had to be changed every year, but forty of these trees having been planted, its unhealthiness entirely ceased. parts extremely beautiful, finely undulating, and rich both in grass and trees, but exceptionally dangerous from the miasmata which it exhales, for which science has not yet been able well to account. on a hot-bed and planted out in the open air in the south of England, have been known to attain a height of ten feet in the same year. In a warmer climate, the growth is probably still more rapid; but we know of no other instance of such rapidity of growth in the case of any valuable timber tree of the temperate parts of the world. There is hope, therefore, for the Campagna di Roma that its cultivation may yet be carried on with the greatest facility The Blue Gum Tree has been supand advantage, and the natural fertility of posed to exert its influence by the aroits soil turned to the utmost account. matic odour which it diffuses in the But if so, there is hope also of speedy atmosphere. But there seems to be immunity from sore distress for the in- much reason for thinking that the secret habitants of many parts of the world, of its power lies in part, at least, in the where intermittent fevers prevail at cer- extreme rapidity of its growth, requiring tain seasons of every year. How happy an extraordinary consumption of water, would many North American farmers be, so that it thoroughly drains the soil if by planting a few hundreds of Blue around it. A marsh near Constantia, in Gum Trees, they could secure probable Algeria, was found to be completely dried exemption from this disease for them- in a very short time by a plantation of selves and their families! The range Gum Trees. Such is the rapidity of within which this tree can be made avail- growth of the tree, that seedlings raised able must, however, be limited by climate. It does not bear the winter even of the south of England, except when the season is unusually mild; and great part of North America, where intermittent fever is very prevalent every year during the summer months in all low grounds, and on the slopes adjacent to them, is subject to a severity of cold in winter which would certainly destroy every plant of this species. But in the Gulf States of North America, and to some extent northwards in the valleys of the Mississippi and other rivers, and along the coasts of Florida, Georgia, and Carolina, its introduction may probably be found in the highest degree beneficial, as also in the West Indian islands and tropical parts of America. It may, perhaps, be doubted if the climate of the west coast of Africa would not prove too warm for it, although its successful introduction in Cuba seems to prove that it is capable of enduring the heat of the tropics; and as the fevers of that region constitute the chief difficulty in the way of European colonization there, the acquirement of the means of preventing them would open up prospects entirely new. It will probably not be long till the powers of the tree are fully tested in India, and if they are found to be as great as French naturalists seem at present to believe, its introduction will probably hasten the cultivation of many a jungle, besides preserving the health and saving the life of many a civilian and many a soldier. One great tract in the North of India seems especially to demand its introduction, and to be in climate perfectly adapted to it the Terai which stretches along the whole base of the Himalaya, where they slope down to the plains, a tract in many From Chambers' Journal. COMBS. COMBS are of prodigious antiquity. Rudely made, they are found among the earliest relics of art. A bronze comb, which has been pictured both by Sir John Lubbock in his Prehistoric Times, and also by M. Figuier, was found in one of three coffins in a tumulus near Ribe, in Jutland, opened by Worsaae, the great Danish archæologist: from other findings in the same coffin, it was plainly the property, not of a lady, but of a fightingman of the bronze epoch. In Jutland we are close upon the footsteps of our own ancestors and of our Danish cousins and invaders. The earlier Celtic tribes seem to have buried their combs as well as their swords in the graves of their warriors. Such customs, indeed, are common to all races in one stage of their culture; his pipe and tobacco-bag were placed beside the dead American Indian, in case he should want to smoke upon his passage. The custom was prolonged, in some cases into Christian times. When the body of the great Bishop Cuthbert was carried in the boat by his monks and clergy to the island of Lindisfarne, they deposited his ivory comb, "pecten eburneus," in the stone coffin beside his corpse. According to Reginald's description of St. Cuthbert's comb, it was of a now unusual shape, broader than it was long. In century, the proper division of the labour is marked out; the deacon is to comb the right side of the bishop's head, the sub-deacon the left side: they are ordered to do their work lightly and decently ("leviter et decenter"). Perhaps some refractory clerks were inclined to use the opportunity, by punishing their spiritual father with a severe dig of the comb. From a ritual of the fourteenth century, belonging to the Cathedral Church of Viviers, it appears that the bishop's hair, at least in that diocese, was first combed by the deacon in the vestry; and then, not merely once, but three several times during the progress of the mass-after the Kyrie, after the Gloria in Excelsis, and after the Creed. No rule as to general European custom, or even national custom, can be drawn from local rituals and pontificals, as every bishop was the ordinary of ceremonies and uses for his own diocese. St. Cuthbert's comb was probably an episcopal one. This popular national saint of Northern England died at