1822.] Mr. Ensors Account of a Knife in a Fir-Tree . 515 
Until thou pass the realms of n ight. 
For, mark! if once she meet thine eyes 
The prize is lost:—again she dies. 
Hell’s sovereign thus is willing to incline 
His powerful sceptre to thy song divine. 
ORPHEUS. 
Now let the laurel wreath be bound 
My victorious brows around. 
This triumph well may claim renown : 
Eurydice regained deserves a crown— 
But am 1 sure that by my side 
Attends my steps my blooming bride ? 
[He looks back .] 
EURYDICE. 
Ah me ! that fond impatient glance 
At once hath ruined both our hopes ! 
Again the Furies round me dance: 
Again th 1 infernal portal opes. 
No longer may my feet delay, 
To thee I stretch my arms in vain : 
See how they hurry me away ! 
Farewell, my Orpheus, once again ! 
ORPHEUS. 
Who would impose a law on love ? 
Who would th’ enraptured look reprove, 
Cast by affliction’s ardent eye ? 
But since my joy is turned to woe, 
Again I’ll seek the shades below, 
Again I’ll seek with her to die. 
man’s fist could lie. The conjecture o 
the sawyers was, that the knife had 
been stuck into the bark, and that the 
hole was occasioned by the rotting of 
the handle, as it was enveloped by the 
annual coating of the growing tree. 
Observe, the blade of the knife was 
above six inches within the sound tim¬ 
ber ; this tree, then, must have been a 
long time growing after the knife was 
inserted into it, and after it fell it must 
have lain a considerable time, to admit 
so many feet of peat to accumulate 
over it. 
The blade is rude, thus 
-\ 
11 had four figures, the last but one is de¬ 
faced, or rather wholly obliterated. I can 
have no doubt of tiie truth of the saw¬ 
yers ; they worked many years for me, 
and were, and are, ready to make oath 
of their statement. They have been 
re examined by others, and they have 
no interest to speak falsely. 
George Ensor. 
Ardressi Not. 29, 1821. 
TISIPKONE. 
Not a step more!-—thy tears are vain : 
, Vain are thy prayers, and vain thy 
songs: 
Of thee may well Eurydice complain, 
Who now to our dark realm belongs. 
Stay thy rash steps ! the mad attempt give 
o’er, 
The laws of hell shall never alter more- 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, 
rflHE account of a fawn’s skull in the 
JL wood of an ash tree, mentioned in 
a late Number of your Magazine, re¬ 
minded me of the following extraordi¬ 
nary circumstance: 
Sawyers, of the name of Short, were 
employed to saw a fir-tree, raised from 
a turf hog, or peat moss, as it is else¬ 
where called. The tree was dug up 
six feet below the surface, in the Rev. 
Mr. Steward’s property, in Tyrone, and 
brought to his residence at Grange, near 
Armagh, where the Shorts were em¬ 
ployed to saw it. They proceeded in 
their task, but having advanced about 
half way through the log, the saw was 
arrested. They then turned the log, 
and continued to saw it in the opposite 
direction, when they discovered the 
blade of a knife, in a hols in which a 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, 
A S the Monthly Magazine has long 
jTjL been distinguished as the most 
useful and instructive periodical pub¬ 
lication in Britain, and as papers relat¬ 
ing to the useful arts and comforts ot 
life have perpetually been found to 
give value to its pages, I am embol¬ 
dened to present this communication to 
your notice, to which, if comporting 
with the plan of your work, 1 should 
he obliged if you would give a prompt 
insertion. 
It cannot be far removed from the 
remembrance of any, that the season in 
which the agriculturist usually cuts 
down his com, dries it and then collects 
it into the stack or barn, was this year 
peculiarly unfavourable, being mild 
and rainy; which not only protracted 
the time when these successive opera¬ 
tions would otherwise have been per¬ 
formed, but which afforded those cir¬ 
cumstances in which vegetation is very 
apt to arise; this is actually the case 
with a large proportion of the grain of 
the last harvest—it has grown whilst 
lying on the ground for the purpose of 
drying, as well as in the layered condi 
tion of the crop. 
New 
