a fog. They hear their windy screaming and wrangling on the cliffs, and keep well off the rocks. This aspect of the bird's usefulness was finely described by the Rev. Richard Wilton, in his poem on the 'Flamborough Pilots,' at the time of the agitation for the Bill. We had been eager promoters of the Bill, and were certainly amply repaid by the sight we saw to-day, the increased numbers of birds sporting, feeding, and clanging, like the wishhounds of Dartmoor in full cry, around us. Needless to say, not one more was shot than was necessary for the collections.

No whiting were caught, but the grey gurnard bit briskly, and we took ninety-seven while the boat was absent. This fish is amongst the few British fish that can emit a groan or sigh on being pulled out of the water, hence it is known in Scotland as the crooner,' and its brother the red gurnard is aptly named by science trigla cuculus. The skilful manner in which the seamen in a trice exenterated, skinned, and beheaded these fish was very striking. They were supposed to be dead before this process was commenced; but as the ninetyseven were by Captain Try's order laid out in the sunshine, like so many sticks of celery, muscular motion, horrendum dictu, still existed amongst the trunks in a manner which opened up many avenues of serious thoughts, leading from this border-land of sensation up to the very Fountain of Life. Our speculations, like those of many much more renowned naturalists, needless to say, soon lost themselves in the outer darkness which surrounds this mystery. And then we adjourned to tea and ate the unfortunate gurnards, on which we had been philosophising, with much satisfac

tion.

The shooting party having returned and a brisk breeze springing up, fishing tackle was hauled in, and

Nauticus exoritur vario certamine clamor. The casings were taken off the trim spars, the sails hauled up from the forecastle and run aloft in a twinkling and then the good ship Firefly staggered along through a stiff tideway under steam and sail, raising at her clean-cut bows what yachtsmen know as 'a very pretty feather.' Everyone had found his appetite, and when Peter announced dinner great was the consumption of roast beef and pudding, albeit the latter was an inch and a half thick, and yellow enough to have terrified a robust landsman who had never known dyspepsia. At sea, with the old Greek ox-hunger' upon one, such trifles are never considered, and all viands taste equally excellent. On the horizon we now saw a good example of sea mirage, the distant vessels seeming much larger and looming distorted in the haze. The phenomenon is not unknown in the fens, where the vast flats lend themselves to such optical illusions as readily as the wide sea horizon. Next we pass several dandy-rigged Yarmouth cutters going up to the herring fishery off the Tyne. These are wonderfully stiff sea-boats, and sailed as steadily as a rock, while their inmates leaned against the side enjoying the spell of idleness, or smoking innumerable pipes, near the booms rigged out astern, partly to clear the decks, and partly to steady the vessel. All these fishing vessels have a wonderful similarity, and their sailors in oilskins and sou'westers might all belong to one family. Most inland readers must have noticed pictures of them in

our port bow. But only those who have tried know how difficult it is to hit a bird in one kind of rapid motion from the deck of a vessel, itself in uncertain motion, with an undercurrent of throbs and spasms from the ceaseless plunging of the piston-rods. When memory turns to the incredible slaughter which used to take place amongst these very sea-fowl before the Bird Bill was passed for their protection in 1869, it is, perhaps, matter of satisfaction that even now, when the fence-months have expired, it is not quite so easy to hit a sea-gull from a boat as it is to knock down a fieldfare from its perch on a hedgerow. And should the main tenance of the Sea Fowl Preservation Act seem to anyone, while contemplating the enormous number of birds on these shores at present, a useless restriction on sportsmen, it will be as well for him to bear in mind that, just before the pass ing of that Bill, on a strip of coast eighteen miles long near Flamborough Head, 107,250 sea-birds were destroyed by pleasure (?) parties in four months; 12,000 by men who shot them for their feathers wherewith to adorn women's hats, and 79,500 young birds, which died of starvation in the nests thus bereft of protectors. Commander Knocker, who was stationed at Flamborough, and reported these facts, saw two boats loaded above the gunwales with dead birds, and one party of eight guns killed 1,100 birds in a week. Practical ornithology, besides the Sea Birds Bill,' can now boast of two more triumphs in the way of protection. The 'Wild Birds' Preservation Act of 1872' protects the ordinary birds of coppice and woodland during their breeding months; and the Wild Fowl Act' of the last session imposes penalties for taking wild fowl between February 15th and July 10th. Not merely naturalists but also all lovers

