idol of Little Biddlebrigham, and the epithets applied to him ranged through the whole pet-curate scale, from 'so unaffectedly devout,' down to 'such a dear darling duck of a man.' What need for any more advertisements? Was there any man, whether 'strictly Anglican' or 'purely evangelical,' for whom we would exchange the Rev. Julian Montacute? Most certainly not; but as he still refused either to marry, to bury, or to christen, upon the alleged ground of his mere temporary appointment, and as self-willed persons went on marrying, and dying, and being born in the parish just as usual, it became necessary to look out for another curate. Our secret design, indeed, was to restrict the new man to the performance of these routine duties, and to keep our cherished Montacute on, if it were possible, for preaching purposes. Upon the very day, however, that the Rev. Decimus Green and his mother-who was almost another curate, dear good soul, as it turned out afterwards-came down to Little Biddlebrigham, Mr Montacute fled. He left a letter upon the squire's breakfast-table to say he was very sorry, but that he had never been ordained at all, and was not a clergyman; and the squire brought it down to the vestry, and almost turned us into stone with the news. The two young brides congratulated themselves very considerably that the wicked wretch, about whom, to say truth, they had always had their suspicions,' had not performed that ceremony about which they had been so anxious. The Wesleyan minister remarked with a chuckle that he had always understood that clergymen of the Church of England were recognisable to the faithful by some infallible sign; while the Ranter assured his again overflowing audiences the whole affair was a judgment upon Little Biddlebrigham. Nobody else, I hope, was pleased in our parish.

Poor Mr Decimus Green, than whom no mortal was ever simpler or more truthful, was pestered to death about his credentials after this, and our theological stable-door most carefully locked after the stealing of the steed. He had not the eloquence of the late usurper of our pulpit, and we were inclined to be dissatisfied with him just at first; but when we got to know his earnestness and intrinsic merit, we some how learned to like his discourses too: they were good, indeed, of themselves, only he could not preach them, on account of his being so shy and nervous. It was one of the pleasantest sights in the world to look at dear Mrs Green while her son was delivering his sermons; her pride in them and him was so entirely unaffected and undisguised, and, at the same time, as it seemed, so right and agreeable.

'What did you think of my son Mus, this morning?' was what she would say to me every Sunday while we waited for him to come out of the vestry, after service, in order that we three might walk home together, for we lived in the same quarter of the little town, quite in the midst of it, and away from the sea: or 'Mus is rather long at times; don't you find him so?' she would now and then observe; and when you said, 'No, certainly not,' as of course you did, she would smile as only mothers can when their boys are praised. In the summer-time, when little Biddlebrigham was rather fashionable, and strangers came down to bathe and enjoy the sands, she was doubly interested in what the congregations thought about him; and it was our delight to represent them as being enthusiastically admiring; for we all loved Mrs Green, I think, and the poor most of all. While Decimus went out among them with his supply of spiritual comforts, his mother made her regular rounds with a great basketful of temporal ones, and she was certainly not less welcome than her son. Of all the curates which Little Biddlebrigham ever had, indeed, these two, who worked so well together, were certainly the best. The old lady had no fault or at least, now that she is gone, we wil!

not confess that much-the young man had but one. Mus or Decimus Green was obstinate-obstinate as a pig, as a jackass, as a man with a scientific theory; in fact, despite his modesty, no man who did not know him could tell how obstinate Decimus Green was. Last summer, our town became so fashionable, that its ordinary accommodations proved insufficient for its throng of visitors. The gentlemen, therefore, gave up the use of our half-dozen bathing-machines entirely to the ladies, while they themselves migrated into a neighbouring bay, taking their own towels with them, and keeping their sixpences in their pockets: among them, of course, was the Rev. Decimus Green. Being somewhat delicate, and having a good deal of indoor work to do, he had lately possessed himself of a horse, in which he took much pride and pleasure. It was a handsome, well-bred mare, but exceedingly self-willed; and our curate, although a tolerable rider, was not quite the man to subdue her. She was somewhat tender in the legs, and salt-water had been recommended for them daily by the equine faculty. You may bring a horse to water,' says the proverb, but you can't make him drink;' and you may also bring one to the sea-beach, without getting it into the sea. Mr Green's man had been thrown in pretty deep places more than once already, and had given it as his opinion that he was engaged to be a groom, and not to be a merman. The mare, he said, was quite unmanageable in the water; and our curate, of course, said she was nothing of the kind. To prove this, moreover, he determined to ride the mare in himself. She was to be brought to him while he was bathing, which was not very early in the morning; and then, whether he stuck on her or not in the sea, it would be but of little consequence. Myself and several other friends were present upon the first occasion, curious to see whether the trial or the curate would come off. The animal was led willingly enough to the sands, and suffered her master-who, however, had to swim in and land for that purpose-to mount her unresistingly; but her complaisance extended no further. Now with her fore-feet planted resolutely on the beach, she protested with her hind-legs against moving seaward, and now rampant upon these hindlegs, she sparred furiously at ocean with her remaining two; but the Rev. Decimus Green sat her like a centaur, or as if he had been fastened on Mazeppawise with cords or cobbler's wax. At length, putting her head right for the waves, he called out to the groom to give her the whip; the order was obeyed by a most tremendous cut with a hunting-thong. Griseldathat was the docile creature's name-gave one terrific bound into the air, turned short about almost before she touched ground again, and flew, with the unfortunate unclothed Decimus upon her, straight back for her stable in the High Street. The poor fellow had no time to throw himself off: past the beach where the ladies were sitting and knitting; by the post-office, where the mail had just come in, and the crowd were inquiring for letters; through the little square, where the market-women were bargaining with the fashionables; by the squire's lawn, where Mrs Broadland and the Miss Broadlands were gardening after breakfast; by the National School, just emptying its throng of pupils and amateur teachers; and so to his own stabledoor, where the sagacious Griselda stopped. This is what I hear from other sources. I never saw Decimus Green from that hour to this, nor has he since then been seen by mortal Little Biddlebrighamer. For the remainder of that day, he shut himself up in his own house, and departed from us, with his mother, under cover of the ensuing night, for ever. seemed to derive, no comfort from my written suggestion that the thing was, after all, not so unusual, or had been done before at least, for a good purpose, by Lady Godiva. 'Never,' he writes, 'never can I look that congregation in the face again.'

