of them will be destroyed....It is overwhelming to contemplate the loss of life from these, in too many instances, avoidable wrecks."

A very large proportion of wrecks are owing to one or more of the following sources of disaster,-viz., bad stowage, deck-loading, over insurance, undermanning, overloading, defective construction, and want of proper repair. Mr. Plimsoll's book gives startling facts respecting these various causes, and we would urge all who have an opportunity to read for themselves his heart-stirring pages.

It is easy to see there is a great temptation to overload, when it is considered that a large proportion of the money received by the owners of the ship is swallowed up by the various expenses of the voyage. Thus, in the case of a ship built for carrying six hundred tons, it may require all the money paid for the conveyance of five hundred tons to meet the working expenses and insurance, leaving only the amount paid for the remaining one hundred tons for profit. Now, if the shipowner has the opportunity to place one hundred tons more in the ship, it will double his profit, and the vessel thus loaded with seven hundred tons instead of six hundred, will most likely make a safe voyage, if the weather keep fair, and if not it is insured, and the owner will not be the loser.

Thus

sheet-iron thus eaten away. In other cases it has been discovered that sham bolts have been used, to the great weakening of the ship. This will be more easily understood by a reference to Figs. 3 and 4. Fig. 3 represents what is called the knee of a vessel, showing how the various parts are firmly fastened by the bolts which go through the timbers, and are secured at each end by bolt-heads or rivets. Fig. 4 shows one of these bolts, and also a false bolt, or "devil," as it is very suggestively called; it is easy to see that a number of these substituted for true bolts must terribly weaken the vessel; and so rotten do ships thus built become in a short time, that if they strike on a rock they do not hold together till the lifeboat can reach them. To meet this difficulty, it is desirable that all ships should be properly surveyed during the time they are building, and at stated periods during the time they are in service until they are broken up, repairs being properly executed from

it is that many ships leave our harbours month by month loaded far beyond what they were intended to carry. Until the present system of insurance sprang up, the owner of a vessel would be careful not to overload her, lest he should imperil his own property; but now that men may gain more by the loss of the ship than if it returned safely, there is a need that Government should interfere, and by proper laws protect the lives of our

seamen.

But not only are ships often overloaded, they are frequently sadly defective in their construction, being built so cheaply that they cannot be expected to resist successfully the mighty force

for further service are sent to sea again and again until they founder, and the insurance is paid; while it rarely happens that any legal inquiry is made, except in the case of a passenger ship. In Mr. Plimsoll's book, p. 61, is given an instance of a ship purchased for £7,500, insured for £10,000, and sent on a voyage, and shortly afterwards sinking with every soul on board; twenty good seamen going down in her. Such instances loudly call for the interference of the nation.

The question will doubtless be asked, Why do not those who insure the vessels examine the property they are risking their money upon? And this leads us to the last feature of this subject that we must touch upon, viz., the system of insurance.

The general notion upon this subject is, that if a vessel is lost which has been insured for ten or twenty thousand pounds, the person who has to pay that amount would take care to have every inquiry made respecting the wreck, before he paid the money: but this is altogether a wrong notion. The sum is not insured by one man, but by a large number of men, one taking £200 of the risk, another £100, and so on, until the whole sum is insured by the underwriters, as they are called. One person in this way partly insures ten or twenty cargoes or vessels in a single day; thus it is that the loss to each is so small that it would never pay him to spend time and money in a long legal inquiry to prove there has been wrong in the matter, especially when it is remembered that probably those who would have been his principal witnesses are at the bottom of the sea; and if he were to attempt it, he would be regarded as a man who was willing, if he had the opportunity, to avoid the payment of his insurances; and the probable result would be that his career as an underwriter would be ended. This matter and many others are fully, ably, and earnestly discussed in "The Appeal."

C. W.

TREES, AND THEIR TENANTS.

XII. THE POPLAR.

BY J. R. S. CLIFFORD.

THE poplar receives a good amount of popular admiration and regard, though some varieties of it have much more than others. There are trees, and the poplar is one of them, that seem to be almost akin to us, and give the garden and the homestead a familiar look; and again there are trees which one could almost fancy had a desire to shun man and his belongings. To lie under the shadow of a time-honoured tree, (when the ground is not too damp, of course!) is like sitting in the parlour of some familiar friend, excepting that the tree is speechless. Lowell has alluded to this in his poem, "Under the Willows," and the poplar is quite as worthy of our regard as its relative which has been the subject of so much poetic comment. So to the poplar also we may say,—

""Tis good to lie beneath a tree,

While the blithe season comforts every sense,
Steeps all the brain in rest,

Brimming it o'er with sweetness unawares." But at this season of the year folks are mostly more inclined to burn trees, and sit by the flame in the "ingle nook," than to seek repose beneath their leafless branches.

