mouse appeared, they forgot their parts, their audience, and their manager, at the sight of the viands which were introduced in the course of the piece, and, dropping on all fours, fell to with all the native voracity of their race. The performance was concluded by their hanging in triumph their enemy the cat, and dancing round her body.

with the servants that he was never allowed them. This novel company of players were to be disturbed. He unhappily fell a victim dressed in the garb of men and women, to the sudden spring of a strange cat. A walked on their hind legs, and mimicked close observation of these animals entirely with ludicrous exactness many of the ordiconquers the antipathy which is entertained nary stage effects. On one point only were towards them. Their sharp and handsome they intractable. Like the young lady in heads, their bright eyes, their intelligent the fable, who turned to a cat the moment a look, their sleek skins, are the very reverse of repulsive, and there is positive attraction in the beautiful manner in which they sit licking their paws and washing their faces, an occupation in which they pass a considerable portion of their time. The writer on rats in " Bentley's Miscellany" relates an anecdote of a tame rat, which shows that he is capable of serving his master as well as The rat, as we have said, has many of passing a passive existence under his pro- enemies; the weasel, the pole-cat, the otter, tection. The animal belonged to the driver the dog, the cat, and the snake hunt him of a London omnibus, who caught him as he remorselessly all over the world. Man, howwas removing some hay. He was spared be- ever, is his most relentless and destructive cause he had the good luck to be piebald, enemy. In some places he is killed for food, became remarkably tame, and grew attached as in China, where dried split rats are sold to the children. At night he exhibited a as a dainty. The chiffonniers of Paris feed sense of the enjoyment of security and on them without reluctance. Nor is rat-pie warmth by stretching himself out at full altogether obsolete in our own country. length on the rug before the fire, and on The gipsies continue to eat such as are cold nights, after the fire was extinguished, caught in stacks and barns, and a dishe would creep into his master's bed. In tinguished surgeon of our time frequently the daytime, however, his owner utilized had them served up at his table. They feed him. At the word of command, "Come chiefly upon grain; and it is merely the along, Ikey," he would jump into the ample repulsive idea which attaches to this animal great-coat pocket, from which he was trans- under every form that causes it to be rejected ferred to the boot of the omnibus. Here his by the same man who esteems the lobster, business was to guard the driver's dinner, the crab, and the shrimp a delicacy, aland, if any person attempted to make free though he knows that they are the scavenwith it, the rat would fly at them from out gers of the sea. They were not always so the straw. There was one dish alone of nice in the navy. An old captain in her which he was an inefficient protector. He Majesty's service informs us that on one could never resist plum-pudding, and, though occasion, when returning from India, the be kept off all other intruders, he ate his fill vessel was infested with rats, which made of it himself. These are by no means extra- great ravages among the biscuit. Jack, to ordinary instances of the amiable side of rat compensate for his lost provisions, had all nature when kindly treated by man, and we the spoilers he could kill put into pies, and could fill pages with similar relations. But considered them an extraordinary delicacy. it seems, in addition to his other merits, At the siege of Malta, when the French were that he possesses dramatic genius. We have hard pressed, rats fetched a dollar apiece; heard of military fleas, we have seen Jacko but the famished garrison marked their sense perform his miserable imitation of humanity of the excellence of those which were delion the top of a barrel-organ, but who ever cately fed by offering a double price for heard of a rat's turn for tragedy? Never-every one caught in a granary. Man directs theless a Belgian newspaper not long since his hostility against the rat, however, chiefly published an account of a theatrical per- because he considers him a nuisance; and formance by a troop of rats, which gives us the gin and poison, cold iron and the bowl, ▲ higher idea of their intellectual nature a dismal alternative, are accordingly prethan any thing else which is recorded of sented to him; with the former he is not so

