Sept. 30, 1882.]

sure. 'You don't live in this part of the country, surely?'

'I am Miss Jolly's maid at the Grange, now,' said little Mary innocently. Val's heart gave a great leap, and his eyes flashed; but he controlled himself.

'Oh,' said Val; and how did you come to be there?'

Mary blushingly informed him that Mr Search had recommended her to Mr Lumby.

'Will you do me a little favour?' asked Val with as little agitation outwardly as though the favour had been the smallest in the world.

'If I can, sir,' said little Mary. She was ready to fly to serve him.

'I want you to meet me at the gate of the Grange in an hour and a half. That will be ten o'clock. Will you give a note to Miss Jolly, for me, if I bring it then?'

01

O yes, sir, with pleasure,' said Mary. 'I don't want anybody else to see it,' said Val. Nobody else must know of it. Now can I trust you to be discreet?' Mary promised the utmost discretion; and Val sped back to the Hall, and wrote his last appeal, begging Constance to meet him, if but for a moment, to appoint her own time and place, and give him but a word.

'Constance!' he whispered. She stopped short, and he approached her and folded her in his arms. My love, my love!' he murmured. 'My heart was breaking to see you. Why were you so cruel? Why did you leave me unanswered?' And when she would have answered him, he stopped her lips with kisses. 'You love me,' he murmured again. 'Why should you break two hearts, and blight two lives? I know you love me. I will not let you go.' This masterful and peremptory wooing is not the way with all women; but if the right man adopts it, it rarely fails. And Constance in his arms found the urgent voices of duty and honour suddenly gone dumb, and her tired heart at rest. Here,' she thought, 'is my place after all.'

'It is too late to go back,' said Val. 'You love me, and you can never be happy without me. And I will not live or try to live without you.' She began to cry and to cling to him, and to protest she had been so unhappy-so unhappy. How was a poor girl to know where duty lay? It was terrible to think of marrying Gerard. She told Val as much, and he kissed her anew with passionate triumph. Should she write to him, and say so, even now in these last days of hope? she asked. But her father wished the match, and her brother and her aunt were favourable to it. She would have to endure so much shame in breaking it off at this late hour. What could be done?

Even yet it was not too late to pay some little tribute to honour. Even yet, Val might have played the man, and have told Gerard the plain truth, and faced his indignation and his misery. But his feet were in the Primrose Way,' and he had not the heart to leave it.

(To be continued.)

SEA-FARE.

In these days of monster steamships, quick passages, and luxurious ocean-travel, we are rather apt to forget how short a time has elapsed since weary voyages in sailing-ships were the only means of communication with distant lands, and with what avidity nearly every recent discovery in art, science, or manufacture has been seized upon and made instrumental in some way or other towards effecting this contrast-possibly a greater one than any other phase of progress can show, and rivalling even the change from stage-coaches to railways.

