such as might be expected to inspire a classic. but loved. Cobbett, when, after the third at- up Selborne to-day is little changed since Cobbett visited it after a reader of his paper had sent him White's book; and the village itself can scarcely have altered since White wrote, except that his house has been enlarged, and there is a new rectory. To a visitor the first impressions of the village are perhaps disappointing, though the lofty beech-covered hill above it, and the romantic glen called the Leith, below the church, bear out all that has been written of them. The one striking feature of the place is the position of the church, on a promontory jutting out into this Leith valley, looking from which the square tower stands like some small for tress closing the steep and narrow glen, backed by the great beech wood of Selborne Hill. The ancient yew-tree in the churchyard still flourishes, and the interior of the church, with its double row of massive pillars, has all the dignity which Norman or very early English architects knew how to give to buildings, however small, and the monuments and fabric show every sign of decent and reverent care. Still, the features of Selborne itself are hardly Wolmer Forest, on the other hand, three-fifths of which lie in the parish of Selborne, is a strangely fascinating region, containing some of the wildest scenery of the South, full of strange birds and rare plants and insects, and improved, rather than lessened in natural beauty, since it afforded White "much entertainment both as a sportsman and a naturalist." In his day it "consisted entirely of sand covered with heath and fern, without having one standing tree in its whole extent,' was studded with large meres and marshes. Now the waters have shrunk; but much of the forest is covered with plantations of pine, and even of oak. The fir-plantations were made by Cobbett's enemy, "the smooth Mr. Huskisson," and formed the text for a ferocious attack on him as commissioner of woods and forests; but though the price now fetched by the wood bears out the economical side of Cobbett's criticism, the trees add much to the beauty and character of the forest. "This lovely domain," says Gilbert White, "is an agreeable haunt for many sorts of wild fowls, which not only frequent it in winter, but breed there in summer, such as lapwings, snipes, wild ducks, and as I have discovered within these last few years, teals." During a spring walk in the for nest of every bird which White mentions as breeding there, except that of the black grouse, which, though introduced for a time, has become nearly as rare as in his days. At the northern end of the forest, near Walldon Hill, is a marsh, not a mere swamp in the peats, but such a marsh as hunted outlaws may have sheltered in, over which the flame of the will-o'-the-wisp may still dance on summer nights; a wide sheet of black water, with dead, white limbs of drowned trees standing out from it, and winding labyrinths of dwarf alders covered with wet mosses and hanging lichens, and mats of bright green grass so firmly tangled that a boy can walk on them, and outside these quaking platforms thick beds of reed. This is the home and nursery of the wild fowl of the forest, where duck and teal, dabchicks and waterhens, bring up their young broods till the helpless time of flapperhood is over. But the ducks and teal do not nest in the marsh; and we found White's observations exactly true, the teals nesting at a considerable distance from the water, and the wild ducks in some of the furthest and driest parts of the forest. About a hun. dred yards from the marsh was a teal's nest. She had hatched her young the day before, but two eggs remained, of a pale ivory color, and the nest, which was placed in deep heather under a seedling fir, was beautifully made of moss and speckled down from the birds' breasts, which exactly matched in color the lichen-covered heather. Had we risen at daybreak, we might perhaps have met the bird taking her tiny brood down to the water. A wild duck's nest was found on a steep, heatherclad hill quite a mile from the water. There are few more difficult nests to find than that of a wild duck on a heath. But in this case a single breast feather gave the clue needed, and after careful search a track was found winding among the heather-stems to a thick patch under the overhanging boughs of a young pine, beneath which was the nest. The eggs had been hatched for some time, and all the broken shells were buried beneath a layer of down. In a wet hollow near the outskirts of the forest, was a snipe's nest. These birds are far less common there than formerly, owing, it is said, to the turf being no longer cut for fuel, so that there is less fresh ground