The similarity between the English "poplar," and the Latin "populus," is a proof that the two names are allied, but, like other words of Latin derivation, the vernacular name of the tree came round to us by way of France, through the Gallic peuplur. But why did the Romans call this tree populus ? Most likely because poplars, like willows, are found in company with others of the same kind; and a poplar plantation, if left undisturbed for a time, will soon be crowded with a juvenile growth, selfsown. Whether this idea occurred to the ancients or not, yet it is true that the different species of poplar afford a home to such a teeming population of insects, as to give an appropriateness to the designation of the tree.

When we speak of the poplar, the tree which most naturally presents itself to the mind's eye is the tall, spiry tree, about which an old soldier remarked that it was the only tree he admired, because a row of these poplars had something of the appearance of a line of grenadiers. And not unfrequently, when we are looking at a woodland slope, we see a poplar overtopping the rest, and seeming as if it aspired to be king of the trees. But this tree pays the penalty of its height, in being compelled to bow its whole form when a strong wind sweeps over the landscape, while others merely have their leaves and branches agitated. And yet, it must be granted, by thus yielding to the storm the poplar escapes the injury it might receive if it made a sturdy resistance when the aërial currents sweep by, a natural fact not without its lesson to nobler beings, and from which I need not pause to deduce the moral. It is a beautiful sight to see some lofty trees of this sort waving as a summer's gale passes over them, and one which the painter has tried in vain to represent on canvas. A Lombardy poplar (for that is the name of this particular species, also called P. fastigiata) has been known to attain the height of one hundred and thirty, or even one hundred and forty feet, and it will reach this in considerably less than one hundred years, so rapid is its growth. Hence many a man has planted poplars in his youth, and seen them become trees of respectable size by the time he has reached middle age. Chroniclers inform us that this poplar only arrived in England about one hundred and twenty years ago, having been introduced from Italy.

The Lombardy is nearly allied, however, to the good old English tree, the black poplar, (P. nigra,) which is in some places planted to form a hedge, and succeeds very well with frequent cutting. Long before the leaves come forth from the large and very sticky buds, we find that the branches are laden (if it be a tree of some proportions)

with richly coloured catkins, which glisten in the soft sunshine of spring. Ere long, the ground is strewn with these, and they have been compared to large red caterpillars lying in odd attitudes. They do certainly look like living creatures as they twist about when the breeze stirs them. The wood of the black poplar, like that of the white species, is used to make a variety of vessels, as it is light and yet pretty durable. But the white poplar (P. alba) has very different leaves. Instead of being merely toothed at the edges, as in the preceding, they are deeply lobed, smooth, and dark-green above; beneath there is a coating of cottony down. This species also displays catkins in the early months of the year, but it comes sooner into leaf than does the black poplar. A poet has likened the effect produced upon the leaves by the wind, as it displays at one moment the green, and in the next the white surfaces, to what we may sometimes see in a pond or brooklet when a shoal of minnows darts suddenly from among the flags and water-plants, 'displaying their silvery sides ere they plunge below. There are in various places along the banks of the Thames, some remarkably large poplars of this species; and in the parks of London several varieties of it are cultivated: one of these bears a resemblance in its foliage to the common maple. A frequent form has greyish instead of white down beneath the leaves. On the decayed branches and trunks of these and other poplars, large fungi may be seen growing, increasing with wonderful rapidity, and at last often becoming the prey of birds or insects.

The Aspen, (P. tremula,) famed for its 66 many twinkling leaves," is also a tree of a good height, when its growth is not interfered with; and in this, the trembling poplar, the peculiar motion of the leaves, arising from the length of the stalks, is most observable, so that the weather must be indeed calm if the leaves of the aspen are not in motion. A belief is current, in more countries than one, that the cross upon which our Redeemer was

hung was made from the wood of this tree, and to that is therefore ascribed the almost constant trembling of the leaves, as if even the seemingly inanimate tree was struck with awe. Like many popular beliefs, it has no foundation in fact; what was the wood of the true cross none can say positively; but it is most improbable that it was taken from an aspen tree, and natural causes fully explain the tremulous movement of the leaves.

