machinery,
and he showed by experiment how well fitted it was for doing this
duty. He also proposes to use it in connection with gun-carriages in
the following way: the carriage is to be furnished with hydraulic
compressors in the customary manner, but the water in the cylinders is
to be driven by the recoil of the gun into a vessel filled with cork.
This will represent a store of energy which will run the gun out again
when loaded, by the aid of a tap which will liberate the water from
the compressed cork. The lecture certainly exhibited cork in a new
character, and called attention to many ways in which it can be used
with advantage.

The nebula in the Pleiades, so strangely discovered by photography,
although it was quite invisible to ordinary telescopic scrutiny, has
now been detected by more than one observer. It is, however, as may be
guessed, an extremely faint object. MM. Perrotin and Thollon, of the
observatory at Nice, say that they have seen it, but admit at the same
time that this was only because they knew from the Paris photograph
that it existed.

The number of valuable substances which can be extracted from coal-tar
is marvellous, and would surprise gas manufacturers of a generation
ago, who gladly gave away the tar to any one who would take it. The
last product of the black and ill-smelling fluid is a substance which
has been named Saccharin, on account of its extreme sweetness, and
the discovery is due to Professor Fahlberg. Saccharin is said to be
two hundred and thirty times sweeter than the best cane-sugar. It has
a great interest for the medical profession, for it can be used to
render palatable the food of patients suffering from diabetes, and has
been already adopted for this service in one of the Berlin hospitals.
At present, the new sweetener costs forty shillings per pound. It has
been ascertained by experiment that saccharin is innocuous; and we may
feel sure that if its price can be reduced, it will become a formidable
rival to sugar.

The chief of the United States Geological Survey, Major Powell, has
discovered near California what he believes to be the oldest human
habitations on the American continent. The mountains in the vicinity
are covered with beds of lava, in which have been excavated square
rooms, lined with a kind of cement made with lava. Although these
rock-dwellers were of prehistoric time, their work shows traces of an
advanced civilisation. Several articles of pottery have been found in
these cave-dwellings, as well as a kind of cloth made of woven hair.
Wrapped in such a cloth, which tumbled into dust when touched, there
was found a small image resembling a man. No fewer than sixty groups of
these villages in the lava have been found.

Mr Eric S. Bruce, who has been experimenting during the past year for
the government with a balloon for signalling purposes, which he has
invented, is about to exhibit a balloon of the same kind at the Crystal
Palace, Sydenham. This aërostat will have a capacity of eighty thousand
cubic feet, sufficient to give it the necessary lifting power to carry
up several passengers. The balloon will be a captive one, like that
exhibited at Paris in 1878, and will, like its huge forerunner, be
hauled down to the earth after each ascent, by steam-power. It will
ascend for the amusement of visitors during the daytime, telephonic
communication being maintained between the car and the earth; while at
night it will be illuminated by the electric light, so that Mr Bruce’s
method of signalling may be fully demonstrated.

The number of deep wells sunk in London and its neighbourhood during
the past thirty years has had the effect of lowering the general
water level in the chalk to the amount of about twelve inches
annually. But there is still a very large quantity available—so the
experts say—without sinking shafts to extraordinary depths. Much
interest attaches to the subject at the present time on account of
the threatened action of the London corporation to sink wells for
themselves, as the strongest protest they can offer against the high
charges of the Water Company supplying the city.

The title of one of Turner’s best pictures, ‘The _Téméraire_ towed to
her last Moorings,’ comes to the mind as one hears that the _Great
Eastern_, the largest steamship ever built, too large, indeed, to
be profitably worked, has steamed round to Liverpool to serve as a
show-place during the Maritime Exhibition there. After this last duty
is done, this monument of Brunel’s wonderful skill will take up her
position as a coal-hulk.

People who rejoice in the possession of wealth and who have plenty
of time on their hands, generally develop into ‘collectors.’ Coins,
pictures, books, china, orchids, postage-stamps, &c., have their
periods as the fashionable things to gather together. The last craze of
this kind is devoted to engraved plates. Old copper plates are perhaps
the best; and the way to preserve and exhibit them is as follows:
the plate is rolled with ink and polished, just as if an impression
were required of it. It is then set aside for the ink to dry, when it
receives a coating of clear varnish, to protect it from the oxidising
action of the air. It is now framed and hung up like an ordinary
picture.

