disagreeable discovery just made that the lamps on the staircase would not burn; the slight inebriation of the cook bringing into full play a latent animosity toward the housemaid, founded on jealousy, and soothed by the mediation of the neighboring green-grocer, hired for five shillings to wait at table on the great occasion.

Just as the Major and Mrs. Overall actually drove up, the said attendant green-grocer, the male Pomona of the neighborhood, had just stepped out to the public house to fetch "the porter." The door was of course opened by the housemaid. The afternoon being windy, the tallow candle which she held was instantaneously blown out; at the same instant the back-kitchen door was blown to with a tremendous noise, occasioning, by the concussion, the fall of a pile of plates, put on the dresser ready to be carried up into the parlor, and the overthrow of a modicum of oysters in a blue basin, which were subsequently, but with difficulty, gathered up individually from the floor by the hands of the cook, and converted in due season into sauce, for the before-mentioned cod's head and shoulders.

At this momentous crisis, the green-grocer (acting waiter) returned with two pots of Meux and Co.'s Entire, upon the tops of which stood heads not a little resembling the whipped stuff upon the raspberry creams— open goes the door again, puff goes the wind, and off go the heads" of the porter-pots into the faces of the refined Major Overall and his adorable bride, who was disrobing at the foot of the stairs.

The Major, who was a man of the world, and had seen society in all its grades, bore the pelting of this pitiless storm with magnanimity and without surprise; but Jane, whose sphere of motion had been somewhat more limited, and who had encountered very little variety either of scenery or action, beyond the every-day routine of a quiet country house, enlivened periodically by a six weeks' trip to London, was somewhat astounded at the noise and confusion, the banging of doors, the clattering of crockery, and the confusion of tongues, which the untimely arrival of the company and the porter at the same time had occasioned. Nor was the confusion less confounded by the thundering double-knock of Mr. Olinthus Crackenthorpe, of Holborn Court, Gray's Inn,

who followed the beer (which, as Shakespeare has it, "was at the door ") as gravely and methodically as an undertaker.

Up the precipitous and narrow staircase were the Major and Mrs. Overall ushered, she having been divested of her shawl and boa by the housemaid, who threw her "things" into a dark hole yclept the back-parlor, where boots and umbrellas, a washing-stand, the canvas bag of the drawing-room lamp, the table covers and "master's " great-coats, were all huddled in one grand miscellany. Just as the little procession was on the point of climbing, Hollingsworth, the waiter, coming in, feeling the absolute necessity of announcing all the company himself, sets down the porter-pots upon the mats in the passage, nearly pushes down the housemaid, who was about to usurp his place, and who in her anxiety to please Mr. Crackenthorpe (who was what she called a "nice gentleman "), abandons her position at the staircase, and flies to the door for the purpose of admitting him. In her zeal and activity to achieve this feat, she unfortunately upsets one of the porter-pots and inundates the little passage, miscalled the hall, with a sweeping flood of the afore-mentioned mixture of Messrs. Meux and Co.

Miss Engelhart of Bernard Street, Russell Square, who had been invited to meet the smart folks, because she was a smart person herself, arrived shortly after; indeed, so rapid did she, like Rugby, follow Mr. Crackenthorpe's heels, that he had but just time to deposit his great-coat and goloshes (in which he had walked from chambers) in the black hole where everything was thrust, before the lovely Charlotte made her appearance. Here, then, at length, was the snug little party assembled, and dinner was forthwith ordered.-Maxwell.

HOOKER, JOSEPH DALTON, an English botanist, born in Suffolk in 1817. He was the son of Sir William Jackson Hooker, Regius Professor of Botany in Glasgow University, and later Director of the Kew Gardens. He was educated in the High School and University of Glasgow, and in 1839 received the degree of M.D. He then accompanied the Antarctic expedition commanded by Sir James Ross, for the investigation of the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism near the South Pole. In 1846 he was appointed botanist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain. The next year he set out for the Himalayas, to investigate the plants of tropical countries. This expedition occupied nearly four years. In 1855 he became Assistant Director of the Kew Gardens, and ten years afterward succeeded his father as director. He travelled in Syria, Morocco, and the United States, and in 1878 published a Journal of a Tour in Morocco and the Great Atlas. His other works are Botany of the Antarctic Voyage (6 vols., 1847-60); Rhododendrons of the Sikkim-Himalaya (1849-51); Himalayan Journals (1854); Genera Plantarum (1862); The Student's Flora of the British Isles (1870), and The Flora of British India (1874).