easily caught, and will never enter a trap or | caught young, and, attaining a monstrous touch a gin in which any of his kind have size by good feeding, take the place of our fretted and rubbed. Poison is a more effect-cats, and entirely free the house of their Fual method, but it is not always safe. Rats own kind. But the most effectual and in which have been beguiled into partaking of the end the cheapest remedy is an expert arsenic instantly make for the water to rat-catcher. Cunning as an experienced old quench their intolerable thirst, and, though rat becomes, he is invariably checkmated they usually withdraw from the house, they when man fairly tries a game of skill with may resort in their agony to an in-door him. The well-trained professor of the art, cistern, and remain there to pollute it.* who by long habit has grown familiar with The writer who calls himself "Uncle his adversary's haunts and tactics, his hopes James," and who, for a reason that will and fears, his partialities and antipathies, shortly appear, is exceedingly anxious to will clear out a house or a farmyard, where impress the public with the belief that the a novice would merely catch a few unwary best mode of getting rid of the rat is to hunt adventurers and put the rest upon their him with terriers, states that a dairy-farmer guard. The majority of the world have, in Limerick poisoned his calves and pigs by happily for themselves, a better office, and giving them the skim-milk at which rats the regular practitioner might justly address had drunk when under the pangs produced the amateur in much the same words that by arsenic. One mode of clearing them out the musician employed to Frederick the of a house is either to singe the hair of a Great, when the royal flute-player was exdevoted rat, or else to dip his hind-quarters pecting to be complimented on his performinto tar, and then turn him loose, when the ance: "It would be a discredit to your whole community will take their leave for a Majesty to play as well as I." while; but this is only a temporary expedi- "Uncle James," however, is of a different ent, and in the interim the offenders are left opinion. This author considers that every to multiply, and perchance transfer their man should be his own rat-catcher, which ravages to another part of the domain where he evidently believes to be the most improvthey are equally mischievous. The same ing, dignified, and fascinating calling under objection applies to the remedy of pounding the sun, as he considers råts themselves to the common dog's-tongue, when gathered in be the crying evil of the day, second only full sap, and laying it in their haunts. in his estimation to the grand injustice of They retire only to return. The Germans the old corn-law. Indeed we cannot see turn the rat himself into a police-officer to from his own premises how the evil can be warn off his burglarious brethren. Dr. second to any great destructive principle, Shaw, in his General Zoology, states that a earthquakes included. He takes a single gentleman who travelled through Mecklen- pair of rats, and proves satisfactorily that burg about thirty years ago saw one at a in three years, if undisturbed, they will have post-house with a bell about its neck, which thirteen litters of eight each at a birth, and the landlord assured him had frightened that the young will begin littering again away the whole of the "whiskered vermin "when six months old: by this calculation which previously infested the place. Mr. he increases the original pair at the end of Neele says that at Bangkok, the Siamese capital, the people are in the habit of keeping tame rats, which walk about the room, and crawl up the legs of the inmates, who pet them as they would a dog. They are

three years to six hundred and fifty-six thousand eight hundred and eight. Calculating that ten rats eat as much in one day as a man, which we think is rather under than over the fact, the consumption of these rats would be equal" to that of sixty*A single dead rat beneath a floor will render a four thousand six hundred and eight men room uninhabitable. A financier of European celebrity found his drawing-room intolerable. He the year round, and leave eight rats in the supposed that the drains were out of order, and went to a great expense to remedy the evil. The annoyance continued, and a rat-catcher guessed the cause of the mischief. On pulling up the boards a dead rat was discovered near the bellwire. The bell had been rung as he was passing, and the crank had caught and strangled him.

year to spare. Now, if a couple of rats could occasion such devastation in three years after the original pair marched out of the ark, how comes it that the descendants of the myriads which ages ago co-existed

among us have not eaten up the earth and banded, a smiling, enlightened, and conthe fullness thereof? Uncle James conven-versible peasantry-and all the result of iently forgets that animals do not multiply rat-catching. But a difficulty has been overaccording to arithemetical progression, but looked. When the entire population is simply in proportion to the food provided converted into rat-catchers, rats must shortfor them. He must not however be expected ly, like the dodo, be extinct. For a while to be wiser than Malthus on the subject of we shall become an exporting country, but animal reproduction, and he has the addi- this resource must fail us at last, and Engtional incentive to error, that he evidently land's glory will expire with its rats. Then paints up his horrors for an artful purpose. once more we shall have a sullen, silent, disThere can be no sort of doubt that he has contented peasantry; "their fund of conseveral well-bred terriers to dispose of, and versation" will be exhausted, or at best the hence the following panacea for all the evils villagers will be reduced to talk with a sigh which afflict society. of the golden age, never to be renewed, when the country enjoyed the unspeakable blessing of rat-catching. In short, we fear that Uncle James has been so exclusively devoted to the science of rat-catching, that he has neglected to cultivate the inferior art of reasoning; but, interested as we sus

