We

going to the pound. An establishment | was so well conducted, and succeeded so such as that described above will produce well, that they were enabled to retire on a several million leeches annually in a competence while yet in the prime of life. healthy condition. Serious losses are What is there "derogatory" to a lady in experienced in cold weather, and in con- making and fitting dresses on to ladies? sequence of injudicious handling of the The dressmaker is only brought in contact annelides; but the profits are neverthe- with her own sex, she has her own doless considerable, as the cost of main-main, and is a monarch therein, if in requitenance and collection is not very great. sition among fashionable persons. The method of feeding these interesting flocks is, as we have said, by sending a number of horses into the ponds, periodically, for unless leeches are provided with an ample commissariat, they will take themselves off in search of forage elsewhere. The horses used for this purpose do not suffer to anything like the extent that might be imagined. They are closely watched during the operation, and carefully tended afterwards. In many cases, horses which have been bought for a trifle have, under the care bestowed upon them, improved so wonderfully as to have been sold afterwards at a profit, so little does the system injure them. Old horses, whose lives have hitherto been a succession of hard knocks and fastings, and a perpetual round of fatiguing journeys, here find a relief from their burdens; death is deferred for months, and even years, and the latter period of their life is passed in a paradise, compared with the experience they have gone through.

advise young ladies who are deft with their needle, to take a few finishing lessons in the art of millinery, and commence in a small way, in conjunction with a friend. With industry and good work they would soon be more independent than a nursery governess can ever be. Another opening might be in this line: there is room in London for a fair number of ladies' restaurants; if two or three ladies with some capital, one of them possessing that amount of housekeeping knowledge often found-despite the groans of certain desponding press-writers — and all having good business capacity, were to set up a good restaurant in a leading thoroughfare, exclusively for ladies, we believe that they would have every prospect of fair success. The polished manners of gentlewomen would commend the place to customers, and by being confined to women only, there could be no danger of its being frequented by persons who could not be refused entrance, and yet whose manners would be offensive to gently nurtured women. Of course, it will be objected that this is "trade," and not fit or gentlewomen. We reply that it is far more fit than domestic service, which we hold to be simply impracticable; that it is quite as fit as being "dummy" in a mantuamaker's show-room, and there are clergymen's and officers' daughters occupying this position-a position which we by no means despise; but we object to the process of "straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel." We fully concede that the work we recommend is not that which properly speaking belongs to the social status of a lady; but we deny that a lady NINETY years ago, women of the class need in any way lose respect in her own who now swell the ranks of governesses eyes or in those of others; and while so took to dressmaking, and found them- few avenues remain open to women who selves in no degree degraded" thereby. have their living to make, it is a pity not Why should not their descendants do the to include among "ladylike " occupations same? The writer of these lines knew a all that can by any possibility be entered firm of fashionable dressmakers, the mem-upon without that distinct transition to bers of which were the four daughters of another social sphere which domestic a man who was socially, and by birth and servitude involves. education, a gentleman. Their business

Paris alone" consumes some twelve million leeches annually; and, prior to the establishment of the system of producing them in artificial reservoirs, the annual importation into France from abroad, exclusive of its own production, was nearly fifty millions. The enormous demand for these useful surgical attendants throughout the world may be estimated from the above figures.

From The Victoria Magazine.
WORK FOR GENTLEWOMEN.

66

From The Gardener's Magazine.
A PERFECT LAWN.

good aftergrowth as 'guano does, the result, I suppose, of its being destitute of phosphatic fertilizers. Daisy-rakes are ridiculous, and for the complete eradication of daisies there can be no plan, I think, so effectual as guano-sprinkling. But for three years I have constantly practised a method which I will venture to consider my own. I go out every morning from the time pleasant summer weather sets in until the pleasant summer weather is over. I have in one hand a strong clasp-knife and in the other a box of salt. For this purpose I buy agricultural salt, which is considerably cheaper than culi

AFTER years of devotion to gardening as the most blessed of pastimes for a hardworking citizen, I rejoice in nothing more heartily than in the exquisitely perfect grass-turf I have secured as the reward of unremitting labor. In some points of management I have departed from the rules from time to time laid down in the magazine, but I have nowhere read such admirable treatises on the making and managing of grass-turf, and if my plan of procedure differs from that of our editor, it remains to be said, so far as I am con-nary salt. When I find a thistle or dock or cerned, that I should probably never have acquired a single practical notion on the subject except for its frequent eloquent and instructive appeals to us to do our utmost to secure a perfect turf. Having about half an acre of grass and two good mowing-machines a Shanks and a Climax-I seem to begin well, but a fastidious eye and a strong soil combine to make weeds conspicuous. I tried our editor's plan of changing daisies into clover by means of sprinklings of phospho-guano. It is a grand method to put into operation just before you leave home for a month or so, but I don't like it if I am not going away. On a fine day you take a boxful of phospho-guano, or Peruvian guano, and when you find a dock or dandelion or thistle you powder the guano all over him by means of a trowel, and make him a nice brown color all over. There follows immediately a brown patch, and if the lawn is dotted with these brown patches its appearance is decidedly objectionable for a month or so; therefore, if you intend to leave home for a tour it is a very proper thing to kill the lawn weeds by this process before going away. Four years ago I treated a pretty croquet lawn' in this way, and it has become since one of the loveli

est bits of turf I have ever seen, for it is
nearly all clover, the result, I suppose, of
the guano dressing, and after two months
of hot weather is still quite green-
though dark green-and agreeable to the
foot. But, I repeat, this process results
in disfigurement of the turf for a month
or so; in fact, the brown patches do not
disappear until heavy rains occur, and
then the grasses and clovers take posses-
sion, and the difficulty is at an end.
have tried other preparations for the same
purpose, but without finding anything bet-
ter than guano.
I find Watson's lawn-
sand an effectual killer of weeds, especial-
ly of daisies, but it does not promote a

I

other rank weed, I carefully cut it out, pushing my knife down so as to cut it below the collar. Into the hole I drop a pinch of salt, which kills the root and makes an end of the business. I must own that sometimes this plan results in brown patches, but they are smaller, at all events, than those caused by the guano system without the knife; and if the work is done with care the beauty of the turf is not materially lessened. Let any one follow up this system and make an amusement of it, as I have done, and the reward will come in time, especially if carried out on land that really suits grass. If I had a soil on which grass did not thrive, I would be content with any substitute, and make no objection to daisies, for, after all, they are green.