the end of the seventh century; but at least a century earlier in the Gallican Church the comb appears to have formed a part of the appliances used at a solemn high mass, especially if sung by a bishop. These church combs were usually of ivory; sometimes they were quite plain, sometimes elaborately carved and decorated with gems. Specimens of them are to be seen in the sacristies and treasuries of a few of the greater churches on the continent; and the inventories of the prizes seized from our own churches at the Reformation epoch, prove that they were once as plentiful amongst us. the treasury of the cathedral of Sens, The combs figured in our English they show a large ivory comb inlaid with manuscripts (many of which have been precious stones and carved with figures copied by the historians of manners) are of animals on it is cut the inscription, nearly always of great bulk, and have "Pecten St. Lupi." Lupus, the French coarse teeth. The medieval and renaisSt. Loup, was the most famous of the sance combs were often double — that is, archbishops of that important see in the in shape though not in size, like modern Merovingian times. Amongst the relics small-tooth combs. In a representation hanging round the shrine of St. Cuth-of the arrival of a guest (painted in the bert in the end of the fourteenth century, the pilgrims saw three combs: one was said to have belonged to St. Dunstan, another to Archbishop Malachi, and the third was called "the comb of St. Boysit the priest." At the Reformation, these and all such portable treasures disappeared, to the loss of the historians of art and manners. Henry VIII. carried from the wealthy Abbey of Glastonbury, "a combe of golde, garnished with small turquases and other coarse stones, weighing with the stones eight ounces.' The episcopal comb was used in the church, after the following fashion. If a bishop was the celebrant at the eucharist, the deacon and sub-deacon combed his hair while he sat upon the faldstool, immediately after the putting on of the episcopal sandals. A towel was placed round the bishop's neck during the operation. The old offices contain prayers to be used by the celebrant at his successive assumption of each article of vesture; but I do not know whether any prayer during the combing of the hair is extant. The process is described in a pontifical writen in the tenth century by order of an abbot of Corbey. In an Ordo Romanus of the end of the thirteenth fourteenth century), one of the welcoming attendants is pulling off his shoes, while another is combing his hair. The comb in this picture is truly immense. Our old English books of courtesy are full of references to the use of the comb. It was a part of the page's duty to comb his lord's hair: directions "for combing your sovereign's head" are given by John Russell in his Boke of Nurture, also by Wynkyn de Worde in The Boke of Kervinge. Carving was the principal duty of the youth, and all other details of his work are included under it as a kind of general title. The duty of combing, as culture widens, begins to be treated by the writers on etiquette as a duty towards one's self, and not merely towards one's lord. Andrew Borde, in 1557, recommends the frequent use of the comb: "Kayme your heade oft, and do so dyvirs times in the day." William Vaughan, in his Fifteen Directions to preserve Health, published in 1602, prescribes combing for its intellectual benefits: it must be done "softly and easily, with an ivory comb," he writes, "for nothing recreateth the memory more." Sir John Harrington in his section on "the dyes for every day," of his School of Saterne (1624), gives and talk." As ladies used the fan in their flirtations with gentlemen, so the artificial swains of the period wielded the comb in their languishing addresses to their shepherdesses. Dodsley has a long note on this custom in the eleventh volume of his Old Plays, and cites a number of illustrations. In his Prologue to the second part of Almanzor and Almahide, written in 1670, Dryden refers to the ostentatious wits in the pit of the theatre. From the How we rejoiced to see them in our pit! the simple instruction: "Comb your head well with an ivory comb from the forehead to the back-part, drawing the comb some forty times at the least." It would seem from the preciseness of his advice, that English gentlemen were still a little slovenly in their own treatment of their hair; when they wished it to be properly treated, they put themselves under the hands of the barber. There is little doubt that the close-cropped hair of the Presby-public use of the comb by the would-be terian and Independent Roundheads was more cleanly than the long hair of the cavalier with its artificial love-locks. It was a part of the extreme protest of George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, against all the fashions of the earlier Puritan sects, who were masters in England when he began his mission, to wear long hair. When he was preaching in Flintshire, in 1651. he says that "one called a lady" sent for him. "She kept a preacher in her house. I went to her house, but found both her and her preacher very light and airy. In her lightness, she came and asked me if she should cut my hair. But I was moved to reprove her, and bid her cut down the corruptions in herself with the Sword of the Spirit of God." He learned afterwards that this lady boasted that she had gone behind him and "cut off the curl" of his hair. At Dorchester, the constables made him take off his hat, to see if he were not shaved at the top of his head; they were sure that so fierce an opponent of the Puritan clergy must be a Jesuit. The long hair of the father of Quakerism, like that of the Frankish kings and chieftains, was necessarily often in need of the comb; and it comes out incidentally, in his