"A dog, to be of sound service, ought to be of six to thirteen pounds weight; over that they become too unwieldy. I would also recommend above all others the London rat-killing terrier: he is as hard as steel, courageous as a lion, and as handsome as a racehorse! [Uncle James is a Londoner of course.] Let the farmers in each parish pect it to be, we join in his commendation The expedimeet and pass resolutions calling upon their of the virtues of the terrier. representatives in parliament to take the tax tion with which a clever dog will put his

off rat-killing dogs. Let them devise plans victims out of their misery is such that a for procuring some well-bred terriers and terrier not four pounds in weight has killed ferrets, and spread the young ones about four hundred rats within two hours. By among their men. Let there be a reward this we may estimate the destruction dealt offered of so much per head for dead rats, and let there be one person in each parish to the race by that nimble animal, “hard as appointed to pay for the same. Rats are steel, courageous as a lion, and handsome as valuable for manure; let there be a pit in a race-horse." A custom has sprung up each locality, and let this man stick up an within the last twenty years of watching announcement every week, in some con- these dogs worry rats in a pit, and there are spicuous place, as to the number of rats killed, and by whom. Then, what will be private arenas of the kind where our fair the result? Why, a spirit of emulation will countrywomen, leaning over the cushioned rise up among the villagers, and they will circle, will witness with admiration the clevbe ransacking every hole and corner for rats. ernest of their husbands' or brothers' ter Thus will a tone of cheerful enterprise, ac- riers. "Uncle James might commend tivity, and pleasantry come in among them, their taste, and think the sport calculated with a fund of conversation;' and in- to furnish them with "a fund of conversastead of that crawling, dogged monotony tion, and a spirit of cheerful enterprise and which characterizes their general gait and but except the fact had manner, they will meet their employers and pleasantry; go to their labor with joyous steps and smil- proved it to be otherwise, we should have ing countenances.” supposed that there was not an educated man in Great Britain who would not have.. been shocked at this novel propensity of English ladies.

The coming man, so long expected, is it seems the rat-catcher. Here is manure multiplied, agriculture improved, food hus

MRS. SIGOURNEY's Past Meridian is mellow | themselves upon the brown earth beneath, ready with the hues of Autumn. There is throughout for the white snows of Winter. And yet the its pages the richness and ripeness of harvest book is cheery amid its sadness, and bracing home, the purple basket of the gathered vintage, the shimmering of the golden sheaves upon the reaped fields. But there is also the chill on the air; the occasional gusts from the cold north, or the keen northwest; and there is the sound of the dry leaves shivering down in the wind through the thin-clad branches, and settling

withal in its mental atmosphere, as if strong with the courage of one who could look Winter in the face without fear; and who knows how to enjoy this world truly, because her best hopes are already fixed upon a better.-Church Journal.

From The Boston Journal.
THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY.

ment of steamers. Then Hudson's Bay itself lies in the heart of the country, pre

THE monopoly of trading privileges en-senting with its straits three thousand miles joyed by this company over several millions of seacoast. It is only three hundred miles of square miles of territory is beginning to from Lake Superior, and abounds in whales excite the attention of the people of Canada, and fish of every description. The object who feel that such a gigantic monopoly in which Mr. Macdonald and others had in close proximity to their own dominion is view, he said, was to open up this country detrimental to their interests, and will be- and claim it as properly Canadian. come increasingly so. The approaching expiration of the lease which the Company hold of a portion of British possessions in North America, with the fact that the home Government have had it under consideration to form a penal settlement in a portion of the Hudson's Bay territory, has brought the subject prominently before the Canadian public, and efforts are making to prevent a renewal of the lease by the Company and secure a removal of their chartered restrictions. The subject has been taken up in

the

Mr. Macdonald said that gold in great quantities was found on Vancouver's Island. He had in his possession a specimen of gold quartz from Gov. Douglass' own garden. He had a specimen also from Queen Charlotte's Island, and it was reported that the company had bribed a man to silence who had found the same metal on the Red river, knowing that so soon as the tide of emigration should set into that region their trade and power were gone. In the Red river settlement the season commenced to be severe papers, and, as we learn from the about the first of November. Farming operToronto correspondent of the New York ations began about the 1st of May. He Commercial, a meeting of the Toronto Board believed meteorological tables would show of Trade was recently held for the special that the climate at Red river was not severer purpose of considering the matter. At this than at Toronto, taking the mean temperameeting much interesting information was ture of the whole year. Snow only lay in developed in regard to the extent and char- the wooded valleys. In the prairies it was acteristics of the territories held by the so thin that the buffaloes did not migrate company. Mr. Allan Macdonald, who has south, but grazed on them the whole given the subject much attention for several winter. years, stated that the Hudson's Bay territories comprised four millions of square miles, including several vast regions as large as Canada in extent, and not inferior to her in soil and in all the requisites for forming a nation. He contended that the whole of that country was properly Canada, having been conveyed by France to England as such in 1763. The Company now exclusively occupy it, prohibiting immigration and agriculture and every attempt to improve it. The Company's sales in London in March last amounted to £450,000. Mr. Macdonald contended that the company had no title to the exclusive rights and privileges of the fur trade which they now claim.

