the flexibility of the extremely delicate
cartilaginous spinal column— nowhere an inch
thick— would cause its manner of progression
to be very like that of a serpent.

The greatest wonders of the deep are almost
hidden from the eye of man. These meteoric
silver-coated fishes appear to reside in the
depths, and it is only at long intervals, and
after a succession of tempests, that a solitary
individual is sometimes cast upon the shore;
where its delicate body is found torn and
mutilated by the elements, and on the rocks.

Mr. Peach's fish of sixteen feet long, seen at
a distance— swimming as it would swim when
at the surface of the water with its crest and
dorsal fin exposed, its silvery shining sides,
and the long wake left by its peculiar motion
—might, at a distance, be considered, by
surprised eyes, thirty feet in length, or even
more. But, when we remember that the
samples taken on the British shores have
been found in comparatively narrow, shallow,
and cold seas, and were probably but small
and sickly specimens carried against their
will out of the depths of their own oceans, in
warmer climes, we may easily conceive that
others of the kind very much larger may be
dwellers there. It is well known that the
backbone of the largest shark becomes a mass
of jelly very soon after putrefaction has
commenced, and we may argue that should
a fish of the kind here mentioned, even ten
times its size, be met with, the vertebræ
would be only seven inches and a half across;
and, being also frailer than the shark's, they
would still sooner perish.

It is an interesting fact that the first
recorded specimen of the fish here roughly
described was found near Land's End, in
Cornwall: and this, the last, near John
O' Groat's, Caithness: the others in places
situated between these extreme points. Thus
they take the range of the whole coast of
Great Britain, washed by the British Channel
and the German Ocean; but hitherto the
appearance of no such creature has been
noticed in Ireland.

     STROLLERS AT DUMBLEDOWNDEARY.

THE strollers. Have not the righteous
powers of law, reform, science, and sectarianism
been directed for centuries against the
strollers? There have been wise Justices in
ruffs, and doublets, and trunk-hose,
determined to put the strollers down, and most
signally failing in so doing, ever since the time
of the Spanish Armada; just as, I dare say,
in the mythic time of San Apollo and all the
gods and goddesses, the great Justice Midas—
for all that he was squire, knight of the shire,
and custos rotulorum— failed in putting the
strollers of his epoch down. Strollers have
been declared rogues and vagabonds by all
sorts of statutes: pulpit thunder and quarter
sessions lightning have been levelled against
them times out of number. No matter; the
strollers have a principle of life in them
stronger than the whole family of Shallows.
Hunted from populous neighbourhoods, and
threatened with all those legal perils which
attend the dire English crime of being
unlicensed, they are surely to be found, after
apparently irretrievable extinguishment, cosily
ensconced in some quiet little village, the
marvel and delight of the unsophisticated, as
they have been for ages.

Here they are, this blessed spring-tide
afternoon, in my dear Dumbledowndeary.
Their wheels have been new tired, some fresh
stitches have been put into the buskin, an
additional inch has been added to the cothurnus,
and some extra dabs have been given to
the scenery; but here in its entirety is the
Thespian waggon at Dumbledowndeary.

Which Dumbledowndeary, I beg to remark,
is thoroughly an out of the way place. One of
our magnates expresses his opinion that it is
left out— at all events, you can't find it in—
many maps of England, and it never rains or
snows at the same time it does in other places.
There is no mint in Dumbledowndeary, no
turnip-radishes, no salad-oil, and there are
very few carrots. There is no lawyer; there was
one some time ago, but he made a most signal
failure of it, and died. There is very little
clergyman; for the incumbent couldn't
make the place out, so he spends his living
of six hundred a year in Hastings, and the
cure of souls is done in job-work by a succession
of clerical nonentities, of whom very little
indeed is seen, between service. There is
never any cholera at Dumbledowndeary, and
seldom any fever, and so little sickness and
few accidents, that our doctor's principal
amputations are confined to the plants in his
greenhouse, and he is fain to eke out his time
by taking photographic portraits, for pure
love of science, of the inhabitants, to their
immense delight: mute inglorious Miltons
coming out under the process and on the
prepared paper, as speaking likenesses, and
"Cromwells, guiltless of their country's blood,"
all generally mild men with sandy whiskers,
appearing beneath the influence of collodion
and iodine, as the most truculent and black-
bearded bravos. We have no crime, and no
immorality (to speak of), and our only regret
is, that more Londoners do not arrive at our
natty railway station; wander in our green
lanes and voiceful woods, fill their eyes with
the delicious prospect of wood and water, and
meadow around them; taste our publicans'
neat wines, and avail themselves of their
commodious stabling, and at last be so
delighted with the place as to buy, build, or
hire houses, and settle in Dumbledowndeary
altogether. But I am afraid that those who
know of and love this queer, pleasant, little
spot, keep the secret to themselves, as those.
Indians do who are aware of the city of gold
in Central America, and tell no stranger, lest
the profane vulgar should step in and spoil it.