The Kyrle Societies have seldom reason to congratulate iron
manufacturers on the progress of their art; but it seems as if they
might heartily rejoice in a Report recently made at the instance of
the North-eastern Steel Company as to the utilisation of an important
by-product of the steel manufacture. The Report is on the results of
experiments made to test the value of basic cinder as a manure, and
is the joint work of Professor Wrightson and Dr Munro, of the College
of Agriculture, Downton, Salisbury. Basic cinder, or basic steel
slag, is the broken-up and useless lining of the converters used in
the Thomas-Gilchrist process for dephosphorising iron, and is a bulky
by-product of the manufacture. It contains from sixteen to nineteen
per cent. of phosphoric acid combined with lime and other bases; and
the Report in question puts it beyond a doubt that the undissolved
phosphates of the cinder have an available and remarkable value for
manurial purposes. Extensive and elaborate experiments conducted
at Downton and elsewhere showed decisively that this heretofore
inconvenient substance is an excellent fertiliser for swedes and other
turnips, as well as for grass. It seems to be positively better for
this purpose than ground coprolites, and only a little less effective
than superphosphate. This interesting Report is published at the _Daily
Exchange_ Offices, Middlesborough. Similar experiments have been
attended with like success in Germany; and from _Le Temps_ it would
appear that enterprising agricultural chemists are already in treaty
with some of the blast-furnaces of Alsace-Lorraine for the purchase of
all the slag produced by them.

The history of the recovery of a portion of the mails from the Cunard
steamer _Oregon_, ought to supply chemists and inventors with a good
deal of food for thought. Before the vessel sank, a portion of the
mail was recovered, but by far the greater portion went down with
her. This was the case with the registered letters, the portion of
the mail containing securities, coupons, &c., to the value of at
least one hundred thousand pounds, besides drafts, letters of credit,
&c., of which the value was unknown. A notice has been issued by the
Liverpool postmaster which tells us that the whole of these registered
letters have been recovered. The letters were thoroughly soaked, but
the post-office authorities dried them as carefully as they could and
sent them on to their destination. All the mail-matter that has been
recovered was badly damaged by wetting, while the bags which were
subjected to long-continued soaking at the bottom of the sea were
very much damaged. In one case, a fifty pound note sent from Frome to
Chicago was delivered only just recognisable, but still sufficient to
insure its being honoured.

These facts have led an American scientific journal to urge the
necessity for waterproof mailbags, waterproof paper, and waterproof
ink. Waterproof mailbags alone will not be sufficient, as, in the
process of handling them or raising them from a sunken vessel, they
are liable to be rendered leaky. Waterproof paper, again, would be of
no service unless it was accompanied by waterproof ink. The mailbags
need only be waterproof in the ordinary acceptation of the term; and if
there could be certainty that they would remain so, nothing more would
be needed to protect documents or anything else placed in them; but as
holes are likely to be worn or torn in them, the only final resource
is the production of paper and ink that will resist the prolonged
action of sea-water. If such a paper and ink can be produced at a
reasonable cost, they would meet with a ready market throughout the
civilised world. But the paper must be lighter, more flexible, and more
opaque than the waterproof parchment paper now obtainable.

The lesson which the loss of the _Oregon_ seems to teach the commercial
world is, that a convenient waterproof paper is required for
transatlantic correspondence. Modern chemistry and mechanical invention
ought to be able to meet this want.

No class of the community has received so much good advice as that to
which the farmer belongs, and it would be a wonder if he did not resent
some of it, and say that it is not good advice that is wanted most, but
good seasons. However, when a practical lesson comes within one’s reach
for the better utilisation of available material, only a foolish person
would neglect to learn it. In the model dairy at the Brighton Show,
last summer, Professor Long gave an explanatory demonstration of the
simple methods of making three kinds of soft cheese, by the employment
of tinned-iron hoops, beech-boards, straw-mats, milk-vessels,
draining-shelves, and a thermometer. In the Journal of the Bath and
West of England Society, he has recently drawn attention to the subject
again, and explains his method whereby the farmer may utilise his
skim-milk by the profitable manufacture of soft cheese. It seems that
anybody can learn the processes; and a few experiments will teach the
practice of ripening the cheeses in an apartment having a regulated
temperature proper for the development of the necessary white mould,
followed by blue mould, producing the most accepted flavour.

From a gallon of ‘whole’ milk, costing sixpence, Professor Long
made Brie cheese—the most famous of French varieties—worth, at ten
days to three months old, from one shilling to one shilling and
sixpence; from half a gallon of milk, half of it skim-milk, valued at
twopence-halfpenny, he made Coulommiers, a round cheese worth at least
eightpence; and from skim-milk only, costing about one penny, he made a
square variety, of his own invention, named Graveley cheese, partaking
of the qualities of the Limburg of Germany and the Livarot of France.
We understand that nearly six millions of the delicious Brie cheeses
are made annually in certain districts of France for the Parisian
market. An important point will be gained, however, in this country,
if some of our farmers begin to convert their skim-milk into a product
which will sell at three or four times the value of the milk.