THE MANUFACTURE OF OPIUM.

The East India Company grant licenses for the cultivation of the poppy, and contract for all the produce at certain rates varying with the quality. No opium

can be grown without this license, and an advance equai to about two-thirds of the value of the produce is made to the grower. This produce is made over to district collectors, who approximately fix the worth of the contents of each jar, and forward it to Patna, where rewards are given for the best samples, and the worst are condemned without payment; but all is turned to some account in the reduction of the drug to a fit state for the market.

The poppy flowers in the end of January and beginning of February, and the capsules are sliced in February and March with a little instrument like a saw, made of three iron plates with jagged edges tied together. The cultivation is very carefully conducted, nor are there any very apparent means of improving this branch of commerce and revenue. During the northwest or dry winds, the best opium is procured, the worst during the moist, or east and northeast, when the drug imbibes moisture, and a watery bad solution of opium collects in cavities of its substance, and is called passewa, according to the absence of which the opium is generally prized.

At the end of March the opium-jars arrive at the stores by water and by land, and continue accumulating for some weeks. Every jar is labelled and stowed in a proper place, separately tested with extreme accuracy, and valued. When the whole quantity has been received, the contents of all the jars are thrown into great vats, occupying a very large building, whence the mass is distributed, to be made up into balls for the markets. This operation is carried on in a long paved room, where every man is ticketed, and many overseers are stationed to see that the work is properly conducted. Each workman sits on a stool, with a double stage and a tray before him. On the top stage is a tin basin, containing opium enough for three balls; in the lower another basin, holding water; in the tray stands a brass hemispherical cup, in which the ball is worked. To the man's right hand is another tray with two compartments, one containing thin "pancakes" of poppy-petals pressed together, the other a cupful of sticky opium-water, made from refuse opium. The man takes the brass cup, and places a pancake at the bottom, smears it with opium

water, and with many piles of the pancakes makes a coat for the opium. Of this he takes about one-third of the mass before him, puts it inside the petals, and agglutinates many other coats over it: the balls are then again weighed, and reduced or increased to a certain weight if necessary. At the day's end, each man takes his work to a rack with numbered compartments, and deposits it in that which answers to its own number; thence the balls (each being put in a clay cup) are carried to an enormous drying-room, where they are exposed in tiers, and constantly examined and turned, to prevent their being attacked by weevils, which are very prevalent during moist winds, little boys creeping along the racks all day long for this purpose. When dry, the balls are packed in two layers of six each in chests, with the stalks, dried leaves, and capsules of the plant, and sent down to Calcutta. A little opium is prepared of very fine quality for the Government Hospitals, and some for general sale in India; but the proportion is trifling, and such is made up into square cakes. A good workman will prepare from thirty to fifty balls in a day, the total produce being 10,000 to 12,000 a day; during one working season 1,335,000 balls are manufactured for the Chinese market alone.

The poppy-petal pancakes, each about a foot radius, are made in the fields by women, by the simple operation of pressing the fresh petals together. They are brought in large baskets, and purchased at the commencement of the season. The liquor with which the pancakes are agglutinated together by the ball-maker, and worked into the ball, is merely inspissated opiumwater, the opium for which is derived from the condemned opium (passewa), the washing of the utensils and of the workmen, every one of whom is nightly laved before he leaves the establishment, and the water is inspissated. Thus not a particle of opium is lost. To encourage the farmers, the refuse stalks, leaves, and heads are bought up to pack the balls with; but this is far from an economical plan; for it is difficult to keep the refuse from damp and insects.-Himalayan Jour nals.