of the country ought to be sincerely grateful for this legislation.>

At Withernsea two large posts are erected to enable ships to try their rate of speed at a measured mile. The Firefly, under steam and sail, but against the tide, made her mile in seven minutes and thirtyfive seconds. This quick travelling soon brought us once more to the shoals, sandbanks, light-houses, and light-ships on and about the Spurn. Running the gauntlet of these, and avoiding a wreck-buoy over a hapless vessel, which here went down, crew and all, in the destructive gale of Good Friday, when the Lincolnshire coast was strewn with wrecks, we left the buoys on our right which mark the channel for Hull, and struck across the Humber for Grimsby. It was such an evening and such a scene as Turner would have loved to paint. A brilliant sunset flooded the Humber with crimson, and brought out in all their vivid colours the green-painted 'billyboys,' and smacks with dark-red sails and red-nightcapped fishermen aboard, now falling upon a passing tug, now a stately barque anchored in mid-channel till she could go up the river. As the strong lights shot through the crowded masts and busy life of the fish dock, and danced over the ripples brightening round the ships at anchor and then dying away left them dusky ghosts of their former selves, the long line of Lincolnshire coast, with its trees and farmsteads, faded into blue mist, while overhead the moon, almost at her full, glided out of a long cloud, and, from the point where we dropped anchor for the night, seemed like a vast 'ridinglight' suspended near the summit of the elegant water-tower. Then it was easy to understand the witchery which sea-life has for an artistic eye, and the incomparable effects of colour not unfrequently to be observed on the waves.

Amid these solemn greys and softened purples and blues of evening the Spurn lights were lit, and immediately the view on all sides was confused by the number of lights run up into riggings, or extending in long-drawn lines when the lamps along the docks were lighted. The many noises of a busy dockyard gradually composed themselves, and the wash of the waves round our bows made itself more distinctly heard. Our cruise had almost ended. The groglocker was opened for the last time, and then we turned in. During the dim grey of morning Captain Try and his mates, we were faintly conscious, were getting us into the yacht's snug berth in the dock. But at seven, when the steam began to blow off, sleep was effectually murdered, and we awoke to dress to its roaring accompaniment. And then came the last breakfast in the comfortable little saloon, not un

mixed with a tinge of sadness at the breaking up of a very pleasant party and the return to the anxieties and duties of life, the last shaking of hands and cheery farewell to Captain Try and his men. The dead birds were duly carried on shore, and, save that the most cherished memories need no sensible object to evoke them, will long, in the mute isolation of their glasscases, remind their owners of the delightful trip of the Firefly amongst the thousands of their screaming, diving, swimming kinsfolk off the wave-eaten cliffs of Flamborough.

All our care not to commence shooting till the earliest legal date was futile. It seems the Flamborough authorities had passed a bye-law to postpone all shooting of sea-birds till August 15, so that our doings on board the Firefly, though committed in sheer ignorance, were doubtless viewed with much reprobation from the cliffs.

IT

might form an interesting sequel to the previous paper, which dealt with the general question of British trade, to endeavour to trace, pari passu, the growth of that trade and the expansion of British lending. Unfortunately we should thereby, after all, gain but a fragmentary view of the several foreign nations and dependencies to which we have lent. Our trade with them is not all the trade that they do; and however great a part the money we have given them may have played in expanding our business of late years, it cannot be taken as by itself sufficient to determine the vital growing power in those other countries. Our object is to find out what solid basis there may be in the past development of the leading nations that form England's customers, which would warrant us in supposing that the prosperity of the past quarter of a century, say, is to continue unabated. We must try to indicate not merely the permanent conditions of such countries, but the accidental causes which may now be working for or against further trade development in them. I shall therefore proceed, as indicated in the previous article, to offer some observations on the position of our more prominent customers, and I propose to begin with India for several reasons. In the first place India is, for certain classes of cotton fabrics, by far the largest customer we have; and secondly, it is the one country with a large trade, the development of which has been entirely in our own grasp. We can trace in it, therefore, without very much difficulty the precise consequences of the forcing process which scientific discovery has

made the fashion all over the world. Add to these the fact that India has of late been very prominently before many people in this country through the silver question,' and depreciation in exchange' controversies, without the true position of its empire, financially or economically, being well understood, and we have found more reasons than were necessary to justify the selection of this as the first country to be dealt with.

In no country, except perhaps the United States, has the modern doctrine that railways, telegraphs, and all scientific improvements, were the only roads to speedy wealth, had more unrestrained free play than in

India. Ever since the time of Lord

Dalhousie the motto of the English rulers of the country has been 'material progress at any cost;' the development of the empire by means of railways, canals, irrigation works, model farms, telegraphs, and roads. High pressure has thus been put on wherever we directly ruled, and the Residents at the dependent native courts have in many cases carried the stimulus of this new spirit into the councils of the petty rulers whose hands they were deputed to guide. As a result of this, in less than twenty-five years India has been covered with a network of railways, which now reaches upwards of 6,300 miles, and a closer network of telegraph wires extending to some 35,000 miles. The enormous sum of 17,000,000l. has been sunk in irrigation works on the Indus, the Sutlej, and on the Upper Ganges, in Orissa, and at the mouths of the Godaveri and Krishna rivers, besides lesser works in the Bombay Presidency and in the Deccan, and we are not sure whether that sum