journal of the year 1662, that George Fox was so careful of personal neatness as to carry a comb-case in his pocket. When he was seized by Lord Beaumont and the soldiers in Leicestershire as a suspected rebel, that nobleman 66 put his hands into my pocket," says Fox, "and plucked out my comb-case; and then commanded one of his officers to search for letters." The cavalier gentry, who took the Quaker patriarch for a plotter, were great employers of the comb. The huge peruke came in with Charles II.; and a fashion arose amongst the gallants of combing their huge head-dresses in public: it is often noticed by the dramatists of the Restoration. It is one of the stage directions, in Killigrew's Parson's Wedding, for a group of fashionable gentlemen of the year 1663: "They comb their heads The comb has now been for so long an implement in all hands, and has become so cheap in price, that it is scarcely possible to realize the unkempt condition of our ancestors in some out-of-the-way places only a hundred years ago. In the Autobiography of Thomas Wright of Birkenshaw, written at the close of the last century, he says, that half a century earlier, in the village of Oakenshaw, about four miles from Bradford, the people were so rude that their manners became a byword throughout the district. It was reported of them, that they kept their heads in such a shock-headed condition from Sunday to Sunday, that an iron comb was chained to a tree which stood in the middle of the village for the use of the whole parish. What have been the advances in the use and manufacture of combs since this period need not be particularized. From Macmillan's Magazine. A CURIOUS PRODUCT. I AM a child of the times, and am sorry to be unable to congratulate my Parent. It is not that I am at all disreputable. My vices entitle me to no distinction. To begin by doing justice, I am perfectly free from vanity and may therefore be the more easily believed when I say that probably few men being bachelors and under thirty are better loved and befriended than I am. The number of persons who take a warm interest in me is astonishing and troublesome. There are homes where, unless dissimulation be carried to the height of genius, I am always a welcome guest, and am, on entering, affectionately greeted by old and young, mistress and maid. them; and yet as I write this I blush. I have used a passionate imprecation, and yet my hand glides as calmly over the paper, and my heart beats as placidly within my breast as if I had just put down in my account-book the amount of The fathers and mothers look upon me my last week's washing-bill. as a young man who has been well This inertia, in a great measure, rebrought up, and who, though not pre-sults from the fatal gift of sympathy uncisely the product his education might checked by spiritual or moral pressure. have been expected to yield, is yet never- It is all very well, indeed it is most detheless, in a season of doubts and per-lightful in matters of taste, to be able to plexities, a person worthy of commenda- say, as Charles Lamb does of style, that tion. As for the daughters of the house, for him Jonathan Wild is not too coarse, I am not aware that I flutter their sus- nor Shaftesbury too elegant. Thank ceptibilities, and should think it unlikely, Heaven, I can say that too; but in matbecause in the first place I studiously ters of morals and religion this catholiavoid attempting to do so, and in the sec- city becomes serious. To find yourself ond place I am not too disposed to be- extending the same degree of sympathy lieve that they have any susceptibilities to, say, both the Newmans-to read, in to flutter; but I more than pass with the course of one summer's day, and with them, for I can quote poetry to those who the same unfeigned delight, Liddon and like to listen to good poetry well quoted, Martineau to stroll out into the woods and there are a few who do; I can pre- and meadows, careless whether it is tend to talk philosophy to those who pre- Keble or Matthew Arnold you have tend to like philosophy, and they are slipped into your pocket-this, too, is a many; and though I can't talk religion, very delightful catholicity, but I am not yet I can listen very contentedly to it; sure that I ought to thank Heaven for it. and if a lady is High Church, and is doing I wonder how often in the course of a battle with some person more enthusias- year Dr. Johnson's saying to Sir Joshua tic than I am, I can quietly, and without is quoted- "I love a good hater." That binding myself in any way, come to the it should be so often quoted is a proof fair combatant's rescue, whenever sore that the Doctor's feeling is largely shared pressed, with a sentence from Dr. New-by his countrymen. I am sure I share it, man, or a line from Faber, and be rewarded with a grateful smile; whilst, again, if the lady be more Genevan in her faith, my memory is equally well stored with the sayings of divines and hymn-writers who have grasped with an enviable tenacity the simple and grand doctrines of Calvin and his successors. For the sons of the house, when I say that I smoke, and am not at all scrupulous about what sort of stories I hear and tell, it will be at once understood how perfect is my sympathy with them. and nobody can accuse me of self-love in doing so for I hate nobody. I haven't brought myself to this painful state without a hard struggle. For a long time I made myself very happy in the thought that I hated Professor Huxley. How carefully I nursed my wrath! By dint of never speaking of the Professor, except in terms of the strongest opprobrium, and never reading a word he had ever written, I kept the happy delusion alive for several years. I had at times, it is true, an uneasy suspicion that it was all But in the meantime, what of myself? nonsense; but I was so