fact that the lacerated edges of the rent were pink and fleshy as though recently torn.

The explanation readily afforded was a description, by our guide, of the process of bringing turtle to England. That large hole-that cruel puncture in the living and evidently sensitive limb was an evidence that the wretched animal had been brought all the way from the West Indies on its back, nailed to a ship's deck by nails driven through its flippers! An abrasure on the surface of the hard back of the animal, produced apparently by rubbing, confirmed this statement.

This cruelty was consequent on the turtle's large size. Had he been smaller he would have been packed with others into an upright barrel with the head off, and thus cabinned, cribbed, and confined would have had an occasional refreshment in the form of sluicing with water. Being large he was nailed to the deck, the same process of refreshing being occasionally applied. When it is considered how necessary movement is to nearly all animal life, the horrors of the turtle's voyage are intensified. Our wounded turtle in the tank was not an instance, we were told, of exceptional circumstances; it was the practice to bring large turtles over nailed in this way to the deck, and our guide confirmed this by his manner, for although he humanely alluded to the "poor thing," his sense of the full measure of the cruelty inflicted was evidently blunted by long experience.

Science tells us that the flesh of an animal that has been worried and tortured is bad meat for man; where then is the choice attribute of rare and costly turtle, under circumstances such as these? Morally, the spectacle of societies for the advocacy of charity and mercy dining off the flesh of a wretched animal that has been nailed to a deck for a long voyage, must be improving. We do not know whether the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals annually dine. If they do, we commend to them a dish of turtle as an excellent theme for after-dinner speeches. Our knowledge of the turtle trade is limited to this solitary experience, but it might be largely increased if that excellent Society would act upon the hint and pursue the subject a little farther-say, as far as the West India Docks or the entrance to the port of London.

Much may be learned as to the habits of the turtle under circumstances not contemplated by nature. Man is the only animal that lies, we believe, comfortably upon his back, but we doubt if the largest of the species would care for a voyage from the West Indies in that position, more especially if two large nails were driven through his hands to preserve his equilibrium. The turtle, judging from our specimen in the tank, has his feelings like the rest of animal life. When taken by the

collar-if this term may be used to denote the orifice in his coat from which his head protrudes-he resented the insult with a vigorous blow from his flipper. He evinced a decided objection, too, to human observation, thinking perhaps, poor thing, that we belonged to the maritime interest, and mistaking, perhaps, our sympathy for nails.

Will somebody listen to the voice of the turtle, or shall we go on dining and boasting in our after-dinner oratory of human charity and mercy to assist our digestion of flesh that has been barbarously tortured by man?

Charles Townley

LAND AND LANDSCAPE.

ÆQUA TELLUS ["Pauperi recluditur "] REGUMQUE PUERIS.— Horace.

1.

ISTEN, O Lords of land, and smile to hear,

You landless Poets, how a simple folk

Lived in a happy vale beside a mere ;

And how one greenest day in Spring they
woke

To hear the Cuckoo sing more loud and gay
Than ever yet their gladdened hearts had heard;
And how the music such brave fancies stirred

Within their pastoral pates, that straightaway

The gray beards wagged in council, where 'twas planned To build a wall round wood and bird, and so

Dear heart, have endless Spring!

O Lords of land,
The simple sages you, whose walls we know
Are fashion's folly! Spite of bolt and door,
Cuckoo and Spring are ours for evermore !

11.

Fair Lady, you who park the Poet's trees
In territorial fence of gilded spears,

What amorous Youth among your jewelled peers,

Sees the rich vision which the Poet sees

Among the emerald glooms of your retreat,—

Rememb'ring how in mythic times, men shrunk
To swing brown axes thro' the mossy trunk,
Lest they should strike some creature strange and sweet,
Whose mystic life was bowered in the tree,—

And weaving into rhyme some rare romance,
To light with glamour your inheritance,

And wed your name to immortality?
Ah, Lady, while your jewelled lovers woo,
They mock the myth and see the trees in you.

VOL. I.

III.

And you, my Lord, hath ever green-eyed Faun,
Or weird web-fingered God with flowery beard,
Or Dryad scattering tinted leaves, appeared
Among the woods to you i' the glittering dawn?
Or have you ever seen the twilight grot

Where sits the Silent God whose ceiled eyes

Are moss-grown with the thought of centuries,
Thro' whose dank hair the grass grows, round whose throat
The ivy clambers, in whose open hand

The wren hath built her nest with straws and chips?
At no time, surely! In your forest land

You only see from topmost leaf to root
The carpentry of towns, the hulls of ships-
Mere solid timbers at so much per foot!

IV:

What tho' the sceptred hand of Power divide
The planet into realms and splendid fiefs
Among her gold-browed Kings and feudal chiefs ;
What tho' the grand primeval gardener died

And left no deed of equal heritage;

Shall we repine or one great dream abate,
We, whose imperial fancy can create

Epochs and empires on a little page?

These lords and ladies, what do they possess
Which we enjoy not, or enjoy the less?

These are our woodsmen, gardeners, what you will-

The land they arrogate, the landscape we!

Let them be magnates of the manor, still
They merely hold the leafy realms in fee.

William Canton,

28

BLIND MINAHAN'S MONEY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "MR. ANDREW O'ROURKE'S RAMBLINGS."

3N the year 1859 the name of Blind Minahan was hated among the hills that slope towards the town of Glenary. He was the Ishmael of the district. He knew more law than any other farmer of the hills, and was continually bringing his neighbours into court on one plea or another. Now it was assault, now a watercourse, now slander, now a straying collop, now a trespass; but no matter what the suit, Blind Minahan always won. In the end, he had so broken down the spirit of his neighbours, and caused them so much loss of money, that all gave way before him and he tyrannized at will.

He was a tall, thin, ill-made, ill-looking man of fifty years of age. The sinister expression of his sallow face was increased by the deformity hich gave him an adjective instead of a Christian name. The left lid nung down over an orbless socket. His right eye was small and brown, and bright and treacherous. On his face was neither kindliness nor compunction, and strangers shrank from him instinctively, as beasts. from venomous reptiles.

The people who knew him believed him to be rich for a man of his class. When Sadlier's bank had failed and half the farmers of Munster lost their savings, all thought his had foundered with the others. But he had only smiled at the disaster, and told the sufferers with brutal candour that they deserved their fate for trusting high interest.

After the failure of the bank, several country people concealed their money under the thatch, in the ground, up chimneys, and in other places of supposed security. Many farmers deposited their savings in the hands of reputable shopkeepers or merchants in the towns, and a good deal of the money reaped and dug from the hills of Sthira found its way into the custody of prominent townspeople in Glenary.

The cottage in which Blind Minahan lived stood half-way down one of the hills. He had never been married, and there was no occupant of the house but himself. The two men he employed constantly about the farm slept in a loft over the cow-house. From dwelling long alone, he had fallen into the habit of soliloquizing. One evening towards the