Novembeb 18. 
THE COTTAGE GAEDENER. 
119 
MSS.), Contributions to the Fauna of Forfarshire; also, 
additions to the Flora of the County, embracing those 
Plants not recorded in Mr. Gardiner’s “Flora” (now 
out of print), as well as additional localities, &c., for 
the rarer species. In this department assistance is 
invited from local naturalists, whose contributions of 
facts will be duly acknowledged in the work. Commu¬ 
nications may be addressed to Mr. Lawson, 7, Hill 
Square, Edinburgh. 
It is too usual to turn from Bahhits as profitless 
animals, and to associate them with the remembrance 
of various unsavoury smells. Both these arise from mis¬ 
management, for we know of instances where they were 
most profitably kept; the yard in which they were was 
perfectly unoffending, and their manure was the best 
fertiliser of the adjoining garden. That the breeding 
of rabbits might be made still more remunerative we 
have no doubt, for the consumption of them is very 
large, and the importation from Ostend so extensive, 
that a deputation from the poultry trade recently stated 
to our government, that the traffic in rabbits from that 
port finds employment for from 180,000 to 200,000 
persons. 
Very recently has been published two very unpre¬ 
tending volumes by Andrew Hamilton, Esq., entitled 
^'Sixteen Months in the Danish Isles." We shall only 
give from them two short quotations, adding the assur¬ 
ance to our readers, that they will find the work one of 
the most amusing that has been published this year;— 
“ From the cemetery, the road goes at once into the 
country. ’Tis a pleasing change, partly, perhaps, because 
not a sudden one, to come from tlie burying-ground to the 
fields where they are sowing the grain for autumn’s harvest. 
There are plenty of nice land-like farms in the immediate 
neighbourhood of the metropolis; large comfortable esta¬ 
blishments, with apparatus fit for laying in provision of all 
kinds for the longest winter at a hundred leagues from any 
town, yet they have the chief town at the very door. And 
now liusbandmen marched o’er the furrows, and scattered 
their precious seed, in the dull bleak afternoon of a cold 
spring day, when it needed some faith to believe that the 
season of budding and blossoming was at hand. But in the 
trees and about the grass there was now a tendency to burst 
forth and shoot, that gave notice the time of earth’s verdure 
was about to return. Spring is the time when the sower 
soweth his seed; it happens also to be the time when most 
human bodies are laid in earth. The fates of the two are 
wonderfully similar. As I leaned over tho paling and 
looked at the husbandman’s field, I knew that, in a few 
months, the seeds he planted there would have burst forth, 
rencw'ed and multiplied, and that tho scene, by the blessing 
of Heaven, would be one of redundant life and lieauty. 
And when I turned my head towards the dead wall I had 
lately passed, and thought of the more dead enclosure 
within, I knew that there also, one day, would lie a similar 
scene of revivification, even ‘ there,’ as Bishop Taylor saith, 
‘ where the field of God is sown with the seeds of the re- 
suirection.’ ” 
“ Harvest was all past save the fruit harvest. This year 
there happened to be an unusual abundance of apples and 
pears, but the quality was inferior. The season had, on the 
whole, not been genial enough to ripen the fruit; but tho 
spring had been peculiarly favourable to its formation, and 
the quantity \vas quite prodigious. Owing to these two cir¬ 
cumstances, many people did not think it worth while to 
gather theh fruit at all; they took as much as they might 
be likely to want, and allowed the rest to rot. In many of 
the gardens and orchards of our neighbours, we trod on 
walks covered with fallen apples,—a not very desirable or 
dry kind of gravel. The plenty was so enormous, I did not 
wonder at people becoming hopeless of ever housing it, or j 
using it if they did. And it appeared that there \Yas no i 
market for so much fruit in Copenhagen. j 
“ There was no such scene in the garden-walks of my j 
host, who considered it as a despising of God’s gifts to take 1 
no pains to reap the kindly fruits of the earth. Whatever 
might eventually be their fate, they were meantime to be 
husbanded. 
“ For many days, nay, for weeks, there was no cessation 
in the plucking, bearing in-doors, and stowing away of 
apples. The trees in the garden were, many of them, in¬ 
habited by one or tw'O human beings, busy from morning to 
night, filhng large baskets. Two men did nothing but carry 
the fruit to the house. Many times did I marvel at that 
constant caiTying. Come down stairs when one would, and 
look through the window whatever time it chanced to occur 
to one, it was impossible to fail seeing the same two men 
marching from the garden-gate across the court-yard to a 
door on the other side, and bearing between them the same 
large hamper piled high with apples. It was as if the men, 
on reaching their destination, were transported back to go 
over the same ground again. I used to think it must be a 
pastime the mansion owners got up for their guest’s amuse¬ 
ment, or that it took place by enchantment. I remembered 
the American superstition of Jumbieback,—the evil spirit 
who assumed the form of a vast plain or prauie. When 
travellers essayed to cross the seeming muirland, he allowed 
them to get on very well during the day, but at night, when 
they stuck up their tents, he would give a quiet hitch, and 
transport them back to the self-same spot they had left in 
tho morning, so that they might traverse the treacherous 
prairie till the day of their death, and never advance one 
step. I was ready to think my two apple-bearers had got 
upon Jimibieback. 
“ Up, above the highest floor of the mansion, it seemed 
there was a series of attics which were used as store-rooms. 
There, one of the ladies presided for many days over the 
disposition of the fruit, until she announced that she 
abhorred even the smell of apples. 
“ Tliere was proportionally a like plenty of pears which 
wei’e the only fruit we thought worthy of being eaten. In 
the forenoon ^d in the evening, we used to consume them 
as heartily as we could ; but we made little progress. Each 
day saw large loads afresh brought in; so we fell upon a 
clever plan. In tho morning, when we took our walks, it 
was resolved to bear a moderate-sized basket filled with ripe 
pears for distribution amojig such of our humbler neigh¬ 
bours as we might meet, or whose cottages we might pass. 
I carried the basket, but when a cottager hove in sight, I 
delivered it to one of the ladies, knowing that she could 
dispense its contents more wisely than I, and that they 
would be more welcome from her hand. In the com'se of 
our round, of whatever length it might be, we always con¬ 
trived to empty our basket. 'The attention on the part of 
the gracious Misses was evidently very well received by their 
dependents. 'The first morning of this arrangement, we 
met, not far from the gates, a large-built pieasant girl. 
“ AVill you have some pears ? ” quoth one of the ladies, 
taking the basket from me, and emptying a good share of 
its contents into the apron that was at once held out to 
receive them. The gul spake not a word; but when she 
had bundled up her apron again about the fruit, witli a 
somewhat theatrical air, as if her gratitude was too great for 
language, she seized the lady by the ana with her large fist, 
so that I thought she was going to put Miss’s hand into her 
mouth ; but it tmaied out she was only going to imprint a 
kiss on it, after which she went on her way. 
“ One Sunday, when we drove across to afternoon seiwice 
at the parish church, owing to some error of the clocks, it 
turned out we had come neiuly an hour too early. Tho 
clergyman had not yet arrived from his annexed chm’ch, at 
which he had been performing nronring service. Coachman 
was bid to put up the horses, while the Majoress asked me 
whether I would accomparry her and her famUy to call upon 
the pastor’s wife; I acceded. 
“ In stepping through the garden, I was made aware of 
the peculiarity in the good lady we were going to see, that, 
in spite of apparent perfect prosperity, and the absence of 
all outward calamity, she nevertheless found the world go 
evermore grievoirsly against her, arrd her lot full of crooks. 
