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these plants, the advent of rain or moist air may be pretty accurately prognosticated. A few will refuse to close at night if it is about to rain on the morrow, as if anxious to greet the friendly power; while others, of a more timid character, will not unclose their flowers in the prospect of wet. The little snowdrop safely shuts up its humble flower before the storm; but, as Macculloch observes, it is a remarkable circumstance that, if it is covered by the shelter of a bush, it makes no attempt to close, while its less fortunate companions around it are all firmly shut up. The plants whose leaves There is yet another class of movements, in the fold up at night are few in number, and are confined parts of vegetables, which surpasses all the rest in the chiefly to the leguminosa and oscalideæ. It is even, singularity of its appearance, and in the difficulty of in these orders, more frequent to find this peculiari-discovering any exciting cause for it. The sensity existing in the leaflets than in the proper leaves tive plant forms one of the nearest of the approaches of the plant. In a few instances, this motion is due simply to a hygrometric condition of the air, affecting their tissues, as it does other inanimate objects: these are exceptions to an otherwise general rule.

the surface of the stigma, becoming the involuntary medium of communicating the fertilizing influence from the one to the other.

The spores or sporules of the confervæ, soon after their first formation, execute movements in water bearing the most vivid analogy to the ciliary motion of the embryo mussel, described in No. 128 of our present series. The pollen tubes of the asclepiades pierce the walls of their enclosing cell, and succeed in reaching the stigma wheresoever it may be situated.

Spontaneous motions, to a remarkable degree, are to be discovered in plants at that which forms the highest point of vegetable vigor-the period when the functions of their flowers are about to be completed. It has been long known that the filaments of the flower of the common berberry rise up and strike the stigma with their anthers upon the slightest irritation: the anthers lie in the concavity of the petals, and could never approach the stigma, were it not that the busy insect, in its search for honey, provokes the irritability of the stamina, and thus secures the impregnation of the seed. In the monk's-hood, it is stated that each of the stamina is inclined to the stigma in succession, with the utmost regularity, for seven or eight days. The stamina of the golden amaryllis are constantly agitated throughout the whole period of fecundation. The genus styridium possess a spontaneous motion of a more striking character. So long as the flower is immature, the pistil is immovable; but as soon as it is perfected, if this column is irritated by a needle, it throws itself from the one to the other side of the flower with considerable force; but in a short time it recovers its original position. These movements may be repeatedly produced by the same means. It has been prettily, and not improbably conjectured, that this remarkable irritability was intended to enable the flower to cast off any insect intruder which might attempt to insinuate itself into it. The stamina of the cactus tuna, or Indian fig, when gently scratched with a needle's point, gradually take, from the erect, a recumbent position, and crouch down together at the bottom of the flower, as if withdrawing from the injury. The filaments of the geranium bow forwards, so as to place the anthers upon the stigma.

to animal life to be found in the vegetable kingdom, being endowed with the faculty of what may be called sensation, if the most striking evidence of feeling-retirement from injury-is to be recognized under such a head. The species commonly known as the sensitive plant is the Mimosa pudica. When one of its leaflets is touched, it, with its fellow, closes soon after, and both fold up: this is followed by the closure and folding up of the next pair of leaflets, and subsequently of all the leaflets on the same stock, while the stalk itself then droops and bends down at an articulation which has the effect of a hinge. If the shock communicated to the plant is pretty sharp, the same consequences take place throughout the whole of its leaves, and leafstalks, and it is, to speak comparatively, of a rapid character. The position then assumed is identical with that which the plant takes at night. The more healthy the plant, and the more elevated the temperature of the stove, the more active and lifelike are the motions. The plant also seems to respond to these apparent injuries more quickly in the morning, and at noon, than at a later period of the day. After a time, it reöpens its leaves, and the stock lifts up its head, when we may again offend it, and cause a second occurrence of the movement: but this irritability is soon exhausted, and then requires a period of repose for its restoration. A curious experiment was once made with one of these plants. It was taken out in a carriage, in full vigor, but as soon as the vehicle began to move over a rough pavement, it drooped its leaves, and was affected throughout; but on the journey, it at length seemed to have accommodated itself to the motion, and resumed all its former appearance; a fact which speaks volumes in favor of the voluntary and sensorial character of this singular attributespontaneous motion.

