5S 



JOUENAL OF HOETICULTUKE AND COTTAGE GABDEXEE. 



[ July 18, 1872. 



tificates ; from Mr. Turner. Slough, fine Carnations and Pieotees 

 — of the latter Edith Dornbrain, Ethel, and Mrs. Allcroft had 

 first-class certificates; — and Mr. Norman, Plumstead, and Mr. 

 Hooper, Widcombe, Bath, had similar exhibitions. Messrs. 

 Downie & Co. had a first-class certificate for Silver Tricolor 

 Pelargonium Stanstead Pride ; Messrs. Paul & Son one for Eose 

 S. Beynolds Hole, noticed last week; and Messrs. Curtis & Co., 

 Devon Eoseries, a like award for Eose Bessie Johnson, a blush 

 Hybrid Perpetual. Miss Thomson, 4, Adelaide Eoad, Penge, 

 sent some exquisite button-hole bouquets, entirely composed of 

 out-door flowers. 



AMONG THE MANX MEN.— No. 1. 

 Having mentioned to a friend that I intended passing my 

 month's holiday in the Isle of Man, he wrote forthwith a 

 fierce remonstrance; depicted the dangers of the Irish Channel ; 

 believed the men, if not the women, had three legs ; knew a 

 reply to a letter could not be had under four days, and finally 

 made this quotation — 



" "When Sathane tryed his arts in vaine 

 Ye worship of our Lorde to gaine," 



kingdoms of the earth" the 



he reserved from his offer of the ' 

 Isle of Man, for he said, 



" That is a place I cannot spare, 

 For all any choicest friends are there." 



However, this confirmed instead of deterring me, 

 for I have not forgotten my school-da3's' adage, " It 

 is right to be taught by your enemies," and I re- 

 solved to learn how Satan's "choicest friends" 

 managed without poor-rates and turnpikes. So 

 hither I journeyed, and assure your readers, if you 

 permit my vagrant notes to appear in your columns, 

 that if the Manxites are Satan's " selecta eprofanis," 

 they and their habitation are agreeable rather than 

 otherwise. 



Beginning at the beginning — and what is news to 

 to myself I always fancy must be news to others — 

 it is to be observed that the maiden lady who might 

 truly have sung 



" Alas ! I am now forty-three," 



was quite on the wrong path when her hopes revived 

 at the prospect of sojourning in the " Isle of Man," 

 for the name has no allusion either to the number 

 or superiority of its male population, but is merely 

 a derivation from the Scandinavian Mon, isolated. 



" 'Tis Mona, the lone, where the silver mist gathers, 

 Pale shroud whence our - wizard chief watches unseen 

 O'er the breezy, the bright, the lov'd home of my fathers ; 

 Oh ! Mairnin ! my graih my ehree ! Mannin veg veen." 



Mannin is the Manx name of the island. Strange is it that 

 its language is so distinct from our own, and stranger still 

 that it is possible now within twenty-four hours to hear our 

 fellow islanders speaking four languages differing from our 

 own. Thus, the day I arrived here was Thursday, and in 

 Gaelic it is called JJir-daoine ; in Welch, Did-Jau ; in Irish, 

 Dia-dardom ; and in Manx, Jerdein. This last is the softest- 

 sounding of the five, and the same characteristic is applicable 

 to the island climate. 