conscious how Am I as easily satisfied? I can't say I necessary it was to my happiness that I am dissatisfied, that is such a very should hate somebody, that I always strong word; but I may say that I am resolutely suppressed the rising doubt in often very much provoked. It would be an ocean of superlatives expressive of annoying for a cold man to gaze stead- the supposed qualities of this mischievfastly into a blazing fire and yet remain ous Professor. But one day, in a luckchill. It is provoking to be able nicely less hour, I opened a magazine at hapto estimate and accurately to appreciate emotions, affections, martyrdoms, heroisms, to perceive the force which naturally belongs to certain feelings and convictions, and yet to remain cool, impassive, and inert. Would to God that I could stir myself up to believe in any of hazard, and began in a listless fashion to read an article about I knew not what, and written by I knew not whom, and speedily grew interested in it. The style was so lucid and urbane, the diction so vigorous and expressive, the tone so free from exaggeration and extravagance, and both these quarters, but morally. There was a time when I did draw a line with my jokes and stories, never a very steady line, but still a line, I now disport myself at large, and a joke - if good qua joke - causes me to shake my sides, even though it outrages religion, which I believe to be indestructible on this earth, and morality, which I believe to be essential to our well-being upon it. The painful problem arises in connection with quite another subject. Although not in love, I have some idea of prosecuting a little suit of mine in a certain direction, and have to own that at odd hours and spare seasons, when my thoughts are left to follow their own bent I find them dwelling upon, lingering over, returning to, a face, which though no artist on beholding, would be led to exclaim A face to lose youth for, occupy age the substance so far from uninteresting, or æsthetically, for I am very sensitive in that my fated symathies began to swell up, and when half-way down the next column I saw awaiting me one of my favourite quotations from Goethe, I mentally embraced the author and hastily turned to the end to see what favoured man was writing so well, and there, lo and behold! was appended the name of the only man I had ever hated. Of course the illusion could not be put together again, and the chair once filled by the learned Professor stands empty. The other day I made an effort to raise Archbishop Manning to it. He has not the playful humour, the exquisite urbanity of the great modern Pervert, but I have heard him preach, he has the accents of sincerity and conviction, and represents what I believe to be in a great degree indestructible on this earth. Failing the Archbishop, the name of Fitzjames Stephen occurred to me, but as he himself has told us, he has so many claims to distinction that it would be a shame to hate him; and, after all, I am nearer his is yet in my opinion, a very pleasant and position by many a mile than I am to the companionable face, one well suited to Archbishop's, and so in despair I have spend life with, which is after all what given up the attempt of finding a suc- you want a wife for. This is not the cessor to Professor Huxley, and repeat painful problem · - that comes on a step that, poor limping Christian as I am, I later. Supposing I was married, and hate nobody. Why not read your Car- blessed, as, after all, most men are, with lyle? it will be indignantly asked. Is not children, how on earth shall I educate "Sartor Resartus upon your shelves? them to keep them out of Newgate? Why bless me ! hear the man talk! Car-"Bolts and shackles ! " as Sir Toby lyle is my favourite prose author. I have all his books, in the nice old editions, round about me, and not only have read them all, but am constantly reading them. You won't outdo me in my admiration for the old man. I think his address to the Scotch students, if bound up within the covers of the New Testament would not be the least effective piece of writing there. Carlyle has long taught me this to lay no flattering unction to my soul, and to go about my business. He has tried to do more than this, and at times I have almost thought he has done more, but it is not for man to beget a faith. Carlyle has planted, he has digged, he has watered, but there has been no one to give the increase. He has taught us, like the Greek Tragic Poets, "moral prudence," and to behave ourselves decently and after a dignified fashion between Two eternities, and for a time I thought I had learnt the lesson, but I am at present a good deal agitated by a dangerous symptom and a painful problem. The dangerous symptom is that nothing pains me. I don't mean physically Belch exclaimed - the thought is bewildering. If I, educated on Watts's Hymns and the New Testament, am yet so hazy on moral points and distinctions, which can hardly be described as nice, such as paying my bills, using profane language, going to Church, and the like, my son, brought up on Walter Scott and George Eliot, and the writers of his own day, will surely never pay his bills at all, his oaths will be atrocious, and he will die incapable of telling the nave from the transept-and how I am to teach him better I really do not see. The old régime was particularly strong on this point; and if one could only bring one's conscience to it, the difficulty is at an end, and the education of children, so long at any rate as they are in the nursery or the schoolroom, goes forward quite easily and naturally. If anybody has had the patience to wade so far in my company, he will probably here exclaim, "My dear sir, you must have been abominably educated yourself;" and though I don't altogether deny the statement, I can't allow it to |