Round the foot of Welbeck Head, across the little bay beyond, and up to the Grange, was a very pretty bit of rustic walk, and Mr Search, who was not without an eye for nature, strolled there in the cool, with his hat a good deal on one side, and a cigar between his teeth. Val passed him swiftly, and was a little savage to see him there, without being conscious of any very precise reason for anger. Hiram, unreasonably angry and unreasonably suspicious, continued walking, to see what took him in the direction of the Grange. The Yankee was, as times go, an honourable man, and he did not care to dog anybody; but he excused himself-he was walking that way already before Val passed him. 'There's no call on me to turn, he said, 'onless I've got a mind to. Before the gate of the Grange, the dark figure ahead of him seemed to pause for a second, but for a second only. If he comes back this way,' said the guilty Hiram, he'll think I've been spying on him;' and deviating from the road, he strolled in the faint misty moonlight across the fields, accusing himself somewhat in his thoughts for having suspected his employer's friend. But Val in that momentary pause at the gate had thrust the note into Mary's hands, with just two or three hasty whispered words: 'Let no one see it. I will wait for an answer. The revolution which has taken place in the mode of And not less than the contrast in speed is the maid carried the note to her mistress, who was in her own room. Constance read it, and could life on board. But a comparatively few years ago, not resist the temptation its summons brought every one who ventured on a voyage to a foreign her. She muffled herself hastily in a gray shawl, shore, whether he were a peer of the realm or a stole tremulously down-stairs, and found the denizen of the forecastle, knew that for weeks dining-room deserted, with its windows open on or months, as the case might be, he must the lawn. She stepped out into the night, passed put up with an unvaried diet of salt beef round the house silently like a ghost, and sped and salt pork, accompanied by hard biscuit or with a heart that sounded an impetuous alarum, along the darkened drive. Val, who had marked dried peas, with a pitiful dole of water daily, that he was followed, had seen Hiram off the and the ever-haunting possibility of supplies field, and was by this time back at the gate running short. Now, the gentleman who pays again, standing in the shadow of the trees within for a trip of three thousand miles, grumbles the drive. if his wine be not iced, and demands daily three

good and abundant meals of fresh meat and For instance, a landsman might feel some interest vegetables.

In the course of this paper, it is proposed to offer to the reader some authentic statistics concerning the commissariat department alone of a large ocean-going steamship. And in considering these matters, two points strike the attention rather forcibly the perfection and immense experience shown in the system by which such a ship can be victualled so liberally yet so exactly as to prevent loss by superfluity, or embarrassment through insufficience; and the marvellous cheapness which competition between great lines has brought about. The discontented passenger who complains that some small item in his dinner of many courses is not to his taste, seldom reflects on the vast forethought which must have been exercised on his behalf down to the smallest minutiæ-for there are no shops at sea wherein to purchase any little thing that may have been forgotten-or on the fact that his passage-money is probably less than the amount which he would have to pay for living at a good hotel with an inferior table for the time equal to the duration of his journey.

The following details have been culled not so much from the very largest steamers, as from those of the best class which take long voyages and are mainly provisioned at the outset. Thus they do not apply to the huge North Atlantic boats, with their six and eight day passages, or to teeming emigrant vessels; but have been averaged principally from the fleets of the Peninsular and Oriental (running to the East), Royal Mail (West Indies and Brazil), Orient (Australia), Pacific Steam Navigation (both coasts of South America), Messageries Maritimes (East, West, and South), and Union (Cape of Good Hope) Companies. It must be remembered, however, that they all vary, for many reasons. more of one thing and less of another. Companies make their own ice on board, and provide themselves with dead-meat instead of live-stock-a very important item. Some take a sufficiency of this, that, or the other thing at starting; while others will renew those stores at their different ports of call, according to the local cost of the articles and the facilities on

Some carry
Some

in learning that such a ship as the representative ideal whose commissariat we are about to glance at, would, if set upright on her stern, project her bowsprit above the cross on the top of St Paul's Cathedral; that her boatswain's stores would include one ton of paint, five tons of spare rope, and five hundred yards of canvas; and that two thousand gallons of oil are required to lubricate her engines for three months; but the fact of her carrying a hundredweight of pepper for consumption each voyage, will give him a better idea of what we wish to convey.

A passenger steamer of four or five thousand tons may have on board seven hundred souls, or more. Two hundred, say, of these will be saloon passengers, a very few second-class, and probably three hundred third-class or steerage passengers. Her company will number something above one hundred and fifty, of whom more than half will be servants, apart from the crew-proper; eight or ten cooks of various degrees the chef generally a Frenchman, and usually one at least of each nationality likely to be included among the passengers-two bakers, a confectioner, three butchers, and about sixty stewards and waiters, back' will occupy from eight to fifteen weeks; English and foreign. Her voyage there and and her stores, renewable each trip, are worth many thousands of pounds.