Honey-wine is said to be excellent; and Dzierzon—one of the most famous
German writers on scientific bee-keeping—tells us that it is often
manufactured by peasants in Eastern Europe. It is made as follows:
Twenty-five pounds of honey are mixed with four and a half gallons of
water in a bright copper boiler, the mixture being gently boiled and
constantly skimmed during half an hour. Three pounds of finely powdered
chalk are then gradually added, under constant stirring. The tough scum
which rises to the surface is skimmed off, and when no more rises,
the liquid is poured into a wooden vessel, where it is allowed to
settle. The liquid is then carefully decanted into the cleaned kettle,
mixed with six pounds of finely powdered and recently burned charcoal,
and raised to boiling. It is now once more poured into the wooden
vessel, allowed to cool, and then filtered through felt or flannel.
It should be stated that the chalk is added to neutralise free acid,
while the charcoal removes the waxy taste. The filtered liquor is then
transferred to the boiler, mixed with the white of twenty-five eggs,
and raised to boiling, when the coagulated albumen will have clarified
the liquid. After having kept the liquid at a gentle boil for one hour
longer, it is allowed to cool, and is then poured into a cask, which
must not be quite full, and the bung-hole covered with a piece of clean
linen. In this condition it is allowed to remain until fermentation
has been completed. When it is perfectly clear, the liquid is drawn
off into bottles. We are told by Dzierzon that this wine, if properly
prepared, resembles the best brands of Madeira, and is a truly royal
beverage. It keeps for any length of time, provided the bottles are
stored in a cool cellar.




A NEW THEORY OF DEW.


The explanation of the formation of dew and hoar-frost which Dr Wells
published about seventy years ago, has been almost universally accepted
as satisfactory ever since. Shortly stated, Dr Wells’ ‘Theory of Dew’
is as follows: Air always contains a certain amount of moisture in the
form of invisible vapour. The hotter the air is, the more vapour will
it contain. Thus, during a warm day, a good deal of moisture passes
into the air; and when the temperature falls in the evening, some of it
is deposited as a fine mist. But even when this mist does not appear,
dew is formed. As soon as the sun is down, especially if it is a clear
evening, the grass, trees, shrubs, and even the soil itself rapidly
get cooled by radiating into space the heat which they contain. These
cooled bodies in turn cool the warm air above them, and this causes it
to deposit more or less of its moisture, which appears either as a film
or in minute drops of dew. The points of the grass, small twigs, and
all other good radiating surfaces are cooled the most; and accordingly
we find the dewdrops most abundant on these bodies; whilst on metal or
hard stone surfaces, which are poor radiators, we seldom or never find
any dew. A clear, cloudless sky, which promotes radiation, is always
favourable to the formation of dew; but on cloudy nights, little is
formed, because the clouds return the heat radiated from the earth.

Hoar-frost is only dew deposited on bodies cooled below the
freezing-point. It is formed in winter when the temperature of the
air during the day is only a little over this point. At night, the
grass and ground are soon cooled below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit,
and what moisture is deposited appears as minute ice-crystals or
hoar-frost.

Many experiments can be cited which tend to strengthen and confirm
this explanation. Thus, every one is familiar with the fact of glass
bottles, mirrors, &c., being covered with moisture on being brought
into a warm room. The same thing happens with a cold cabbage leaf, or
with a bundle of vegetables or a bunch of flowers. On a cold night,
the windows of a warm room soon get dimmed. Still more striking is a
phenomenon which frequently occurs in countries where the temperature
is much below the freezing-point in winter. The houses are well heated,
and if a number of people are together, as in a ballroom, the air soon
becomes moisture-laden. If the ventilation is not over-good, it may
happen that a door or window will be opened. With the rush of cold air
from without, the merry-makers are often alarmed by being suddenly
covered with hoar-frost, or sometimes even a shower of snow. This does
not come from the outside, as it occurs most readily on cold, clear,
starlit nights. It is the moisture of the air of the room suddenly
cooled below freezing-point that appears as snow or hoar-frost. Many
similar experiments may be noticed, all of which are satisfactorily
accounted for on Dr Wells’ theory.

