But all

from London, I was furnished, by the bank of Prince Torlonia, with a very warm and complimentary letter of introduction to Passavant of Basle, in case I might fall short of money on my way home; and Prince Canino (Charles Bonaparte), whom I accidentally met in Genoa, gave me another of the same tenour. would not do. I only wanted 12., which, with what I had by me, would have enabled me to reach Cologne, where I could have got any supply of money from the good landlord of the Hôtel du Rhin. Passavant, to whom I had presented the two letters, and to whom I had given a full account of the unfortunate shipwreck, could not possibly comprehend how I could have the temerity to travel without a regular letter of credit. I offered him my draught on Denison of London. He refused to take it. Would he accept my watch worth forty guineas, in pledge, till my bill should be honoured? No. He looked at me, and then at the letters, and then at me again; and said there was something equivocal in the one from Prince Torlonia's bank. He would not advance me a single sous. On making my

retiring bow, I told him that, as I was in the

habit of writing occasionally on natural history, I would make honourable mention of his great liberality in my next publication, and that, in the meantime, I would send Torlonia a full account of our interview.

*

I should have stuck fast for money in Basle, had not Lord Brougham's brother (William Brougham, Esq.) luckily arrived in the town that very day. He immediately advanced me an ample supply.

All went well after this, until we reached Aix-la-Chapelle. Here, an act of rashness on my part caused a serious diminution in the family. A long journey, and wet weather, had tended to soil the plumage of the little owls; and I deemed it necessary, that they, as well as their master, should have the benefit of a warm bath. Five of them died of cold the same night. A sixth got its thigh broke, I don't know how; and a seventh breathed its last, without any previous symptoms of indisposition, about a fortnight after we had arrived at Walton Hall.

The remaining five have surmounted all ca

* Prince Torlonia, on receiving my letter, made Passavant smart severely for his conduct.

sualties, having been well taken care of for eight months. On the 10th of May, in the year of our Lord 1842, there being abundance of snails, slugs, and beetles on the ground, I released them from their long confinement.

Just opposite to the flower-garden, there is a dense plantation of spruce fir trees. Under these, at intervals, by way of greater security, I placed the separated parts of two dozen newly killed rabbits, as a temporary supply of food; and at 7 o'clock in the evening, the weather being serene and warm, I opened the door of the cage. The five owls stepped out to try their fortunes in this wicked world. As they retired into the adjacent thicket, I bade them be of good heart; and although the whole world was now open to them, "where to choose their place of residence," I said, if they would stop in my park, I would be glad of their company; and would always be a friend and benefactor to them.

THE POWERS OF VEGETATION.

IN those good days of old, when there were no corn-factors in England to counteract that part of our Redeemer's prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread," by hoarding up vast stores of grain, until mouldiness and vermin have rendered it unfit for the use of man, there' stood at Walton Hall a water-mill, for the interest of the proprietor and the good of the country round. Time, the great annihilator of all human inventions, saving taxation and the national debt, laid this fabric low in ruins some sixty years ago; and nothing now remains to show the place where it once stood except a massive millstone, which measures full 17 ft. in circumference. The ground where the mill stood having been converted into meadow, this stone lay there unnoticed and unknown (save by the passing hay-maker) from the period of the mill's dissolution to the autumn of the year 1813, when one of our nut-eating wild animals, probably by way of a winter store, deposited a few nuts under its protecting cover. In the

course of the following summer, a single nut having escaped the teeth of the destroyer, sent up its verdant shoot through the hole in the centre of the procumbent millstone.

One day I pointed out this rising tree to a gentleman who was standing by; and I said, "If this young plant escape destruction, some time or other it will support the millstone, and raise it from the ground." He seemed to doubt this.

In order, however, that the plant might have a fair chance of success, I directed that it should be defended from accident and harm by means of a wooden paling. Year after year it increased in size and beauty; and when its expansion had entirely filled the hole in the centre of the millstone, it gradually began to raise up the millstone itself from the seat of its long repose. This huge mass of stone is now 8 in. above the ground, and is entirely supported by the stem of the nut tree, which has risen to the height of 25 ft. and bears excellent fruit.

Strangers often inspect this original curiosity. When I meet a visitor whose mild physiognomy informs me that his soul is proof against the stormy winds of politics, which now-a-days