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bestiaries, once the most wide-spread of picture books, were reproduced, popular belief in monsters was represented, and the general dress, pursuits, and amusements of our ancestors were shown in some cases with a fidelity for which the historian is thankful. The decorations consist mainly of a principal subject immediately supporting the bracket, and of two side lobes or cusps springing from it. The whole has thus to some extent the appearance of an armorial cognisance, the centre presenting something equivalent to the heraldic shield, and the sides answering to the supporters or a species of mantling. One of the most remarkable of the carvings in Great Malvern Church presents the rats hanging a cat by means of a rope across a beam; a method of treatment more effective than that of belling the cat, familiar in Scottish history. The supporters are two owls, to whom this species of justice administered by the rats might be supposed to serve as a lesson. Nothing is there, indeed, in the nature of human pursuits, and little in the shape of grotesque imagining, illustrations of which may not be found among these carvings. Now it is a merman and a mermaid, now a presentation of the mouth of hell with the fiends pitchforking naked sinners, now "anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," and again, Lohengrin drawn by swans. It is needless to say that attempts were made to read mystic or devotional symbolism into these things as into others. The effort is, however, but misspent labour and misapplied ingenuity, of a kind with which the student of human nature is but too familiar.

THA

SYSTEMATIC DESTRUCTION OF GREENERY.

HAT I did not travel beyond my brief in what I said in the December Gentleman's Magazine concerning the reckless spoilation of hedgerows and plantations is shown in the fact that now, somewhat tardily, the periodicals connected with floriculture have taken up my cry. I read in the Gardener's Magazine an outcry similar to my own, but on the subject of ferns. The writer protests against the scandal that laws are not made, not only against the taking of ferns, but against the general spoliation which goes on of the greenery forming the charm of many of our landscapes. Round London, for instance, says the writer, echoing my complaint, "our heaths and open places are rapidly being denuded of everything green, but the grass and such prickly things as the gorse and the bramble, which protect themselves by their thorns from being torn to pieces, or carried away." Later he continues, "the very bracken, which ten or fifteen years since covered

Wanstead Flats, for instance, in profusion, may now be hunted for in vain. The common broom [with all its historical associations as the plant à genêt, whence our kingly name Plantagenet] is almost gone, the heather is in like case, and all simply because the vandal is unchecked, and that large percentage of the community who [which] would be happy to aid in protection is powerless in the absence of any laws." It is as a rule the middle class which is guilty of this ravage, and especially the feminine portion of it. It is women who, armed with trowels and other weapons, dig up with the rapacity of the hunter or the sportsman the elegant ferns which bathe their roots amidst the cool mosses of Westmoreland and plant them in arid gardens where they cannot thrive. Behind them, far less culpable than they, come the rustic tramps who dig them up for the sake of selling them in the towns. Some of my readers will see the time when the lovely bulrush, the very sight of which by the water-courses is a delight, will be as extinct in England as the buffalo in America and the divinely named Meadowsweet-in France no less delightfully named "la reine des prés"—will be no more than a name.

MY

EDUCATION, NOT LEGISLATION, THE REMEDY.

Y associate of the Gardener's Magazine, if he will let me call him so, is for rendering penal the wanton destruction of natural objects. I cannot quite concur in this. Apart from the great question of multiplying offences-which thinking men must always regard with mistrust-there is the extreme difficulty of enforcing such laws when they are made. Who is going to arrest a child for picking flowers or a woman for digging up ferns? What magistrate is likely to convict and punish? What official, even, is going to carry out your laws? On a recent holiday the shrubs in Parliament Fields had on them notices of by-laws of the County Council prohibiting, under a penalty of five pounds, the breaking of the white thorn or other blossoming trees. Yet, as I passed, men and women, not children, were breaking off branches regardless of the prohibition, and were walking about with their spoils in their hands, while the amber footpath was white with the fallen blossoms. All the while the police were looking on indolently, I might almost say approvingly. Being known to some of them, I succeeded in stimulating them to languid action, to be abandoned as soon as my back was turned. Once more I cry out for education and not for legislation-the education that shall effect the same change with regard to objects of beauty that is already in operation with regard to domestic animals.

SYLVANUS URBAN.