exposed for them to feed upon. The nest was simply a round hollow in a wet tussock; but when their brood is hatched, the snipes are said to be most affectionate parents. This particular pair are said to have nested in the same place last year. Some men employed to dig sand close by, were surprised to see a snipe fly up, which, after showing great unwillingness to quit the spot, perched on a rail about four yards off-a most unusual thing for a snipe to do- and remained watching them. Soon after, they discovered at the bottom of the pit four very young snipes lying together, which they took up and laid upon the level ground, whence they were soon called away by the mother bird into the rough grass near. Plovers nest on the swamps and rough hillsides; and there are a fair number of wild pheasants and partridges on the sides. of the forest. Squirrels swarm in the pine-trees, and live on the seeds of the cones. But perhaps the most interesting colony in the forest is the heronry. Perhaps this is a recent settlement, for Gilbert White does not speak of it. The nests are in a plantation of tall pines in the very heart of the forest, where one or two small brooks, deeply tinged with iron deposits, flow through the wood. The trees are so tall as to be inaccessible to the climber; and as the great birds launch themselves from their nests, and sail round with harsh cries above the tree-tops, the visitor might well imagine himself back in some bygone forest era. The trees on which the nests are placed are covered by a thick green lichen, and are readily distinguishable from the rest. One rare bird which haunts the forest has been almost destroyed by the severe winterthe Dartford warbler-and great numbers of woodpeckers also died. But in the ring of lofty firs which caps the hill above the pool of Holy Water, there are a number of their nests, or rather, the holes drilled in successive years by the one or two pairs which annually haunt the spot. One of these had been robbed in the early morning by the squirrels, which had sucked the eggs, and flung the shells upon the ground. Higher up in the firs were the nests of carrion-crows and hawks, robber birds which haunt this lofty eyrie, and, soaring round the hill or perched on the dead branches of the trees, keep a watchful eye upon the forest for miles around. Wolmer Forest is a good instance of a government property managed with good sense and good taste. The forest fires, of which Gilbert White speaks, are now kept in check, and the wild life of the district is just sufficiently preserved to give that additional interest to woodland scenery from the absence of which the forests of France so greatly suffer. If the origin of the sentiment which so preserves these creatures be sought, it would perhaps be found in the writings of Gilbert White, of Selborne. From The Speaker. AN EGG-STEALER. IT wanted less than an hour to high tide when Miss Marty Lear heard her brother's boat grate on the narrow beach below the garden, and set the knives and glasses straight while she listened for the rattle of the garden gate. A stunted line of hazel ran along the foot of the garden and prevented all view of the landing-place from the kitchen window. But above the hazels one could look across to the fruit-growing village of St. Kits; and catch a glimpse, at high tide, of the intervening river, or, towards low water, of the mud-banks shining in the sun. It was Miss Lear's custom to look much on this landscape from this window; had, in fact, been her custom for close upon "Iss, "How's Miss Marty,' says he. 'Agein' rapidly,' says I. The nerve that some folks have! Comes up to me cool as my lord and holds out his hand. He've a-grown into a sort of commercial, — stomach like a bow-window, with a watch guard looped across. I'd a mind to say Eggs' to en, it so annoyed me; but I hadn' the heart. 'Tis an old tale after all, that feat o' his." 'Well, the last night he came over, 'twas low tide. I was waitin' for en in the orchard; an' he would have me tell father and you, and I wouldn'. I reckon we quarrelled over it so long, his boat got left high in the mud. Anyway, he left me in wrath an' I stood there by the gate in the dark, longin' for en to come back an' make friends afore he went. But the time went on an' I didn' hear his footstepno, nor his oars pullin' away - though listenin' with all my ears. "An' then I heard a terrible sound -a low sort of breathin' but fierce, an' something worse, a suck-suckin' of the mud below; an' ran down. There he was, above his knees in it, half-way between firm ground and his boat. For all his fightin' he heard me, and whispers out o' the dark, “‘Little girl, it's got me. Hush! don't shout or they'll catch you.' "Can't you get