numerous biographers of that benevolent
man. The time is the year seventeen
hundred and eighty-eight, when George the
Third was king, and Howard thus puts her
story to the then secretary of state for the
home department:—

To the Right Honourable Lord Sydney.

Elizabeth Baker, of the parish of Uffington, in
Berkshire, was committed September 1st, 1785, and
on the 20th of March, 1786, was convicted of felony
for stealing one calf's skin, and sentenced to be
transported for seven years. By a letter from Lord
Sydney, dated 25th November, 1786, she was ordered
to be removed on board the ship Dunkirk, at
Plymouth; but being then ill, and since becoming a
cripple, she still continues in the county gaol at
Exeter. This woman has been married near eighteen
years, has had fifteen children; six are now alive, one
of whom is blind. Her husband, a sober man, works
constantly at his trade in the prison, and has uniformly
declared he will never leave her.

Now, my lord, from the consideration of these
circumstances, I earnestly implore her free pardon.

This petition, I am persuaded, will not be denied
me, as amidst the many objects of distress in prisons
that I have long been conversant with, this, my lord,
is my first application.

                (Signed)                           JOHN HOWARD.
London, Dec. 12, 1787.

This touching story of overpunished crime,
is lying, in John Howard's own manly hand,
before us. After many years' knowledge of
gaols, in almost every country, this was his
first application to the secretary of state in
England. No wonder he was roused. Seven
months elapse between committal and
conviction, and seven years' transportation is
adjudged for what is now only punished
with three months' imprisonment. The incident
of the husband working constantly at
his trade in the prison with his wife,
and his uniformly declaring that he will
never leave her, will bring tears to many
eyes. Was John Howard's application
acceded to? Did Elizabeth Baker return to
Uffington in Berkshire through John
Howard's manly appeal to government in her
behalf? We hope so. Of the six surviving
children some may yet be living, unconscious
of the touching story in their parents' lives,
or of the interest which Howard took in
procuring the free pardon of their mother.

A FEW MORE LEECHES.*

IT appears from a report by M. Souberain
to the French Academy of Medicine, that
some one is trying to do with leeches as
others are trying to do with edible fish—
culture them or nurse them from the embryo. M.
Borne, an inhabitant of St. Arnault, in the
Department of Seine-et-Oise, after long study
succeeded in establishing a regular leech-factory
near his native place. It consists of a sort of
bog, two or three acres in extent, surrounded
by a trench filled with water. M. Borne found
by observation that leeches are wont to deposit
their eggs in small galleries, which they form
in the soft earth on the borders of ponds; and,
accordingly—on the principle sometimes
adopted in society of leading a man by letting
him do what he likes—the experimentalist
formed a number of zig-zag channels reaching
to the edge of the water, and covered them
over with the stiff mud which he had removed.
He found, by observation that leeches are
wont to warm themselves in the sun in winter
and lie in the shade in summer; and, accordingly,
he constructed small earthen
promontories, one facing the south and the
other the north, where they might congregate
as instinct dictated. His mode of feeding
them is this:—He beats a quantity of
blood with switches to separate the fibrin,
which he has found to injure them; he places
a number of leeches in a flannel bag; he
plunges the bag into the sanguine fluid, and
there he leaves the leeches to have their fill.
He seems to know what is good for their
health and their age; he takes them out
when he judges they have made a judiciously
hearty meal, washes them in tepid water, to
make them dainty and clean; and
restores them to their former habitat. The
actual receptacles for the leeches are large
pits sunk in the ground, and filled with water.
When eggs have been deposited in the little
zig-zag channels, the leech-rearer removes
them from time to time, and places them in a
small pit by themselves, where they are
carefully tended during the hatching process.
The trench or ditch of water, which
surrounds the boggy island, is destined to
preserve the leech from enemies, of which he
appears to have many. In a little wooden
hut lives a man, the bog-king, whose sole
duty it is to combat the birds, and the water-
rats, and the insects, which would otherwise
be likely to make short work with the
leeches.

* See Half a Dozen Leeches, Volume x. p. 200.

PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE.

DR. Hood, of Bedlam Hospital, in his
work on criminal lunacy, shows from
indisputable data, that the largest portion
of the inmates of our prisons and asylums
is contributed by agricultural counties. That
there should be less crime and insanity in
towns and manufacturing districts, we may
at once perceive; because there the poorer
classes find within their reach factory schools,
mechanics' institutes, and free libraries. Their
mental faculties are sharpened and kept in a
state of wholesome activity.

It is far otherwise in rural districts.
During the long dreary winter evenings
the ploughman or the hedger is without
resource. Their only refuge is the village ale-
house; where, by the abuse of beverages
which might, taken in moderation, be no
detriment to him, the rustic beclouds his
already heavy faculties.

It is certain, therefore, that the best
correction for this state of things must be, a