SEEDLING TREES. 
143 
shut on it like dyke-water. There was great robber}' going on ; 
there was a stone of plum cake — it was rather heavy, but not 
bad — and we found a skepful of the pieces under the table ; so 
the waiters and me, we got some flour and seme [lard], and 
made a cake and had our tea. They’d take a quarter of a pound 
of tea and a pound of sugar, and hafe a pound of butter ; and I 
said, ‘ They shan’t have no more tea.’ And all the gleaning 
time they’d call after me, ‘ Queen ! queen ! when are we to have 
our tea?’ Audi said, ‘You may buy it for yourselves. I’ll 
never ask for a penny for it.’ ” 
The old queen’s /«£s were lower than her successor’s — a half- 
penny for women and nothing for children. 
I think I must add what this old lady told me about herself, 
apart from her official capacity. Words like hers need no com- 
ment in their suggestion of courage and force, with a great 
pathos lying underneath : — “ I’ve been a woman, I can tell ye, 
though I say it myself. I’ve done a man’s work. I’ve worked 
wi’ horse power and wi’ machine power, an’ the wind blew my 
petticoats round. I was like a man.” She told me, too, of her 
“beautiful rosemary,” which she had been so proud of ; the 
rosemary which “ gentlemen would stop and ask me for a bit 
of ; for it grew like lelock [lilac] ” ; the rosemary which grew in 
the ‘ odd place ’ (place to itself), where she had lived in the 
old working days. 
E. H. Hickey. 
SEED*"-ING TREES. 
MONGST the rrymy interesting subjects for study which 
may be taken up by. young people living in the country, 
hardly anything is more delightful than collecting and 
drying seedling trees. Let us go for a ramble in the 
woods and see what can be found 
in this month of July. 
Under the beech trees we shall 
soon light upon the beech-nuts of 
last year, coming up through the 
moist rotting soil in the form of 
two broad green leaves called co- 
tyledons. As they often retain the 
dry three-cornered husk upon 
them for a time, we can easily 
see that they are young Beeches, 
otherwise, as the two first leaves 
are so unlike the perfect form, it 
might be rather difficult to name 
our specimens. 
A little stalk grows up from young befxh. 
between the cotyledons, crowned 
with two perfect young beech leaves, and this is all the baby tree- 
can do the first year. In autumn the leaves drop off, and the 