We shall want a parting glass with the friends || who have come to see us off at starting-and possibly a little brandy not long after-so we had better begin to make one or two rough notes at the bar. Here and in the wine-rooms below, four thousand bottles of spirits, fifteen hundred we shall find twenty-five thousand bottles of beer, bottles of champagne, five thousand of other wines-besides a large quantity, in the wood, of some light claret or Figuera, which is frequently supplied gratis at breakfast and dinner-and ten thousand bottles of various aërated waters. One thousand lemons are suggestive; but though eighty tons of ice-where there is no ice-making machine-may seem conducive to unlimited be borne in mind that the chief functions of sherry-cobblers and other 'long drinks,' it must the ice-house are to cool the drinking-water in the tropics and preserve fresh meat, fish, and fruit. Passing to more innocent beverages, milk ad libitum appears to be guaranteed by one thousand tins of the condensed article, and board for storing them; while the same ship five hundred gallons of the fluid 'direct from the may be differently stocked for different voyages, on board' makes a good line in a Company's cow,' kept sweet in the refrigerator. A milch cow influenced by the time of year and the proba- advertisement, and is calculated to attract those bilities of a greater or smaller number of pas- who contemplate travelling with a family of In no case is the quantity stated children. But where there are half a thousand exaggerated beyond the actual figures which people, the presence of such an animal must be some vessels' provedore accounts present-pos- soothing rather to the imagination of the milksibly, indeed, falling short of others. It will be drinker, than calculated to affect the quality of the readily understood that the major part of the consumed milk to any appreciable extent. Neversubstances mentioned are for the use of the first-theless, a cow is attached to most passenger steamboats. One thousand pounds of tea and eighteen class passengers; since those which have been hundred pounds of coffee, sweetened with eight selected at hazard as illustrative of the subject, thousand pounds of sugar, are comfortable items are rather such as indicate the luxurious pro- for those who relish the cheering cup; while fusion and completeness of arrangements, than twenty thousand gallons of fresh water, brought what may be termed the necessaries of equipment. from the shore, and stored in huge tanks in the

sengers.

A large quantity of rum was carried until recently in every vessel, rations of that spirit being served out to the ship's company daily, Then what an epitome of wealth must a wellas agreed upon in the articles. This custom has found, well-freighted ship be, as she ploughs her lately been abolished in most of the mercantile way through the waters, exclusive of her priceless marine services, with great advantage both to cargo of human lives, or even the possible treathe owners and their employés. But though sures in specie and diamonds of her bullion-room mercantile marine Jack's grog is stopped, he cannot to mention the mails which most of them still enjoy his 'baccy, and half a ton of the pleasant weed is recognised as part of the outfit before sailing from dock.

more; and that there are some thousands of tons of precious merchandise, baggage, and coal aboard, her provedore stores, about which we have been wondering, seem but a small matter after all!

THE HELODER M.

A VENOMOUS LIZARD.

these grooved teeth are, so to speak, the direct channels for the introduction of a deadly secretion limited to their appendages, as is the case with a snake, or whether they simply effect inoculation of a poisonous matter, disseminated throughout the general saliva or mucus of the mouth by the mere wound they inflict, in the same way that a mad dog communicates hydrophobia by its bite-a process which resembles that of a lancet procuring the absorption of vaccine fluid by its scratch, while the ordinary bite of a venomous snake is rather to be compared to the action of a hypodermic syringe. It is worthy of note, as bearing out both this possibility and the inconsistent character of the heloderm, that it has glands in the lower as well as in the upper jaw.