We have another familiarly known instance in the dionca muscipula, Venus' fly-trap, a native of Canada, spreading upon the ground the peculiar It has been not long since related that there is a leaves which have originated its name. They are plant growing in the Swan river colony possessing provided with teeth, and have the appearance of a yet more extraordinary powers of motion. Its rat-trap-a comparison which applies to their funcflowers are of an anomalous structure, and it would tion as well. When the insect alights upon the seem that the anthers form the superior, and the leaf, and touches its midrib, it is instantly caught stigma the inferior lids of a kind of box. The by the springing up of the lateral valves of the upper lid does not touch the under, but is connected leaf; and so great is the force and velocity of this to it by a hinge: they remain apart until some in- act, that the fly is crushed to death. There has sect lights upon the flower; the lid then instantly been an ingenious surmise that the object of this closes over it, and keeps it prisoner so long as it is contrivance is to furnish the plant with a species of turbulent and buzzes about: when it is quite still, food for which it seems to entertain this extraordithe lid uncloses, and suffers it to depart from its nary predilection. There is a humble, and, by convegetable lock-up: if, however, the lid fails in cap-trast, a feeble instance of a similar nature in a little turing the trespasser, it rises again in anticipation British plant called the sun-dew, found growing in of a new-comer. In this case the insect, by bust-bogs and wet heaths, the leaves of which are covling about, rubs off the polen of the anthers upon ered with a gummy exudation, which prevents the

escape of the insects alighting upon them, and these are subsequently further secured by the leaves slowly folding over them.

Decandolle tells us that there is a species of acacia, a native of Senegal, which goes by a name corresponding to "Good morning" because, when touched, its leaves bow down as if to salute those who touch them. There is also a plant, a native of Dominica, called "the sentinel," from the fact that its leaves keep up, as it were, a constant watch one of them is always on the qui vive; the leaf is bent down, then rises and assumes its erect position, and there is an uninterrupted succession of such evolutions in this curious plant to the ample justification of its appropriate title.

Of all the wonderful movements in plants, there is not one which excites more astonishment than that of the Desmodium, or Hedysarum gyrans; we could not find a more appropriate name for it than thevegetable chronometer." Its habitat is the banks of the river Ganges, where, indeed, under the fostering influence of the fertilizing mud, the humid air, and the fervid sun, it is alone to be found in the plenary enjoyment of its remarkable powers. Beneath the slanting sunbeam and the muddled air of our own climate, even in our best stoves, the movement, there so vigorous, dwindles to feeble agitation-sufficiently remarkable, however, to make it one of the curiosities of the conservatory. It requires a temperature exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the full development of its mobile powers.

The lateral leaflets of the plant are in perpetual motion under favorable conditions-a motion of a periodic character. One leaflet will rise until it attains a considerable angle, and then, by a succession of little starts, comparable to the intermitting motion of the seconds hand of a watch, it is depressed to an equal angle, and then begins to rise. While one leaflet rises, its fellow falls, and between them they keep a continual oscillatory motion. This movement does not cease during the night: in fact, in its own climate, it has a fair title to the perpetual motion award. It is remarkable that, even if the leaf is held between the finger and thumb, and forcibly prevented from moving, it will, as soon as it is set at liberty, immediately recommence its movements, and with accelerated velocity, as if the power had been accumulating during the interval. The direct rays of the sun, or movements in the atmosphere, are not the causes of, neither are cooperative with, any other cause of these movements, as they are most lively in the shade, and when the atmosphere of the stove is perfectly still.

It remains briefly to indicate the existence of what may be called movements in closed cells in vegetables. In the Cheledonium majus, a peculiar vibratory motion has been detected, affecting the particles of its yellow sap. This is destroyed by cold, and is subject to a curious intermittence in the occurrence of the vibrations. The chara, an aquatic plant, affords us the best known example of this kind of motion; its stem is formed of elongated cells, which, under microscopic examination, are found to contain a transparent liquid, with globules floating in it: these globules move up one side of the cell and down the other, in a continual circuit, the motion in each cell being independent of that in immediate relation to it. No cause has hitherto been distinctly assigned to this phenomenon-it is one which obtairs in many aquatic plants. The globules are believed to be starch vesicles.

The sertularia, campanularia, and tubularia, among polypes, possess a circulation which has some resemblance to the above. A current of granular particles, having a motion like that of sand in an hour-glass, has been discovered to set along the axis of the tube, forming portions of the stem and branches, to continue in one direction for a short time, then immediately to return in the opposite. Sometimes the granules have a vibrating dancing motion in the tubularia, a current sets up one side of the tube and down the other, as in the chara.