out?' I whispered back. 666 No, I'm afraid.' "I'll run an' call father an' Job.' "Hush! Be you mazed? want to let 'em know?' Do you "But it'll kill you, dear, won't it?' 66 Likely it will,' said he. Then after a while of battlin' with it, he whispers agen, 'Little girl, I don't want to die. Death is a cold end. But I reckon we can manage to save me an' your name as well. Run up to the hen-house an' bring me as many eggs as you can find and don't ax questions. Be quick; I can keep up for a while.' "I didn' know what he meant, but ran up for my life. I could tell pretty well how to find a dozen or more in the dark, by gropin' about; an' in three minutes had gathered 'em in the lap o' my dress, and run down agen. I could just spy him a dark blot out on the mud. "How many?' he asked,; an' his voice came hoarse as a rook's. "About a dozen.' """Toss 'em here. Don't come too near; an' shy careful, so's I can catch. Quick!' "I stepped down pretty near to the brim o' the mud an' tossed 'em out to him. Three fell short in my hurry, but the rest he got hold of, somehow. That's right. They'll think eggstealin' nateral to a low family like our'n. Now back to your room-undress-an' cry out, sayin' there's a man shoutin' for help down 'pon the mud. When you wave your candle twice i' the window I'll shout like a Trojan.' "An' I did it, Job; for the cruelty in a fearful woman passes knowledge. An' you rescued en, an' he went to gaol. For he said 'twas the only way. An' his mother took it as quite reas'nable that her husband's son should take to the bad'twas the way of all the Trudgeons. ther to son, they was of no account. Egg-stealin' was just the sort o' little wickedness that ought to come nateral to 'em. Fa STRYCHNINE AN ANTIDOTE TO SNAKEPOISON.Dr. Mueller, of Victoria, in an interesting letter addressed to Lord Lansdowne, governor-general of India, claims to have discovered the secret of snake-poisoning. Dr. Mueller's theory is that snake-poison suspends the action of the motor and vasomotor nerve-centres. It is merely a dynamic action, and does not destroy tissue. It follows almost as a matter of course that the proper antidote is something that stimulates and increases the functional activity of these nerve-centres. And this remedy is strychnine. "It is applied," he writes, "by subcutaneous injections of ten to twenty minims of the liquor strychnine and continued every fifteen minutes until the paralyzing effect of the snake venom on the motor and vaso-motor nerve-cell are removed and slight strychnia symptoms supervene. The quantity of the drug required for this purpose depends on the amount of venom imparted by the snake, and may after the bite of a vigorous cobra amount to a grain or more, since more than half a grain has been found necessary to neutralize the effects of the bite of the tiger-snake, a reptile much resembling the cobra in appearance but not imparting nearly as much venom.in case of snake-bites in Australia, ít m Strychnine and snake-poison being antagonistic in their action, I have found invariably that large doses of strychnine produced no toxic effects in the presence of snake-poison, until the action of the latter is completely Suspended. These effects in their initial stage, manifested by slight muscular spasms, are patent to any ordinary observer, and per fectly harmless. They pass off quickly, and are an unfailing signal that the antidote is no longer required and the patient out of danger. Though fully aware of the unfavorable results of experiments with the drug on dogs made at Calcutta and London as well as in Australia, I was nevertheless so fully convinced of the correctness of my theory that I administered the antidote fearlessly to persons suffering from snake-bite, to a few at the very point of death, with pulse at wrists and respiration already suspended, and in every instance with the most gratifying success. This success has been equally marked in the practice of other medical men in nearly all parts of Australia, more especially in Queensland, where the most venomous of our snakes are met with. Owing to the general adoption of my method, deaths from snake-bite are now events of the past in Australia, and occur in rare instances, where from ignorance, neglect, or the impossibility of procuring the antidote in time it is not applied." It is quite possible of course that, although the remedy invariably succeeds be equally potent against our more deadly cobra and krait. Nevertheless it is well worth trying, and we hope that experiments with it will be made in India. Allahabad Pioneer. IV. REMINISCENCES OF SIR RICHARD BURTON, Temple Bar, 406 For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. 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