He derived, or

Botany yields a liberal quota to the fairy tales of science' true tales,' that make the wildest or the most grotesque creations of fancy look timid and commonplace.

The traveller in South America is haunted at every turn with some one or other of the four hundred species of the cactus tribe. Sporting with ugliness, delighting in the quaintest variations of it, they constantly arrest his attention by their entire unlikeness to all other vegetable forms. Without leaves, mostly without branches, their dull green, dropsical-looking stems, pinched in here, bulging out there, yet bedecked with glorious flowers, rise often to the height of thirty or forty feet. There is the hedgehog cactus, a small round prickly ball; and the old-man cactus, with tufts of venerable-looking gray hair. There is the thin, whip-like serpent cactus, a parasite which climbs from bough to bough; and the torch-thistle cactus, rising in a round column, mostly branchless, but occasionally ramified in the strangest way, just like a clumsy gigantic candelabra, forty feet high. Sometimes the old dead stems remain standing erect, white and ghostly among the living stems, after the green fleshy rind is decayed. The benighted traveller thankfully avails himself of them, in that scantily wooded region, to make a fire or burn as a torch-hence the namein the dark tropical nights. There are melon-shaped cacti, and some that look in the distance like reposing Indians, but on near inspection prove low shapeless heaps of a cactus that is thickly set with yellowish red spines. Though growing for the most part under the burning rays of a vertical sun, on dry sand nearly devoid of vegetable mould, and beneath a sky that for three-quarters of the year yields them not one drop of rain, they are tumid with a watery acid juice of inestimable value to the parched traveller. Even the wild ass, cautiously stripping off the dangerous spines with his hoof, knows how to help himself to a delicious draught when traversing the desolate steppes. The physicians of America make use of it in various ways. The thick leathery cuticle with which the cactus is covered prevents evaporation, and enables them to hoard the scantily supplied moisture; and they are further assisted in this by that absence of leaves which characterises nearly all the species; for it is through the leaves that plants chiefly evaporate their surplus moisture. Another peculiarity is the abundance of beautiful little crystals of oxalate of lime deposited in the cells of all the cactaceæ. Some species contain no less than 85 per cent. of it. Nearly all produce small but palatable fruits-a sort of tropical gooseberries and currants. The wood of the torchthistle is so firm, though light, as to be available for beams and posts; and if we add that the invaluable little cochineal insect inhabits and feeds upon the cactus only, and that the spines of one kind are so dangerous that even buffaloes are killed by the inflammation following a wound from one, we shall have enumerated all that is most important concerning them.

There is a little plant with which every school-boy is familiar, the spurge or wolf's-milk, in the efficacy of whose milky juice to cure warts he has great faith. This juice, or milk-sap, as it is called, occurs in many different families of plants, increasing in number as we approach the tropics. Its properties vary from the most useful and nutritious down to the deadliest poison. All the plants possessing it are distinguished by a peculiar anatomical structure. In the bark and in the pith are long, curved, and branched tubes, not unlike the veins of animals containing this thick juice, which is generally milk-white; but there are yellow, red, and even blue milk-saps. It consists, like animal milk, of an albuminous fluid with small globules floating in All milk-saps contain more or less caoutchouc, but only beneath a tropical sun do those qualities

it.