The cases just cited bring us to the confines of the two kingdoms. They have been quoted, not as instances of a motion strictly deserving the epithet "spontaneous,' ," but to show that the distinc tive characters of each, with immediate reference to the attribute in question, are so finely shaded into one another, as to defy all attempts at an artificial separation.

It is hoped that motions sufficiently singular in themselves, but of a mechanical, and a purely mechanical character, will not be confounded, as they too commonly are, with the kind of movement here described. Thus the spring and detent of some seed-vessels the hygrometric closure of some flowers

everlasting flowers, for instance-will open and close for many years after they are dead, if alternately exposed to moist and dry air. The forcible action of the squirting cucumber-Momordica elaterium-the up-tendency of the iridaceous corm, however deep it is buried, and the upward rising of the roots in palm-trees, are curious and interesting in themselves, as evidences of the effects of certain physical laws, but are not to be reckoned in physiological importance with the simple act of the unsheltered snowdrop-an intuitive avoidance of evil.

The last example to be here enumerated, approaches in its character so nearly the motions of the humblest members of the animal scale-animal- In many of the spontaneous motions here enuculæ that it is really hard to call it anything merated, we are permitted to discover the immeelse than a vital phenomenon: it is the motion of diate end which they serve; for others we are still the oscillatoria, a genus of confervæ. Upon the unable to assign a cause or an object. It would field of the microscope they appear like an infinite not be the least important of the ends served, if, by multitude of filaments, having a greenish cast, in- the demonstration of a power of motion of inscrutatersected by many articulations or divisions. They ble origin, we might be taught that the resources are seen to twist about from right to left, in a man- of the Divine architect are deeper and richer than ner bearing the most direct resemblance to the writhings of worms. They travel, when unconstrained, to distances many times their own length, in water, in the course of a few hours.

the narrow confines of our too conceited philosophy can circumscribe, and than, moreover, in our investigations into his handiwork, we are at all times ready to allow.

DURABILITY OF TIMBER IN A WET STATE.

J

"IN digging away the foundations of old Savoy Palace, London, which was built six hundred and fifty years ago, the whole of the piles, consisting of oak, elm, beach, and chestnut, were found in a perfect state of soundness, as also was the planking which covered the pile heads."

This paragraph is taken from an English paper. The cedar swamps of Cape May afford even more remarkable proofs of the durability of timber in a

On the north side of Maurice River Creek the meadows and cedar swamps, as far up as the fast land, are filled with buried cedars to an unknown depth. In 1814 or 1815 an attempt was made to sink a well curb near to Dennis Creek Landing, but, after encountering much difficulty in cutting through a number of logs, the workmen were at last compelled to give up the attempt by finding, at the depth of twenty feet, a compact mass of cedar logs.

bark still adhering to some, when the mud is removed. As one passes up the creek a few miles the stumps approach the surface, and near the edge of the live swamps they become very numerous.- -Trenton Gazette.

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From the N. Y. Mirror.

SAMUEL LOVER.

MR. LOVER, the Irish novelist, poet, painter, dramatist, and, we believe, actor, has arrived in this city. He has already received from a portion of the press the courtesy due to his distinguished reputation. As the author of Rory O'More, Handy Andy, and £. S. D., as well as of several successful dramatic productions acted by Power, and of songs which are known everywhere, America, having paid him nothing in the shape of copyright, should eagerly welcome any opportunity to make him amends. The day will come, we trust, that whenever a copy of one of Mr. Lover's books is sold in this country, he will receive the author's tithe, and in like manner with his plays and songs. In the mean time, the public may flock to hear him sing these very songs, and tell some of the anecdotes which give so much life to his novels. It is Mr. Lover's intention, we understand, to give a series of "Irish evenings," illustrative of the song and humor of his countrymen. They will doubtless assume the form of a most refined and attrac tive entertainment.