One of the most plaintive and yet beautiful poems which the gentle bard of Olney has left us, was called into existence by the reflections awakened in the poet's mind when a favourite grove of poplars was destroyed. It appears to be the same grove which he elsewhere calls the "spinney," a word now almost obsolete. The piece is entitled the "Poplar-Field," and begins thus,—

"The poplars are fell'd; farewell to the shade And the whispering sound of the cool colon

nade;

The winds play no longer, and sing in the leaves,

Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives."

The different species of poplar swarm with insects throughout the summer season, some of them being in the winged condition, and others in the larval or preparatory state. The effects of the ravages of several of these is visible enough in some years; especially are these trees disfigured by different flies, which form, in their grub condition, protuberances upon the leaves and twigs, which are commonly known as "galls." Amongst them there is a great variety to be noticed, in shape, colour, and size; and a very curious fact is, that the maker of the gall is frequently not its tenant for any length of time, but it is ejected, if not devoured, by some intruder. It has been observed that a solitary gall will become in turn the dwelling of several little creatures, the last possessors being sometimes those crab-like mites, called acari, whose form can scarcely be seen without the microscope. How it is that the puncture of an insect causes the tree to throw out

such singularly-shaped objects as are many of the galls, is even now a mystery to able botanists.

Often, in the summer, swarms of bright-coloured beetles are to be seen running over the poplar leaves; these generally belong to the genus Chrysomela. If they are touched, they emit from the mouth a dark fluid, which is not poisonous, yet serves in some way to secure them from the attacks of their enemies of the insect race, though not from birds. The small, six-legged grubs of these beetles devour the leaves, as do also the perfect insects. The commonest species on the black poplar has wing-cases of a steely-black hue; upon the aspen occurs one which is of a dark chestnut colour, and this skeletonizes the leaves, leaving only the fibres. The familiar ladybirds, or "lady-cows," lesser creatures of the beetle race, abound also on the poplars, mostly when their favourite food, the aphides, are numerous, and they help to reduce the multitude of these green and black feeders upon the juices of the trees to more moderate numbers, in which work they are aided by several other insects, as partial as are the ladybirds to this disfiguring "blight." Another insect of the poplar, rather uninviting in appearance, is called the Grey Pentatoma; it occurs also on various trees and garden shrubs. This has leathery wing-cases of a grey colour, freckled with black, and has not much power on the wing. Hence, for its protection, it has been provided with the means of giving off an unpleasant odour when alarmed.

The large, seven-striped caterpillar of the Poplar Hawk Moth is feeding on the leaves of the different kinds of poplar from June to August; preferring, as it appears, bushes to lofty trees. The silky-coated grey and white caterpillars of the Satin Moth are often observable in companies during June, showing a preference for the leaves of the Lombardy poplar. The hairs which clothe this caterpillar are stripped off, and woven into the cocoon, which is sometimes placed on the trunk, and

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sometimes close to the roots. The moth is very sluggish. If we chance to come across one of the strange-looking caterpillars of the moth called the Ziczac, we may be at first in doubt as to whether it is a caterpillar at all; the body is most curiously humped, and the favourite attitude of the creature when on a twig is to repose with both the extremities of the body raised in the air. On poplars, too, with many others which cannot be enumerated here, occurs in autumn the slim, dull green caterpillar of the Herald Moth, so called because it comes forth in April, and is a natural prognostic of bright days to come.

"THE NATION AND KINGDOM THAT WILL NOT SERVE THEE SHALL PERISH."

(ISAIAH IX. 12.)

LOVE of country and home is a strongly-marked feature in the English character, and one peculiarly necessary in order to temper that love of travel and enterprise which is so deeply rooted in the Anglo-Saxon race, and which makes them the most colonizing people and energetic discoverers in the world. Patriotism is a virtue always claimed by Englishmen, and they have much to cause them to love their country beyond the fact of its being the land of their birth. Is it not in the van of the nations as regards civil and religious liberty? are not her sons the leaders of science? and does not her soil cover minerals which, whilst they have made her wealthy, have caused her to exercise industry and skill? It will, therefore, be interesting to consider what will give stability and strength to ourselves as a nation, what will establish a people in the earth, and what has been the cause of others falling from high positions in the scale of nations; so that each one may do his part as a patriot to advance and benefit the country to which he belongs.

There are many things which are thought to be the safeguards of a nation;