pharmacopoeia gives no direction for its administration, for the benefit of those who wish to make trials of 
it, we subjoin the following form : — 
R Spigeliee radicis concisee 1 fe 
Sennae Foliorum jij. 
Aurantii corticis concisi. 
Santonici seminum contus. 
Foeniculi seminum contus. aa 3j. 
Aquae ferventi §xij. 
Macera per horas duas in vase leviter clauso, et cola. — Dose, a wine glassful three times a day on an 
empty stomach. 
This month, says William Howitt, more than all others shows us. 
The continued Frost — a frost that, day after day,and week after week, makes a steady abode with us, 
till the beaten roads become dusty as in summer. It every day penetrates deeper into the earth, and farther 
into our houses; almost verifying the common saying, “January will freeze the pot upon the fire." Our windows 
in the morning are covered with a fine opaque frost-work, resembling the leaves and branches of forest- 
trees, and the water is frozen in the ewer. The fish in ponds, reservoirs, and shallow waters, now suffer 
from their being frozen over, and great numbers perish. In many places you may see them moving under 
the ice, seeking some access to air or food ; in others, firmly embedded in the ice, their bright and silvery 
sides shining through it. In dikes and small streams, or pools, boys have great sport in breaking the ice 
and drawing out these poor frozen creatures. I have seen, on such occasions, eels and other fish of a con- 
siderable size taken out ; and I have seen, too, fishes frozen up in a solid ice, and apparently dead, on being 
gradually thawed, recover their animation. The small birds are hopping, with half-erected feathers, upon 
our door-sills, driven to seek relief from creation’s tyrants by the still more pressing tyranny of cold and 
famine. The destruction of birds, and of all the smaller animals, in a continued frost, is immense, parti- 
cularly if it be accompanied by snow. Snow is a general informer, betraying the footsteps of every crea- 
ture, great and small. The poacher and the gamekeeper are equally on the alert while it lies freshly upon 
the ground, the one to track game, the other vermin ; and thousands of pole-cats, weasels, stoats, rats, otters, 
badgers, and similar little nightly depredators, are traced to their hiding-places in old buildings, banks, and 
hollow trees, and marked for certain destruction. The poacher, particularly on moonlight nights, makes 
havoc with game. Partridges, nestled down in a heap on the stubble, are conspicuous objects ; and 
hares, driven for food to gardens and turnip-fields, are destroyed by hundreds. Wood-pigeons are killed in 
great numbers on cabbage and turnip-fields by day ; in the neighbourhood of large woods, where they 
abound, the farmers’ boys set steel-traps for them in the snow, laying a cabbage-leaf on each trap, to which 
they fly eagerly, and are abundantly captured; and by moonlight they are shot in the trees where they 
roost. Larks frequent stubbles in vast flocks, and are destroyed by gun or net. Immense numbers of these 
delightful songsters are sent, during the winter months, from the neighbourhood of Dunstable to London, 
and may be seen by basketsfull at the poulterers’. When they have congregated in flocks on the approach 
of winter, they arrive in that neighbourhood lean and feeble ; but they soon become strong and in good 
condition, being supposed to pick up fine particles of chalk with their food. They are in season from Mich- 
aelmas to February ; and are not only served up at the inns in that town, by a secret process of cookery, 
in such a manner as to be regarded by travellers as a peculiar luxury, but are thence sent, by a particular 
contrivance of packages, ready dressed to all parts of England. 
There is an account, illustrated by an engraving, in the second volume of Hone’s “Every-Day Book,’’ 
of a singular mode of killing larks, at this season, in some parts of France and England. 
In France they use what is called a miroir, or twirler. This is a piece of mahogany highly polished, 
or a piece of common wood with bits of looking-glass fixed in it. It is fixed on an upright spindle, and 
twirled by pulling a string ; and the larks, as they fly over, seeing the glitter of it, are irresistibly attracted 
by it, hover over it, and are shot in abundance. However frequently shot at, the survivors still are attracted 
by the twirler. Hone’s correspondent says that a friend of his shot six dozen before breakfast, without a 
boy, as is the common plan, to pull the twirler for him; and that it is not only the great amusement of the 
gentlemen in France in winter, but that ladies on fine, dry, frosty mornings, go out in numbers to watch 
this sport; and as many as ten or a dozen parties are, at one time, firing about five hundred yards apart, 
and yet the larks continue coming. 
In England the Dunstable people have a similar invention, which is called a larking-glass, which is 
fixed on a pole and twirled, and the larks come darting down to it in great numbers, and a net is drawn 
over them. Besides great quantities being thus taken, and also morning and evening with trammelling 
nets, others in severe weather are taken by laying a train of corn and chaff in the snow, and placing along 
it a line to which is fastened, at certain intervals, nooses of horse-hair, in which their feet are entangled. 
As if the feathered race did not suffer enough from famine and the severity of the weather, everybody 
seems now up in arms against them. The law, with a spirit of humanity honourable to the nation, is op- 
posed to tracking game in a snow, yet this is a time of peculiar enjoyment to the sportsman. Water-fowl 
are driven from their secluded haunts in meres and marshes to open streams; snipes and woodcocks to 
springs and small runnels ; where they become accessible, and easily found. In towns and villages, every 
mechanic and raw lad is seen marching forth with his gun, to slay his quota of red-wings, field-fares, &c. 
which now become passive from cold and hunger. 