To the Editor of The Tribune:

It is a constant business near Dennis Creek to "mine cedar shingles." This is done by probing the soft mud of the swamps with poles, for the purpose of discovering buried cedar timber; and when a log is found the mud is cleared off, the log cut up into proper lengths with a long one-handled saw, and these lengths split up into shingles and carried out of the swamp ready for sale. This kind of work gives constant employment to a large number of hands. The trees found are from four to five feet in diameter; they lie in every possible Lover is, as you know, the writer of songs equal position, and some of them seem to have been (quite equal, I think) to any of Burns'. He is the buried for many centuries. Thus, stumps of trees author of tales of humor, in a vein in which he has which have grown to a great age, and which have no equal. His songs are set to his own music, of a been decaying a century, are found standing in the twin genius with the words it fuses. His power place in which they grew, while the trunks of very of narration is peculiar and irresistible. His comaged cedars are lying horizontally under their mand of that fickle drawbridge between tears and roots. One of these instances is thus described to laughter-that ticklish chasm across which touch us, in a manuscript from Dr. Bresley, of Dennis mirth and pathos-is complete and wonderful. Creek, who has himself "mined" many thousand He is, besides, a most successful play-writer, cedar shingles, and is now engaged in the busi- and one of the best miniature painters living. He ness: "I have in my mine a cedar some two and a is a Crichton of the arts of joyance for eye and ear. half feet over, under a large cedar stump six feet But it is not of his many gifts that I am now particin diameter. Upon counting the annual growths of ularly aiming to remind your readers. the stump, I found there were thirty of them in an inch; so that there were 1,080 in the three feet from the centre to the outside of the tree. The stump must thus have been 1080 years in growing. To all appearance, the tree to which it belonged has been dead for centuries; for, after a stump in these meadows decays down to the wet, there is no more decay-none, at least, that is perceptible. Now, we have 1080 years for the growth of the stump, and 500 for its decay, and 500 for the growth of the tree under it; for this must have grown and fallen before the tree to which the stump belonged sprouted. We are thus carried back for the term of perhaps 2,000 years, of which 1,500 are determined, beyond question, by the growth of the trees."

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The better opinion is, that these trees have gradually sunk through the soft mud of the swamps, after having attained their growth and fallen. Many, however, have decayed in their erect position, for the swamps are full of stumps standing as they grew.

Within a short distance of the mouth of Dennis Creek, and about three miles from any growing timber, can be seen at low water, in the bed of the stream, numerous cedar and pine stumps, about six feet below the surface of the meadow, with the

In his personal appearance Lover has no smack of superfine clay. He looks made out of the fresh turf of his country, sound, honest and natural. He is careless in his dress, a little absent in his gait and manner, just short and round enough to let his atmosphere of fun roll easily about him, and if frayed at all in the thread of his nature, a little marked with an expression of care-the result of years of anxieties for the support of a very interesting family. His features seem to use his countenance as a hussar does his jacket-wearing it loosely till wanted-and a more mobile, nervous, changing set of lineaments never played photograph to a soul within. There is always about him the modest unconsciousness of a man who feels that he can always employ his thoughts better than upon himself, and he therefore easily slips himself off, and becomes the spirit of his song or story. He does nothing like an actor. If you I had heard him singing the same song, by chance, at an Inn, you would have taken him to be a jewel of a good fellow, of a taste and talent deliciously peculiar and natural, but who would spoil at once with being found out by a connoisseur and told of his merits. He is the soul of pure, sweet, truthful Irish nature, though with the difference from others, that, while he represents it truly, and is a piece of it himself,

To an appreciative mind, it, of course, adds powerfully to the influence of a song, that the singer himself conceived the sweet thought, put it into words and melted it into music.

he has also the genius to create what inspires it. | his faculties of patience have another world for their development; that is all. To him it is indifferent whether he listens to the war of a thousand cannon or to the strains of Grisi and Mario. He has no choice. Duty is the grand sentiment of his existence. It kept him in the Peninsular, when, contending with his mighty foe, he was assailed at home with all the malice of faction, and now it takes him to routs and operas. Did it require him to be fastened to Damien's bed, he would obey its mandates without a murmur.

Lover is so genuine a piece of exuberantly gifted Nature, still unspoiled from the hand of God-that the appeal for appreciation of him is to that within us which is deeper than nationality or fashion-to our freshest and most unsunned fountain of human liking. He has been recognized and admired, for his nature, in the most artificial society of the world. It would be strange, indeed, if he should find himself farther from appreciation of it, in a new republic.

I have given you no idea of his peculiar style, but have endeavored only to say what was not likely to be said soon enough by those unacquainted with him.

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It is now his duty to bear his part in civil life, to lend the lustre of his presence to his sovereign's court-to share in her pleasures-to show an interest in her pursuits. Duty is from him a magical word, the sentiment of his existence; he has braved death for its sake a thousand times, and still lives only to show his devotion to it.