Yet, within the last few months, Mr Aitken, in a communication to the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, has brought forward many observations, and
the results of numerous experiments, which appear to prove that Dr
Wells’ theory of dew is not, after all, correct.

The essential difference between the old and the new theories is as
to the source of the moisture which forms the dew. Instead of being
condensed from the air above by the cooled vegetation, Mr Aitken
maintains that it comes from the ground. The author of the original
theory admitted that some of the dew might come from below, but
affirmed that it must be an exceedingly small proportion. Mr Aitken’s
experiments, on the contrary, seem to prove that most if not the whole
comes from the ground.

It is quite clear that the grass and soil do get rapidly cooled on
dewy nights; but if they are below the temperature of the air above,
the ground just under the surface is much warmer. Thermometers placed
on the surface of grass were often found ten to eighteen degrees
lower than those placed under the surface among the stems. In such
circumstances, vapour must be rising from the soil, and part of it will
condense on the grass, which has been cooled by radiation. By carefully
weighing small squares of turf cut from a lawn before and after the
appearance of dew on them, it was always found that they _lost_ weight.
If the dew had condensed out of the surrounding air, the turf would
have _gained_ in weight by the amount of dew deposited. It was thus
clear that vapour was rising from the ground, only part of which was
condensed on the grass, the remainder passing into the air.

Another experiment, pointing to the same conclusion, was made by
inverting thin trays over the grass. On dewy nights these trays were
always found wet on the under surface; and the grass below them was
always much wetter than that freely exposed outside. The moisture
rising from the ground was evidently trapped and condensed, instead of
being allowed to pass freely into the atmosphere.

The explanation of the absence of dew on the surface of stones, roads,
and other hard surfaces, on the old theory was, that these, being poor
radiators, did not get much cooled. But closer observation shows that
dew does form on stones and clods and gravel, only it is chiefly on the
under surfaces. Thus, slates laid over both hard and gravelly roads
are always found dripping wet on their under surfaces on dewy nights;
while their upper surfaces and the surrounding roads are dry. During
frost, too, clods and stones on the surface of the soil are almost
always found to be covered with hoar-frost, showing that the moisture
is trapped as it rises from the soil.

But perhaps the most interesting observations and experiments were
those made to determine the origin of the ‘dewdrops’ on grass and
vegetables. In the first place, it is found that these drops do not
appear on all plants. Some are wet, while others growing alongside
are dry, though there could be no great difference in their radiating
power. Then the leaves do not get wet all over, but only at the edges
and on the tips. A closer observation reveals the fact that these
so-called ‘dewdrops’ are formed at the end of the minute veins of
the leaves and grass, and are not now recognised as dew at all, but
moisture exuded from the interior of the plants themselves. Moreover,
these drops always appear before the true dew in the evening, and
very often are seen when no true dew is formed. They even appear when
the vegetables are placed under conditions where condensation of the
surrounding water-vapour is impossible, and must, therefore, be due to
the vital activity of the plants.

Another observation may be mentioned which clearly shows that moisture
rising from below may become condensed on the cooled surfaces of loose
material. If the weather is at all cold, the beard and moustaches get
covered with moisture; and in very cold climates, the eyebrows, hair,
and whiskers get covered with a coating of hoar-frost. The moisture
which forms this certainly comes from the body, which is always at a
much higher temperature than the surrounding air.

All these observations and experiments have led to the conclusion that
moisture is constantly being given off from the earth; and that, except
on the rare occasions when a warm moisture-laden wind blows gently over
a previously cooled surface, it only returns to the surface of the
ground after being condensed into rain, sleet, snow, or hail. Dew is
only a portion of the outward current trapped on the exposed and cooled
surfaces of the grass and other bodies.




COMRIE EARTHQUAKES.


Regarding earth-tremors or earthquakes, which, curiously enough,
seem to be mainly confined in Scotland to Comrie, in Perthshire, a
correspondent writing from Comrie kindly favours us with the following
notes as to the erection which is there devoted to the registering of
earthquakes. Our correspondent says:

I recently visited the building with a view of giving you a few notes
as to its history and construction. I may state that about fourteen
years ago, the British Association applied to Mr Drummond of Drumearn
for leave to erect a house on his property, which he at once granted
free of charge, and assisted to defray the cost of erection.