From Macmillan's Magazine. THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL.

brances."

"I think the house beautiful; it is so full of remem-
"The slow, sweet hours that bring us all things good,
The slow, sad hours that bring us all things ill,
And all good things from evil."-TENNYSON.

Three years passed away, and the old man
died,

Two households we were before:
Now we gathered all round this one fireside
Thirty years ago, and more.

And now, by these very same windows bright
My children are standing to-day,
Looking out on the green grass, the clouds so
light,

The blue heaven that is far away.

Far away, but to their child-thought quite

near,

For one has just entered there,

So mingle life's joys and woes.

One passed, too, for long happy years a wife,
Who left us a blooming bride,

Who had told them God would soon call her She quietly laid down the burden of life,
home

To his heaven so bright and fair.

Fair children grown up by her side.

She had looked for new life with summer's

The happy memory sweet.

For a Christian life breathed its power around,
Nothing mean could entrance find,
Loving counsel and help alike were given,
Ever courteous, liberal, kind.

Each day brought to each its appointed task :
But the happy social time

Was when over the open book they talked
Of its prose or poet's rhyme;

Or discussion grew strong, deep truths were
weighed,

Thought, satire, flashed out by turn;
Or in other moods these aside were laid,
Love's sweeter lesson to learn.

And music and song would the hours beguile
When the evening guests were there,
While the eager talk and the answering smile
Lighted up those faces fair.

But these dumb old walls give no echo back,
They have kept their secrets well,

Fond words have they heard while glad tears
were shed,

But never a one they tell.

But there lingers about them a hallowing | Then another came, little Sunbeam bright,

Laughing eye and flaxen curl.

And yet once again we gave thanks, when he,
"Little brother," came to share

Our fond love, we forecasting the years to be,
As he lay cradled there.

And the dear old home is now ours alone!
As a trust it comes to me,

Yes, a sacred trust from those who are gone,
Ah! what shall our record be?

As sitting beside my nursery fire,
Watching my children at play,
I ask, will they feel it a holy place,
When we, too, have passed away?

was not there, so the coachman was able to see the forest. But it is certain that the forest might have been there, though there had been a reasonable amount of wood to hide it from the coachman and to suggest it to the tourist. Pall Mall Gazette.

MANY people would be amazed at the notion of a "forest" without trees; but those who have either studied the old forest laws or have mastered the geography of the New Forest on the spot know that at all events there may be large parts of a forest wholly treeless. "Silvam habet in foresta" is a Domesday phrase, showing that, though there were woods within the forest, yet the forest itself was not all wood. Still one is a little startled at finding any one bold enough to deny that a A LESSON IN TURKISH.-The word ulema forest could contain any trees at all. We find is plural, and means such persons as have such a daring person in a coachman spoken of graduated in Mussulman law and theology in in Mr. Frank Buckland's "Log-book of a the medresses, or schools attached to the Fisherman and Zoologist." At one place mosques. The pupils of these medresses are the tourist asked what they called yon hills.' called softas. This word softa is a corruption "Eh, but that's just a deer-forest, says the of the past participle of the Persian soukhte, coachman. 'Deer-forest,' said Mr. Tourist, which signifies burnt, and indicates that those 'but I see no trees.' 'Trees,' said coachee, who bear it are consumed by divine love. 'but, man, who ever heard of trees in a for- The softas are taught by professors called est?"" Mr. Buckland, with rather curious khodjas, and live in imaretts, or gratuitous logic, adds, "In a true etymological sense I hotels, on the money provided by pious bebelieve the coachman's definition of a 'forest' quests. Their numbers are very large, not was right, for I find the following definition because Turks are phenomenally devout, but in a dictionary: 'Forest, in geography, a for the sound, practical reason that the softas huge wood; or a large extent of ground cov- are exempt from military service. The softas ered with trees."" Then the dictionary adds ultimately become khodjas themselves, and some of the usual derivations, among which khodja, which is borrowed from the Persian, the Latin forefta and the German frost may be means "reader." The imams, who are the safely corrected into foresta and forst. The veritable priests, take charge of the ceremoNew Forest and the Domesday record there- nies of religion. Their name comes from the of, though they hardly bear out the coach-Arabic, and signifies "he who holds himself man's doctrine that there can be no trees in a forest, quite upset the tourist's doctrine that there can be no forest without them. According to the most likely etymology, foresta is from foris, foras, an outside place, outside many things, especially outside the ordinary law. There was some one who could not see the wood for the trees. To be unable to see the forest for the wood is a very likely case indeed. In Mr. Buckland's story the woodl

forward." Naturally they are selected from the ulema. Mollah, from the Arabic mevla, means literally "one charged with administrative power," but actually it designs no class in particular, but is applied to anybody who has acquired a reputation for purity of conduct, much as in some English counties the title captain is given for life to anybody who has been lieutenant in the militia for three months.

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