principal food of man." So M. Hayet gets sweet
acorns, roasts them, honestly confesses to them,
and says that, although the aroma and stimulating
power of his coffee is less marked than that of
the colonial article, it is more permanent. "It
is," he goes on to tell the purchasing world, "by
studying the effects of this new aliment, that we
have been able to demonstrate that its daily use
regulates the natural functions, restores the
health and plumpness of persons weakened by
long illness or excessive labour, reanimates the
strength of debilitated children and weakened
systems." This delight of the breakfast-table
costs only tenpence a pound.

Will the schoolboy who throws his orange-
peel into the road (unless he certifies to the
excellence of his school appetite by eating it) be
kind enough to remember that there are people
who think it worth while to go all the way to the
West Indies for collections of waste orange-peel
to be shipped thence in casks for England? It
will be considerate in him to keep his orange-
peel in his pocket, and look out when he
walks abroad for the sort of man who buys that
article. In China they make paper of bamboo.
Couldn't the schoolboys in a body agitate till
they persuaded somebody that he might realise a
fortune by building a mill for the manufacture of
paper from schoolmasters' canes. Limitation of
supply is not usually found to check the sanguine
expectations of a speculator in some new material.
Paper can be made also of blocks of wood; for
which purpose, however, it would be illegal to
sell the heads of the schoolmasters who use the
canes. Wood in the log, or in bark, has only to
be divided into fibre, and Mr. Robertson, at the
Albion Foundry, Hobart Town, has found a short
way of doing this. He puts the wood into a
cannon, of which he then plugs up the mouth.
Into the closed cannon, through the touch-hole,
he forces high-pressure steam. It penetrates
between the fibres of the wood, and at last, when
the pressure has reached a certain point, blows
out the plug and the wood after it, the wood rent
into a wool. One of the best of the hundreds of
plants that will yield fibre to the paper-maker is
the stinging-nettle, and it is greatly to be wished
that the paper-makers would send people about
the country to pull up the stinging-nettles that
are so much in the way of those who go black-
berrying or gather roses by the wayside. We
should be glad, also, if Mr. Simmonds would
point out that it is worth somebody's while to
gather the thorns off the brambles. Could they
not be introduced as a moral sort of stuffing to
the chairs in the government offices, whereof
the waste-paper that is actually sold fetches
seven thousand a year, and the waste-paper with
which seven times seven thousand unlucky
correspondents are sold, is diffused north, south,
east, and west by the post-office.

Proud to have hit upon something for which
Mr. Simmonds, great in all histories of the economical-
convertible, has not discovered a suggested
use, here we break off—triumphant. Having
fairly put ourselves above the author, we can
afford to give a patronising nod at parting to the
book from which we have got every syllable of
the information herein given, and might have got
:housands of syllables more.

THE DUCHESS VERONICA.

IN EIGHT CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER Vll. NEW YEAR'S DAY AT VILLA SALVIATI.

IT is New Year's morning in Villa Salviati, the
greatest holiday of the year. What Christmas-
day has always been among us in England, the
first day of the year has been, and is still, among
the nations of continental Europe. Then friendly
ties are reknit, and presents and remembrances of
all sorts are flying about in every direction. Then,
among Roman Catholic communities, it is not
only the first day of the year, but the first day of
Carnival also; the period, more or less long,
according to the fall of Easter, from the beginning
of the year till the beginning of Lent, into
which the social and religious habits and
observances of Romish Christendom prescribe, that
all the junketing, the feasting, the dancing, the
pomp-and-vanity worshipping, and dissipation of
the year shall be concentrated. The theory of
carnival keeping is, that Momus, leading forth
his gay procession of votaries on the first day of
his reign in joyous, yet moderate and orderly
mirth and jollity, continually beats the measure
of his mad dance quicker and quicker, as the
pleasure weeks of the year slip on, until with a
"sempre crescendo" movement, and grand finale
crash, he brings them, in headlong career of
frantic fun and universal licence, suddenly to a
dead full stop on the sombre threshold of lenten-
tide, which neither he nor his crew may pass.
Sharply the mad revellers are pulled up on their
haunches. At mystic toll of bell in the small
hours of that last night of revelry, sudden as the
change in a phantasmagoria, the scene is shifted.
The dancing mimes vanish; the preaching friars
come in. Feasting is changed to fasting.
Pomatum and powder give place to ashes and
cowls. The world has had its fling. Now
Heaven must have its turn. What has been
done amiss according to rule and fashion, must
now according to rule and fashion be wiped out
by due penitential application, and all made
straight. This is the orthodox theory and
practice of carnival and lenten-tide.

But Mother Church takes a part also in
inaugurating the holiday season. The festival of
the New Year commences with full-dress Church
ceremonials, and ends with equally, but not more,
full-dress balls. A great gathering at the palace,
of magnificently embroidered coats, grand
powdered perukes, jewelled stars, and crosses, collars
and buckles, with more or less noble homunculi
within or beneath them! Then all the duke's
horses and all the duke's men, and the serenest
of highnesses himself, and all the court ladies,
and all the court gentlemen, proceed in great
state to the cathedral, and are received there by