The reason why the British Association selected a site here and erected
this earthquake-house at Comrie, was on account of the long-continued
periodical shocks that had been felt in Upper Strathearn, particularly
from the year 1780 to 1848. About the former date, they had been rather
severely felt over the whole district, and damage to some extent
done to buildings. On a sheet of water near to Lawers House, the ice
was shattered to pieces. Some of the inhabitants at that time kept a
record of their occurrence; and we believe the late Sir David Dundas,
of Dunira, had a seismometer placed on his estate in Glenlednoch, to
the north of Comrie; but there seems to be no evidence to show that
it had ever indicated any shock. Coming down to the year 1839, the
inhabitants of the village of Comrie were greatly alarmed, about eleven
o’clock on the night of the 23d of October, by one of the most violent
tremors that had been experienced there; and the good people rushed
out of their houses and assembled in the old Secession Church for
prayer, which was conducted by the Rev. R. T. Walker, the minister of
that church. Many others fled to the hills. But no serious damage was
done to property, save some rents in the chimneys. From 1839 to 1847,
tremors continued to be more frequent, causing considerable alarm by
the movements of furniture and crockery.

The work of erecting the building proposed by the British Association
was carried out under the care of the late Dr James Bryce of Glasgow,
who resided here for many seasons, and was well acquainted with the
locality and its geological formation. The site chosen is a rising
ground near Drumearn House, and is built on rock that is supposed to
extend a considerable distance westward. The building is stone, and
slated, and is about seven feet square inside. The floor is laid with
Arbroath pavement, on solid rock, and is overlaid with fine sand, on
which are placed two boards, at right angles to each other. These
boards are six feet long by nine inches broad, and on each are placed,
standing, nine round wooden pins, varying from the fourth of an inch to
an inch and a half in diameter, but all of one height (eight inches).

The building is in excellent condition, and the pins or markers are
in their places, awaiting the action of an earthquake to record the
desired information as to the severity and direction of this now
seemingly extinct agency of force in Upper Strathearn. The size of pin
or cylinder thrown down, and the direction in which it falls, indicate
the strength of shock as well as its direction. Any one who feels
interested and may wish to visit the building will readily get access
by applying to Mr Drummond.

Many theories have been propounded as to the cause of the earthquakes
which have visited this district. The late Mr Patrick M‘Farlane of
Comrie, who took a great interest in them, erected a seismometer in
the steeple of the parish church of Comrie, which was visited by many
of the members of the British Association and others; but so far as
we are aware, it never registered any markings. It was a very simple
apparatus. The pendulum was of considerable length, and all but rested
on a table overlaid with magnesia, which, being light, offered no
resistance to the oscillation of the pendulum. A few slight shocks
occurred between 1847 and 1877, but these attracted little notice.

I may remark that no earthquake had, till recently, been felt here for
some years, consequently, there had been no registering. But on Sunday
morning 18th April last, at one o’clock, and again on Thursday the
22d of the same month, about half-past five A.M., a slight earthquake
occurred. I visited the earthquake-house on both occasions; but there
were no markings, none of the pins having fallen.




WHICH?


    If thou art false as thou art fair,
      And false the fairest fair may be,
    Again the wondrous power to snare,
      Again the siren’s self we see.
    There’s danger in those dimpling smiles,
      It glances from that witching e’e,
    And he who would escape thy wiles,
      Must quickly from the tempter flee.

    For better far, as sages tell,
      From fickle fair to bid adieu,
    Than fall beneath the magic spell
      Of charms the heart may ever rue.
    Beware, if false, of beauty bright,
      Beware that luring beacon’s ray,
    For, oh! the love that trusts its light,
      May drift a wreck ere dawn of day.

    But if thou’rt true as thou art fair,
      Art leal in heart, though seeming gay,
    Wouldst ever constant prove, and ne’er
      With faithful heart all faithless play,
    Then thou’rt a gem worth more than gold,
      More precious than the ruby rare,
    More to be prized than wealth untold,
      True heart enshrined in form so fair.

            JOHN NAPIER.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Conductor of CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL begs to direct the attention of
CONTRIBUTORS to the following notice:

 _1st._ All communications should be addressed to the ‘Editor, 339 High
     Street, Edinburgh.’

 _2d._ For its return in case of ineligibility, postage-stamps should
     accompany every manuscript.

 _3d._ To secure their safe return if ineligible, ALL MANUSCRIPTS,
     whether accompanied by a letter of advice or otherwise, _should
     have the writer’s Name and Address written upon them_ IN FULL.

 _4th._ Offerings of Verse should invariably be accompanied by a stamped
     and directed envelope.

_If the above rules are complied with, the Editor will do his best to
insure the safe return of ineligible papers._

       *       *       *       *       *

Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON,
and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

       *       *       *       *       *

_All Rights Reserved._



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 126, VOL. III, MAY 29, 1886 ***


    

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