The same in peace as in war, he is never ill, never wanting; he is never too early or too late. With what a contemptuous feeling must he hear people talk of pleasure: he to whom it matters nothing whether, on rising from his hard pallet to

THE hero of Waterloo is one of the most con-morrow, he receives an invitation for a court ball, stant habitués of the Opera. Can life present a or is appointed to command once again in the Penstronger contrast than that exhibited by his noble insular!

aspect, his white hairs, the glorious recollections When the queen indulges her fancy with some that surround his name, to the frivolities of fantas-palace masquing, the duke, in the exact costume tic ballets? Can he spend the evening of his hon-prescribed, with powdered peruke, with unaccusored life more unprofitably than in gazing on scenes tomed garments, is at the palace to the moment. in which he can have no interest, in listening to If there is a cartoon exhibition, he reviews the picsounds to which he is indifferent? What connec-tures as though he really took an interest in all the tion can there be between the labors of his past allegorical devices presented to his view. He life, the toils of his campaigns, the hazards of his bloody combats, and the faded graces of Taglioni, or the meretricious allurements of Cerito? Napoleon at St. Helena shows a finer picture to the mind than Wellington caged in his opera-box, listening, happily somewhat dull in hearing, to the hoarse bawling of Fornasari? Does he go there night after night for fashion, or for pleasure? Is his mind so vacant that it requires amusement? Is his time so little occupied that he is devoured by

ennui?

misses none of the Egyptian-hall exhibitionsnone, we mean, that position in society calls on him to notice. It is his part not to disavow merit, but to assist in its exaltation when recognized. He makes a present to Tom Thumb, he records his opinion of the euphonia. If he is at the Opera ballet late on Saturday night, he is at the Royal Chapel, St. James', early on Sunday morning. Heaven knows! May we always hold charitable judgments! He may esteem one duty of as much importance as the other.

Who shall answer these questions? Who shall One other great hero was nurtured by the last dare to pass judgment on a character so illustri-war, whose glory will not pale when brought in ous? Who shall even venture to arraign or to contact with that of Wellington. Duty was with excuse his actions? Yet, it may not be presump-him, too, the ruling sentiment of his life-more, it tuous, if it be admitted they are singular, to seek a key to them.

The duke does nothing without a motive, nothing without thought. This is his distinctive character, that his mind is always wakeful, and so piercing and comprehensive that it pervades every fibre of his sentient being, and rules the slightest motion of his frame. He does nothing unconsciously.

The duke is the same man in his opera-box as, when in the plains of Vittoria, his eagle eye caught the false movement of the French battalions, and poured his army on the instant to overwhelm and destroy them-the same as when, on the heights of Waterloo, he watched for the coming of the Prussians, and saw with an anxious but unshaken soul his squares swept by the ruthless fire of the French artillery.

The scene has changed. His sense of duty and

was with him a passion, and he died while exalting it as the grandest aim of life. Yet we cannot imagine Nelson acting the part of our Wellington. We cannot believe that his fiery spirit could have been purified to such an utter abnegation of self. We cannot conceive that he, in his respect for duty, would ever have lost all his individuality, all his vehemence of feeling, even all his ardent desire for renown. Had Nelson lived he could never have been what Wellington is now.

If it be glorious for man to throw off all the weakness and failings of his nature, and to appear as the embodiment of abstract quality, the hero of Waterloo-apart from his military fame-has achieved a grand title to distinction. In his civil, as in his martial career, he appears unaffected by the weaknesses of humanity, the representative of the first principle of social life-duty.-Britannia.

From the Spectator.

PROGRESS OF IRELAND.

THE Condition of Ireland has impressed the Morning Chronicle with the most singular and conflicting feelings. According to our contemporary, that condition" begins to excite serious doubts whether the government may not have done more harm than good" by interfering to supply the people with food. That which seems to have awakened the fears of the writer is the necessity for further aid. The nature of his alarm is altogether strange, and, as it appears to us, groundless.

The doubter fully recognizes the emergency under which government acted: speaking of the disease in the potato crop, which "bore all the character of a sad and fatal disaster'in Ireland," he

says

ment."