that make it so invaluable to man perfect themselves. Here, even in hot-houses, it more resembles the birdlime obtained from our misletoes. If the sap is left to stand, the caoutchouc globules rise to the top and coalesce exactly in the same way the butter globules (or cream) do in milk. The list is a long and interesting one both of useful and of noxious milk-saps. The cow-tree furnishes the Cingalese with a sweet and pleasant drink, which he uses exactly as we do milk. In Brazil there is a spurge whose milk, when flowing forth from the stem in the dark hot summer nights, emits a bright phosphoric light. The root of the yucca or mandioc plant blends in close union the most wholesome nourishment and potent poison; and the process of dissolving this union and turning each to its appropriate purpose, is a very curious one. The Indian pounds the roots to a thick pulp with a wooden club in the hollowed trunk of a tree, ties it up in a tight bundle with a stone attached to the bottom, and hangs it up so that the weight of the stone squeezes out the milk-sap. The pulp is further freed from the volatile poison contained in it by exposure to heat, then powdered between two stones. And this is the celebrated cassava meal, so important an article of diet in South America. After the Indian has poisoned his arrows with the sap thus pressed out, it is set to stand for a considerable time; and the fine white powder deposited by it is-tapioca. Strychnine and brucine, two of the most active vegetable poisons, occur in other milk-saps; and there is a tree-the manchineel-which infects with poison the very rain-drops that pass over its leaves, to such a degree, that the luckless traveller who takes shelter beneath, speedily finds himself covered with blisters and ulcers. The natives avoid it with as superstitious an awe as if it were the fabled upas-tree of Java; and apropos of the upas-tree, that venerable tale which blends three real but separate things into one fictitious whole, it comes in our way to be explained here, because one of the three facts jumbled up together, is the existence of a tree from the milk-sap of the roots of which the upas radia or sovereign poison is concocted. A tiny arrow dipped in this, and blown through a hollow reed, makes the tiger tremble, stand motionless a minute, then fall as though seized with vertigo, and die in brief but violent convulsions.' In that island of beauty, fertility, and horror, grow gorgeous flowers whose dimensions are reckoned by feet instead of fractions of an inch-the Lianes, Paullinias, and Rafflesian lilies. True, primeval forests open in majestic aisles, and the bare hundred-feetlong stems of the lianes coil about and stretch from tree to tree like the rigging of a ship. The antiar, with tall, smooth, slender stem, sixty or eighty feet high, crowned by a circlet of glossy leaves, pours forth from its easily wounded bark, like the manchineel, a sap that causes blisters and ulcers to him who heedlessly touches it. Apes chatter among the boughs, and pelt the traveller with fruit. The melancholy orang-outang wanders gravely about leaning on his staff. The awful mountains send out a fiery molten flood; and lower down, mud-volcanoes break out suddenly without fire or light, swallowing up in filth fertile valleys with all their men and oxen. There are streams that petrify the neighbouring trees; springs white with sulphur; little cones of gypsum spouting unceasingly hot or cold water; and, above all, there is a narrow flat valley, nearly bare of vegetation, where the ground is strewn with the skeletons of all kinds of animals: the tiger and his prey side by side, overtaken by their common foe, death; the vulture in search of carrion, turned to carrion himself; dead beetles, dead ants lying in heaps. Man only can traverse unharmed this valley of the shadow of death, because his erect posture raises him above the fatal exhalations of carbonic acid gas, which, being heavy,

diffuse themselves slowly, and cause death by asphyxia to all near the surface of the soil. It is the same gas as in the celebrated Grotto del Cane at Naples, and in the vapour caverns of Prymont. And now we have the three terrible phenomena which led to the belief in a tree whose very shadow was deadly, and from its boughs the birds that settled dropped down dead. No wonder the natives, and the equally credulous, though brave and enterprising travellers of the seventeenth century, should attribute to a tree yielding so virulent a poison-the slightest particle of it introduced into the blood by a mere scratch caused instant death-the destructive action of the intangible, and, to them, quite undiscoverable carbonic acid gas emitted from the soil. No wonder they thought it a vapour issuing from the deadly poison-tree; and to complete the wonder and terror of their tale, further endowed it with the noxious milk-sap of the tall slender antiar.

But we need not travel so far from home for examples of plants yielding milk-sap of a noxious kind; our own ugly nettle is possessed of as marvellous a little apparatus for mischief as the serpent's tooth, and so similar to it in structure, that it might almost be called the vegetable serpent. A snake has in the front part of its jaw two long thin curved teeth, movable like the claws of a cat, and perforated lengthways by a minute canal, which terminates in an aperture at the point, and in a little gland containing poison at the root. When the animal bites, the resistance of the thing bitten pushes back the tooth, so that it presses into the gland, and squeezes out the venomous fluid, which runs along the little duct into the wound. The hairs on the leaf of the nettle are its teeth; each hair consists of a single cell, with a small knob at the tip, and expanded at the other end into a sac containing the irritating milkjuice. The slightest touch breaks off the brittle knob, and, as with the serpent's tooth, the pressure of the cell-canal in puncturing the hand that has rashly touched it, forces up the juice out of the sac, and discharges it into the tiny wound. The injury is but slight from our nettles; but the burning sun of the tropics, which matures the venom of the snake into a weapon of death, ripens too the poisonous sap of the nettle the suffering from the slightest touch of one lasts many weeks, causing the arm to swell; and there is one species by which acute pain, lasting for years, is caused, and death itself often can only be avoided by amputation.

