race is a race apart. They are not like other
men. They are never tall, never fat, never thin.
What becomes of these men, your Eye-witness
demands, during the summer months and "in the
season of the year?" What becomes of them
and of their stock, their sorry skates, their
impaired gimlets, their pointless bradawls, their
strips of bedside carpet, and their wheezy
chairs? These are awful questions! To
look at these men, they are like bill-stickers.
But can they belong to that valuable
fraternity? Hardly; for if so, who would stick
the bills on our walls while these mysterious
personages are sticking the skates on our feet?
Are they members of some league or guild,
which supports them through the year? Are
they and the icemen, bound up as they are by
common interests, allied in such a society; and
do they spend their summer together, the skate
proprietors fixing the sorry skates on the feet
of the icemen, taking them off again immediately,
and then tumbling through trap-doors
provided for the purpose, and being straightway
hooked up again with the apparatus of the
Humane Society, for practice?

The season for skating is so short and uncertain
in this country, that little or no legislative
attention has been bestowed upon the best means
of regulating the condition under which that
pastime may be most safely practised. Short,
however, as the season is, the list of accidents
which annually occur is long enough
to justify the bestowal of some degree of
attention upon this subject. In the first place
(to take the most important class of accidents,
those, namely, which affect life), is there any
reason why our ornamental waters should have
a greater depth than two or three feet? If, as
their name implies, these artificial lakes are
simply intended for ornament, that purpose
would surely be answered by two feet of water
as well as by twenty. The difficulty, if there be
any, with regard to the fish, is unworthy to be
put in the balance for a moment; if they cannot
live in the shallow water, they may go. There
is, indeed, but one doubt that can affect this
question, and that is, whether a great depth of
water is necessary to prevent stagnation. On
this, the present writer is unable to give an
opinion, but the subject is well worthy of the
attention of those who may be acquainted with
such matters, being one by which, beyond the
shadow of a doubt, human life is annually lost.

A miss is not as good as a mile in all cases,
and when the point of a walking-stick has been
within a quarter of an inch of your eye, you are
not (as to the nerves) as well off as if it had
never attained such proximity to the organ in
question. The wild flourishing of sticks by
skaters in their attempts to preserve a balance
must have struck—in more senses of the word
than one—everybody who has spent much time on
the ice as one of the most annoying and
aggravating dangers they have had to encounter. A
disaster produced by this practice of carrying
sticks, so prevalent among bad skaters, has
occurred this year. It is enough to say that the
thing is excessively dangerous, that sticks are of
no use to skaters whatsoever, and that they should
not be allowed in the hands of any one engaged
in skating.

These two are the main questions in
connexion with this topic, which really seem, as
affecting life and limb, to call for some little
attention. It would be curious to examine the
books of our hospitals and of the Royal Humane
Society, with a view to ascertain how many of
the accidents which one frost has brought about,
might have been prevented by a more serious
recognition of the great importance of that
annual visitation.

ANOTHER WHITSTABLE TRADE.

IF it had not fallen to the lot of Whitstable
to be celebrated for its oysters, and its company
of "free dredgers,"* it might have claimed a
word of notice for producing that rarest of all
workmen, the sea-diver. As the oyster exerts
such an obvious influence upon Whitstable men,
and lives at the bottom of the sea, it would
almost seem as if this stationary shell-fish were
the father of this other Whitstable trade.

The Whitstable divers may be from thirty to
fifty in number, strong, stout, healthy, temperate
men, who look like able-bodied sailors. Though
not incorporated as a joint-stock company, and
protected by a charter, like their friends and
neighbours, the free-dredgers, they form
themselves, by a kind of Whitstable instinct, into a
working brotherhood, under the presidency and
guidance of a captain—Mr. Green. Mr. Green
is not a diver himself, and has never been under
water, either in the helmet or the bell; but he
directs the labour of those within his command,
purchases their chances for a certain fixed
payment before they dive, and acts generally like
that very useful, but oftentimes much-abused
"capitalist," without whom so few trades can
be successfully carried on.

In stormy seasons, when the wreck of some
heavily-laden homeward-bound vessel is an
every-day occurrence round our fatal coast, the
rooms at the King's Head Inn, in Whitstable,
the house of call for divers, are very thinly
attended, and the men, with their boats and
apparatus, are hurried off in all directions to
profitable work. Mr. Green is then in the
hourly receipt of telegrams from Lloyd's, or
from private owners, requesting him to send
"four divers to Moelfre," and four more "to
the Goodwin Sands." If a vessel tilts over, as
it did the other day in the Victoria Docks, Mr.
Green is communicated with to furnish help;
and his divers are sometimes sent for from the
West Indies, and distant, unknown seas.

These men go down to work in the diving dress,
until they are sixty or seventy years of age. The
dress consists of a waterproof body suit, to keep
them dry and warm; very heavily-weighted
boots, to keep them steady and on their legs;
and the well-known helmet with the glass-eye

* See No. 31, pp. 113, 14, 15, and 16.