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London: CHATTO & WINDIS, 111 St. Martin's Lane, W.C

WITH LARGER ANGLE, INCREASED FIELD AND IMPROVED DEFINITION.

[graphic]

Engrared Real Size.

AN ACHROMATIC COMBINATION, COMBINING THE DEFINITION OF A MICROSCOPE WITH THE PORTABILITY OF A POCKET LENS.

'If you carry a small Platyscopic Pocket Lens (which) every observer of Nature ought to do).--GRANT ALLEN in Knowledge,

The Platyscopic Lena is invaluable to botanists, mineralogists, or entomologists, as it focuses about three times as far from the object as the Coddington Lenses. This allows opaque objects to be examined easily.

The Platyscopic Lens is made of four degrees of power, magnifying respectively 10, 15, 20, and 30 diameters the lowest power, having the largest field, is the best adapted for general use.

The Lenses are set in Ebonite Cells, and mounted in Tortoiseshell Frames,

Price of the Platyscopic Lens, mounted in Tortoiseshell, magnifying either 10, 15, 20, or 30 diameters, 188. 8d. each power
ILLUSTRATED DESCRIPTION SENT FREE.
JOHN BROWNING, Opbtbalmic Optician, 63 STRAND, LONDON, W.C.

[graphic]

Published on the 25th of each Month. Price SIXPENCE.

SCIENCE-GOSSIP.

NEW SERIES.

EDITED BY JOHN I. CARRINGTON. "Science-Gossip" is now one of the brightest and most diversified monthlies for the lover of science.' NATURE. Subscriptions, 6s. 6d. per annum, including postage, to he addressed-The Proprietors, 'Science-Gossip,' 60 St. Martin's Lane. London, W.C.

Publishers: THE NASSAU PRESS, and SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO., London.

TRAVEL AND

TALK.

By Rev. H. R. HAWEIS, M.A. With Portraits. 2 vols. crown 8vo. cloth, 128. "These two attractive volumes are a cultured observer's records of a hundred thousand miles of travel, and they include such diverse experiences as a conversation with Oliver Wendell Holmes and a talk with a Fil cannibal, a discourse on music and morals and an estimate of Mormonism, a eulogy of the learned girls of Vasser College and an appreciation of the swarthy helles of Honolulu. Mr. Haweis is a discerning traveller and a capital talker, and he talks as familiarly of a San Francisco opium den, the extinct moa, South Sea missions, hummingbirds, butterflies, and wild buffaloes, as of the intellectual life of Boston and New York, Mr. Hawes came into close acquaintance with most of the cultured men and women of the towns he visited, and he gives much information that is new and personal concerning Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow, Phillips Brooks, Lowel, Howells, Mrs. Bigelow, Mrs. Stowe, and other eminent persons in whom his numerous readers will be interested; It is altogether an exceedingly diverting, refreshing, and instructive work.'-DAILY MAIL

London: CHATTO & WINDUS, 111 St. Martin's Lane, W.C..

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THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

C

MARCH 1897.

LITTLE DANIEL.

By J. W. SHERER, C.S.I.

I.

HECQUERS was the last house out of Stoke-Harewood, on the London road.

It was a modern villa of the ordinary stucco kind, with an older bit at the back, covered with ivy. The picturesque portion, consisting of offices and a small bedroom or two, was all that remained of the wayside inn, called The Checquers, the necessity for whose existence had passed away with the coach and waggon trade.

Shrubs and flowers, in the garden between the house and the high-road, made a pretty show; and at the back there was a lawn. which had been the old bowling-green, with some large chestnut trees and a long strip of kitchen-garden ground.

The shade, the fragrance were pleasant, and the small domain looked an abode of peace. It was scarcely that.

For Mrs. Ross Bunting, widow of the late Dr. Bunting, and presiding spirit of Checquers, though really kind-hearted, displayed a considerable amount of self-will. She was rather stout, and had black hair and eyes and a red face; but she was tall and her features were good. Relations were strained between this lady and her daughter, Mrs. Cecil Lobb. The truth was, the elder widow was a strong woman, and the younger widow a weak woman; and weak women irritate strong ones. Cecil Lobb should never have married. He was good-looking but very silly; and as his people were hard up,

VOL. CCLXXXH.

NO. 1995.

Q

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