KIRKE WEBBE,

THE PRIVATEER CAPTAIN.

CHAPTER XI.

Ir was less from lack of appetite, than as affording a respite from Webbe's blistering banter, that I declined accompanying him to the table d'hôte. I dined alone; not very heartily, to be sure; a depressing sense of helpless involvement prevented that. I was perplexed in the extreme, but it would be scarcely worth while to recite the moony meditations in which I remained plunged till evening had for some time set in, seeing that they resulted in the forlorn conviction that to boldly repudiate the absurd marriage urged by Webbe's overbearing insistance, and the tears and tenderness of Clémence, would not only break the heart of a gentle girl, whose only fault, within my knowledge, was loving too well and most unwisely, but might be in effect to pass sentence of death upon my father. My only hope, therefore, was in the girl's concurrence with the delaying suggestion embodied in my note, the answer to which it was full time I should seek.

Voices in loud altercation caused me to pause as I was passing forth, and I looked in for a moment at the guests assembled round the table d'hôte. There were

several officers of the line and national guard there; amongst them the warlike bootmaker. The company appeared to be in a state of considerable excitement. Sicard was upon his legs, nearly opposite Webbe, declaiming with lively gesticulation upon Bonapartist and Bourbon politics in general, as well as I could make out, and with especial and malignant reference, it seemed, by the fixed direction of his flaming face and eyes, to M. Jacques Le Gros. The privateer captain, whose back was towards me, had, I supposed, presumed to differ in opinion from the shop-keeping warrior; but feeling quite satisfied that Webbe was able to hold his own against a regiment of wordy assailants, I went on my dismal way to the Rue Dupetit Thouars.

Truly a dismal way! A cold, driving rain was falling; and dirty, dingy St Malo, darkly visible by the dull light of lanterns swung on ropes across the narrow streets, looked dirtier and dingier than ever. I had no umbrella, and as the distance was not very great, preferred hastening on to returning for one. It thus happened, that butting blindly ahead against the wind and rain with my hat pulled down over my eyes, I missed the right turning; and after splashing along for more than the time that should have brought me near Madame de Bonneville's magasin, I found myself nowhere that I knew of, or could immediately ascertain, the streets being completely deserted. I made several starts in directions which I fancied should lead to the Rue Dupetit Thouars, without result, till I ran against an autorité, as he came sharply round a corner. The collision was violent, and a little irritated the gendarme.

'Sacre bleu !' he exclaimed; 'who is this?' To which I replied by asking him how far off and where the Rue Dupetit Thouars might be.

'How far off? Where? At least a quarter of an hour off, if you walk fast. Go to the top of this alley; then turn to the right, traverse the Place, ascend the Rue St Jean, and inquire again.'

The cocked-hatted functionary, who was apparently bound upon pressing business, stayed no further parley, I went off, as directed, at the top of my speed, and was traversing the Place, when I was suddenly brought to a stand-still by a glimpse of two women as they rapidly crossed over at some distance from me, and disappeared up a narrow street. of them, there could be no doubt, was Fanchette: the face of the other, as I for a moment caught it by the light of a lamp close to which she passed, seemed to be that of the fierce Frenchwoman I had once seen in the Isle of Wight-of Louise Féron, alias Madame de Bonneville!

One

So sure was I of this, that I impulsively called out and ran towards the women; with what intent, had I come up with them, would have puzzled ine to say; when, having lost sight of the chase, and hot, steaming with excitement and exertion, I stopped to take breath and consider what I was to do, or had purposed doing. I didn't know at all. Probably a vague desire to cut in some way or other the Gordian-knot by which I was enmeshed and hampered, had caused the inconsideratepursuit. As the reader already knows, I was ever rash and headlong. Should I meet and be recognised by Madame de Bonneville, our fine scheme would of course fall to pieces at once, not to speak or think of other correlative possibilities. And might not her inopportune return to St Malo have the same result? Certainly it might, and it behoved me therefore to be trebly wary and circumspect; and first of all, to ascertain beyond doubt that I had not been mistakenthat Fanchette's woman-companion was really Louise Féron.

This step in mental demonstration was nearly pari passu with that, I having quickly resumed walking, which brought me to the corner of a street I knew, by