skins are taken for Germany and for the caps
of our Grenadier Guards. Next to the
Russians, the Greeks and Turks are the most
costly purchasers. The trade in this country
for beaver skins is all but annihilated, owing
to the universal substitution of silk hats for
those made of the former.

The use of furs has been for many years
on the decline in this country, and even such
as are still in demand for muffs, boas, and so
forth, owe their origin to English rabbits,
more frequently than to animals of the
American wilds. The Lord Mayor, Aldermen
and Common Councilmen of London, as
well as the Sheriffs, have their robes and
gowns trimmed with the fur of the sable or
marten according to their respective ranks.
In like manner, the state robes of the
nobility and majesty are lined with ermine, one
of the most costly of furs.

Of the antiquity of the use of furs, as an
article of dress, there is ample proof, although
it is not so many centuries since the better
kinds, as at present known, were very rare
and costly. In the account handed down to
us of the wardrobe of Edward the First, no
mention is made of any furs but those of the
goat and the lamb. The importation of foreign
skins became a matter of some importance
very shortly after this period; doubtless the
profession of skinner or furrier must have
been, even in those days, a very lucrative one,
for we read that in the reign of Edward the
Third, Thomas Legge or Legget, a skinner,
and then Lord Mayor of London, whose
descendants have since become Earls of
Dartmouth, was so exceedingly rich, that he lent
the king three hundred pounds to aid his
majesty in carrying on the war against the
French.

At a very remote period, fairs were
appointed to be held at Winchester, St. Botolph,
Stamford, and St. Ives, for the sale of furs.
Various statutes have been passed by different
monarchs, from Edward the Third to
Henry the Eighth, regulating the use of furs
of several kinds by particular classes. One of
the oldest of these confines the use of furs
of all kinds, " to the Royal family, and the
prelates, earls, barons, knights, and people of
Holy Church, who might expend by the
year one hundred pounds of their benefices
at the least."

In the reign of the last Henry a law was
passed forbidding the use of the sable to any
below the rank of Earl; and it is certain that,
up to the reign of Elizabeth, but few of the
gentry wore any richer furs than those of the
rabbit. On the Continent, at no more remote
period than in the seventeenth century, laws
were in existence on the same subject; the
use of the costly sable being there confined
to kings and princes only.

In connection with this subject there is a
story which deserves mention, however much
it may be scouted by the lovers of fairy tales
and the romance of childhood. We ourselves
would wish to disbelieve it ; but it reads,
nevertheless, very like fact. In the tale of
Cinderella, the maiden is represented as
putting on a pair of glass slippers, in which
to dance at a ball ; indeed, the main interest
of the story hinges at length in these same
slippers of glass. To spoil all this pretty
romance, the antiquarian steps in with his
musty parchments and assures us that we are
quite mistaken in our version of the story,
which is of French origin, and that the
blunder of an ignorant translator has caused
the error. The slippers were really of sable
fur, and the French for sable being vair was
mistaken for verre — glass, and hence the
blunder. The same learned authority tells
us that whilst the slippers being of glass had
no meaning, their having been composed of
sable carried a real significance, inasmuch as
the use of that costly fur being then confined
to princes of royal blood, the fairy intended
by this to endow Cinderella with an importance
in the eyes of the Prince that could not
be mistaken. I shall be, however, much
mistaken if the English nation does not stoutly
adhere to the glass version of our beloved
Cinderella, repudiating all antiquarian
interpretations and translations of every kind, for
generations yet to come.

CHIPS.
THE ANTECEDENTS OF AUSTRALIA.

TRANSPORTATION of criminals to the
American colonies having ceased from the
commencement of the war of independence, the
jails in England were soon overflowing with
criminals and reeking with disease. The
Government therefore determined, upon the
favourable representations of Captain Cook,
to form a penal settlement upon that portion
of the eastern coast of New Holland that
had been named by him New South Wales.
There he had discovered Botany Bay, so
named by Banks and Solander — the naturalists
who had accompanied Cook — from the
abundance and variety of its then unknown
productions. A few miles to the northward
of Botany Bay he had named a magnificent
inlet of the ocean Port Jackson; which
now forms the harbour of Sydney — in
beauty and extent second only to that of Rio
Janeiro.

No time was lost in carrying the new
scheme into operation. Captain Phillips was
selected to take charge of the expedition
and to superintend the formation of the penal
colony. He sailed from England in May,
seventeen hundred and eighty-seven, and in
January of the following year landed at Port
Jackson with seven hundred and fifty-seven
convicts.

From this small beginning have sprung, at
various intervals, the colonies of Australia and
Van Dieman's Land. It was only in eighteen
hundred and thirty-five, that Governor Sir R.