Capt. Kennedy, a native of the Hudson's Bay territory, and who has spent thirteen years in the service of the corporation, said the Hudson's Bay Company held the country under two titles, one portion being chartered territory and the other licensed territory, the latter under a lease for twenty-five years, expiring in 1859. On the Labrador coast of the territory, where he had lived for eight years, porpoises were so abundant that they can be caught by thousands; small whales are also to be captured, and sealskins and other furs can be got in abundance. Coal and plumbago abound in Hogarth's Inlet, so much so that they can Reindeer As an evidence of the undeveloped riches are so numerous that, with a party of twelve, be picked up on the seashore. of large tracts of the territory held by the he (Capt. K.) killed 216 in two hours. He company, it was stated that in the valley of had seen ten or twelve thousand of them at the Saskatchewan there exist vast beds of one time. The fur trade he considers a coal; there is there in fact one of the great-secondary matter. The entire country, exest coal fields in the world, and a navigable tending north 400 miles from the boundary, river runs through it, affording every facil- is capable of the same cultivation that is now ity for inland navigation and the employ-carried on in Canada-particularly flax, tal

low and hides, which now have to be im- | trade." The territory which came under the ported, can just as easily be raised on these prairies. The land is as fertile as it can possibly be.

At the close of the meeting the Board passed resolutions declaring that the claim of the Hudson's Bay Company to exclusive right of trade over this territory is in contravention of the rights of the people of British North America, and also providing

for a memorial to the Canadian Parliament on the subject.

terms of his notice, he said, included large tracts of land little fitted for industrial pursuits, and large tracts which were fitted for could show that motives of policy and huthe use of civilized man, and he thought he manity of no ordinary magnitude were involved in the question. He would not go into the history of the territories. bloodshed and confusion arising under the divided rule of the Hudson's Bay and Northwestern Companies were well known. These two Companies at length amalgamated under the title of the Hudson's Bay Company, and at present possessed almost exclu

The

We are not surprised that the Canadian people are agitating for a removal of the re-sive administration over the country extendstrictions which the monopoly of the Hud- ing from Hudson's Bay to the Pacific, and son's Bay Company now maintains over including Vancouver's Island. Under their such a vast extent of valuable territory as first charter, of the year 1670, the Company that above described, even though that terclaimed to possess rights over the important ritory may not be so magnificent in its Rupert's Land. Some years ago their title territory comprised in what was called resources and productions as they seem to to this territory was called in question, but believe. The day for such gigantic monop- was confirmed by the then law officers of the olies has gone by. They are contrary to Crown, who, however, recommended an apthe spirit of the age, and belong to the nar-peal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy row-minded commercial policy of the past. Monopolies are a serious drawback to public prosperity wherever they are established. Especially is this true where their selfish grasp is extended, as in this instance, over a wide extent of the earth which abounds in the materials necessary for supporting millions of the human race, who are thus in a

Council, which, however, was not attended Rupert's Land had then never been disto. The rights of the Company over proved. But the trade of this Company extended to the more important Territory of British Oregon, held under a royal license for 21 years, expiring in 1859, and to Vancouver's Island, which they held under a lease granted for 11 years, which also exgreat measure cut off from reaping the pired in 1859. The Company had deriches which God has created for them. licenses would be renewed, as it took time to manded, with justice, to learn whether these This patent of the Hudson's Bay Company reduce the operations of such a Company. bas as yet, probably, effected little harm in Under these circumstances he had thought it checking the settlement of Northern Amer-right, before taking any steps, to ask the ica. The territory has hardly been needed for the immediate purposes of civilization, bat the time is now fast approaching when it will be required to meet the wants of an increasing emigration from the over-peopled nations of Europe. The time has therefore come when all restrictions upon settlement, trade, fishing, hunting, &c., should be removed and those extensive regions thrown open to the enterprise, industry, and skill of

all who choose to enter them.

DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Mr. Labouchere then rose, pursuant to notice, to move for a "Select Committee to consider the state of those British Possessions in North America which are under the administration of the Hudson's Bay Company, or over which they possess a license to

opinion of the House of Commons upon the question. Of course, over so extensive a tract of country, instances of oppression table; but, on the whole, the Hudson's Bay were to be found; they were, in fact, ineviCompany has been desirous of promoting, and they had promoted, the welfare of the native tribes of red men, still comprising a population of 300,000; and they had restrained, as far as possible everywhere, and away from the borders entirely, the destructive sale of ardent spirits among them. As a preliminary to the present motion, he had communicated on the subject with the Governor of Canada; and he had reason to believe that the Committee would have the advantage of hearing evidence from that colony.

Mr. Roebuck thought the Hudson's Bay Company, as a fur company, must necessarily be opposed to colonization. The trapper desired to continue the solitudes for the sake