"In England the potato bore but a small proportion to the whole food of the people; and good trade, with full wages, promised abundance of means to purchase the other necessaries of life; but in Ireland each man's own plot of potatoes constituted the sole dependence of entire districts; and these gone, the last hope of subsistence fled with them. Ireland, moreover, was unfortunately circumstanced: the plot of potatoes was not alone the sole source of food, it was the sole field of employ"To such a country it might even have been doubted if the temptations which such a threatened scarcity would usually hold out would tempt commercial enterprise and capital to its aid. The merchant speculates not only on the demand, but also on the means of payment. Altogether, therefore, it would be difficult to conceive so strong a case to justify a government in stepping out of its usual course, and making an extraordinary effort to save a whole people from starvation. Indian corn was imported with the capital of the exchequer."

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small provision-dealers in Ireland could not with-
stand the powerful competition of the government
granaries.
The little and constant deal-
ers who purvey for the public were ruined, and left
the government, in many instances, in the undispu-
ted possession of the market. But will the govern-
ment keep the market? Can they keep it? It is
the beginning of a system at once degrading to the
people to endure and impossible for the government
to sustain."

Are we to infer from these gloomy forebodings that "the late government" ought not to have interfered, but ought to have left the remedy to the working of pure political economy? We fear that pure political economy would have done very little to aid in supplying the food to relieve starvation Political economy, like tonic medicine or dietetics, is of no undoubted virtue for a sudden emergency. The case described in the first extract above forbade all hesitation; it demanded instant action; and we must regard the evil consequences, if there have been such, as things not to have been avoided-not now to repine at, but manfully to encounter with correctives. The censor appears to think that there was a needless fright: that it would have been best to leave the Irishman to the slower but surer and healthier means of bettering his condition by independent industry. But no plan of independent industry could have brought food to the multitude, where the customary article of food was wholly wanting and there was no money to buy others. It was not the food for next year that was in question, but the food from day to day. It is a burlesque on political economy to preach independent exertion to a man actually sinking under the pangs of hunger.

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England herself would have been injured most seriously by neglect of Ireland. The Morning Chronicle tells us that double the number of reapThis aid it is which begins to excite doubts- ers was expected over this year: so, had Ireland "The extent to which public money has been been left to starve, a double allowance of that half expended in Ireland during the last year, not real- pauper class, enfeebled by want of food, therefore ly in employing the people, but literally in feeding doubly helpless and uncertain in their industry, them, is but little known, we apprehend, in this would have been thrown upon the rural districts of country. But just in proportion as means have Great Britain, or would have thronged the ports of been furnished gratuitously, independent exertion migration. What would the English laborer have has been relinquished. It is the most said to it? Oh! pure political economy would say, remarkable fact connected with the history of Ire- he must have been content to meet the wholesome land during the past year, that even the railways exposure to competition. We doubt the advantage which have there been in the course of construc- of any such contest, of any such migration as that tion have experienced the greatest difficulty in pro- of the Irish reapers to this country. What would curing sufficient continuous and steady labor. It is be the effect of its absence in England? Why, on no less singular, that in a year of so much do- the one hand, its effect would be to raise agricultumestic dearth, there has been less emigration to ral wages, on the other, to set the agricultural emEngland than in any former season; and it is a ployers on finding better means of economizing still more startling fact, that in this year of suffer- labor by the help of machinery. The incursions of ing in Ireland, when such extraordinary efforts the unsettled Irish laborers have helped to beat have been made by the executive to save a perishing down the level of wages in this country, without people, neither haymakers nor reapers have come bringing the slightest improvement to our modes of from Ireland. * Nor is it, alas! that the agriculture. Ireland herself can derive no permaIrish have better prospects now, independently of nent and fructifying benefit from so irregular a their casual labor, than they had last year. On the draught upon the labor-market. She has harvests contrary they are infinitely worse. Last year the of her own to reap. The migration is a sign of potato crop failed: this year it is one universal the very worst state of society-that in which the blank; it is annihilated. * At a moment means of subsistence actually fall short even of abwhen the Irish should be making the greatest exer- solute necessity. It is because the Irish are already tion, they seem to be making none. What, then reduced to the "coarsest kind of food"-because will be the value of the aid doled out to them by the they cannot fall upon anything easier and cheaper government during the last year, if it have deprived to obtain than potatoes, and because they have not them of the motive to personal and independent ex- enough even of those that they must perforce ertion for the future? But, moreover, the policy leave home and contend with the English laborer of the late government is showing itself in other for part of his scanty means. To do so, the Irishman ways to have been equally mischievous. The yearly does that which must powerfully contribute

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