SOME time ago a box containing a lizard was sent to the London Zoological Gardens, and on the lid was written: The bite of this animal is not poisonous.' One can well imagine that this information was looked upon as doubly superfluous when the inmate was disclosed, seeing that lizards have always been held as harmless creatures. It was handled freely by those present, and examined with a good deal of attention; for the species was new, and no description of it was It will be very interesting to learn the natural to be found in the standard works of reference; food of this creature, and such knowledge will and when at last conveyed to the Reptilium, it probably give us a solution of the mystery-Why was taken by the keeper and thrust into a den is it, and not the other members of the lizard tribe, with little ceremony or precaution. Big lizards venomous ? Nature bestows nothing wantonly, of all kinds, however, can inflict nasty bites, and and there must be a reason for the heloderm's are usually ready to do so when first received; possession of such a secretion-some function of a propensity well recognised by practical natu- vital import to the possessor. Poisonous snakes ralists, who soon acquire a knack of handling are so provided, not as many people imagine animals without risk. Furthermore, the creature to enable them to go about doing mischief, was lethargic from cold and the effects of its long sea-voyage; possibly, also, from want of food, for it had eaten nothing since it left its native land, Mexico. Luckily, therefore, the lizard did not afford a demonstration of those terrible powers with which it is endowed, before its true nature was recognised. But when Dr Günther, the chief of the Zoological Department at the British Museum, and the best authority on reptiles at the present day, to whom the lizard was submitted for classification, had examined its mouth, he at once pronounced it to be dangerous; and all doubts vanished from the minds of the most incredulous when a frog and a guinea-pig were bitten in quick succession; the former being killed almost instantaneously, while the latter was dead in three minutes.

Heloderma horridum is the technical name which has been bestowed on this lethal saurian. For simplicity's sake we will call it the heloderm. It is a handsome creature, and its general hue and appearance strike the attention at once: rather over a foot in length, with a body as thick as a man's wrist; the ground colour a warm pale yellow, covered with a network pattern of dark brownish lines; the tail large, stumpy, and encircled with double rings; muzzle, black. At first it refused grapes, banana, lettuce, carrot, minced meat, cockroaches, frogs, lizards, slowworms, mice and rats, all of which were tendered to it for food; it, however, devoured a couple of eggs. Harmless as all other lizards are supposed to be, the mouth of the heloderm reveals a dental arrangement totally at variance with all one's preconceived ideas, every tooth appearing to be grooved as in the case of the fangs of poisonous serpents. Furthermore, this irreconcilable lizard holds on to its victim, and works its jaws fiercely and continuously after they are buried in the flesh, as though sending an abundant flow of venomous saliva into the body; thus departing from all rule of procedure among veneniferous serpents on like occasions.

It remains to be seen, however, whether

but for the simple purpose of obtaining food. Destitute of the constrictive power which distinguishes boas and pythons, they would be no match for the animals which constitute their natural prey, were it not for their venom. But what can a creature, having teeth to bite with, claws to seize and tear with, agility for pursuit, and, it may be, a prehensile tongue, want this extra and seemingly superfluous ammunition for? In other words, upon what has it been intended to feed, to demand such weapons of offence? Certainly, one would say, not upon eggs, fruit, or cabbages, like the iguana; and we find it apparently as perfectly adapted for catching and slaying small mammals and birds as are many undoubtedly harmless lizards of a similar size and forma

tion.

may

It be that it will be found to prey upon some powerful animal that requires great holding-power to retain, and which may probably be cold-blooded animals such as snakes. When a venomous serpent which feeds on birds or rats attacks, it strikes a sudden blow, and withdraws. The victim may stagger or flutter away, but is bound to fall within a short distance, where it can be followed and eaten at leisure. But those which devour their own kind, like the coral-snake and hamadryad, seize the serpents which form their meals, and do not again relinquish them-much as our common grass-snake deals with a frog. The reason for this is evident: the poison takes effect so much more slowly in a cold-blooded animal, owing to its defective organisation, and consequent tardiness of the vital processes, that the bitten snake might escape too far to be retrieved if released before it died.

The Indians in Central Mexico are said to pay a superstitious reverence to the heloderm, and to worship it as the incarnation of one of their deities The writer heard there-the legend obtains much farther south-of a lizard which fights with all venomous snakes from 'antipathy and other disinterested motives whenever it comes across