When I turn my eyes to the window of the room in which I 

 am writing, I look over a garden in which are large standards 

 of Fuchsia coccinea, and a scarlet Geranium that has lived 

 unprotected through six winters. This is not surprising when 

 you know that I am near the margin of Douglas Bay, and that 

 the temperature near the sea is always from 2° to 4° warmer 

 than even two miles inland, and even there the mean tempera- 

 ture of spring is 44° 7' ; of summer, 56° 17' ; of autumn, 

 49° 97' ; and of winter, 40° 9'. At Castletown the Crocuses 

 are in flower several weeks earlier than at Ballasalla, only two 

 miles from it, but inland. Another proof of the climate's 

 mildness is that Apples, large and eatable, were in the market 

 in the first week of this month. In 1805, a cartload of vege- 

 tables brought to that market was crowded round as a prodigy, 

 but they are now abundant there, and of excellent quality. I 

 see that Mona's Pride Kidney Potato was in one of the prize- 

 taking collections at the Birmingham Exhibition, and there 

 was in the market here a basket of it — they were the fairest, 

 finest, early tubers I ever saw. Another sight quite new and 

 attractive to me were the sellers of butter and eggs ; there 

 must have been sixty respectably-dressed countrywomen — I 

 counted forty — arranged in two parallel rows, between which 

 the purchasers passed. Each woman had a basket of butter, 



and another of eggs, new-laid, fourteen for Is., and all large, 

 none of the minikin Cochin productions. 



I observe the mongrel breeds of fowls — for even the Eumpies 

 are mongrels — are all large, mixtures of many sorts probably, 

 but evidencing very strongly that the Spanish and the Dorking 

 were among their forefathers. I have seen it stated that the 

 eggs of the Eumpies differ in shape from those laid by other 

 varieties, but I have ascertained it is not a fact; at least, the 

 mongrel Eumpies lay eggs of the normal shape, and I fancy 

 that no one ever saw an egg of a pure Eumpie. Some of those 

 which I have seen are double-combed, and like large Silver- 

 pencilled Hamburghs without a tail ; but others are single- 

 combed, black-feathered, and white-lobed, evidences of Spanish 

 kindred ; and a third specimen was unmistakably descended 

 through one parent from the Golden-spangled Hamburgh with 

 the addition of a coloured top-knot. This tail-less variety is 

 common not only in this island, but in all the Hebrides, but I 

 know not its normal plumage. 



It would puzzle naturalists to explain why tail-less fowls and 

 tail-less cats should prevail here and not elsewhere in the 

 British Islands. Tradition, however, may save naturalists being 

 foolishly imaginative, at least, so far as regards the cats. A 

 beautiful specimen is on the wall of the garden near me, and I 

 will supply you with a portrait, not of her, but of one very 



similar. Manx cats, called here sometimes Eumpies, and 

 at other times Stublins, if of high degree — the feline blue- 

 bloods, which are wild, have not even the rudiment of a tail. 

 One tradition is that they are hybrids, the parents being a 

 common cat and a rabbit. This tradition may have been sug- 

 gested by the hind legs of the Manx cats being longer than 

 those of the common eat, raising the rump somewhat after the 

 mode of a rabbit. At all events they have none of the habits 

 of the rabbit, for they are good mousers and "wiU mew." 

 Another tradition, probably nearer the truth, is that the ori- 

 ginals were from one of the ships of the Spanish armada de- 

 stroyed on the coast. We know of the intercourse the Spaniards 

 then had with India, and we also know that there — namely, in 

 Burmah and the Malay Archipelago, there is a s imil ar breed 

 of tail-less cats. 



As they differ from us Englishers in these zoological pro- 

 ductions, so do these Manx men differ from us in many of 

 their customs — customs of bygone ages linger here. 



The day after I landed was Midsummer-day, and therefore 

 St. John's-day of the Old Style ; and information was given 

 me that it was " Promulgation-day," the meaning of which 

 was as much hidden from me as it would be, if unexplained, 

 from most of your readers. The Manx men have their House 

 of Parliament, but called the " House of Keys," a suggestive 

 name, for its members pass laws for the locking-up of the 

 persons of the islanders and unlocking their treasures. In 

 days " long, long ago," the " House " promulgated the laws 

 passed during each year by reading them to the people assembled 

 round Tynwald Hill on St. John's-day, a day probably se- 

 lected because it is in a season usually fine-weathered. Now, 

 Thyngwall means a popular assembly on a bank, and that 

 bank is now near Douglas, is a terraced turf-covered mound — 

 I send you a drawing of it — and there I saw thousands of 

 holiday-niakers professedly assembled to hear the law promul- 



