infallible, errors in numbering may occur in spite of all precautions.
These are detected in a singular way. All the tickets in one series
are made to pass through a machine with a velocity which the eye can
scarcely follow. When stopped, the numbers are tested by two little
index plates or wheels; if the same number is denoted on both indexes,
all is well; but if any error has crept in, the index notifications
differ, and afford means for determining at what part of the series the
mishap has occurred.
A sheet of cardboard is certainly not a ponderous substance; but it
is surprising how weighty the packages become when large quantities
have to be dealt with. The tickets are tied up into small compact rows
(string and tying being peculiar), and then packed into cubical masses
in tin-lined boxes or cases--so firmly and closely pressed as to be as
dense as a mass of wood. About fifty thousand tickets weigh one and a
quarter hundredweight. The factory turns out two and a half millions
of printed tickets (railway, steamboat, refreshment, &c.) per week,
and ten millions of smoothly prepared but unprinted tickets; these
numbers, multiplied by the fifty-two weeks in a year, give a total
annual production of something like _six hundred and fifty millions_,
weighing upwards of sixteen thousand hundredweight! If these tickets be
taken at two inches in length, and if they were laid flat end to end,
they would reach----But we will leave our junior readers to exercise
their arithmetical skill in solving this problem: merely hinting that
it would require many voyages from England to America, and back again,
to cover a distance equal to the length of this cardboard ribbon. From
such small beginnings do great results ensue.
FISHING EXTRAORDINARY.
There are extraordinary ways of fishing practised by people of
uncivilised countries, which are not the result of ignorance, but of
that ingenuity which is always rendered fruitful by dire necessity and
the instincts of self-support. The Chinese, amongst their many original
ideas, have some curious ones on the subject, and doubtless fish now as
they did a thousand years ago; and though on the coasts they may have
adopted the generally accepted system of working nets, on the waters
in the interior of the country they adhere to the methods peculiar to
their own nation--methods quaint and curious. The lakes and rivers of
China, and especially of the north, are so abundantly stocked with
fish, that in some places the men called fish-catchers make their
living by actually seizing and drawing them out with their hands. The
man goes into the water, and proceeds half walking half swimming,
raising his arms above his head, and letting them drop, striking the
surface with his hands. Meanwhile his feet are moving on the muddy
bottom. Presently he stoops with a rapid dive and brings up a fish in
his hand. The striking of the surface was intended to frighten the
fish, which when alarmed, sink to the bottom; then the naked feet feel
them among the mud, and once felt, the practised hand secures them in
a moment. Catching fish in this manner is of course a trade in itself,
and the plentiful supply it implies is somewhat explained by the fact
that even the little ponds of Northern China swarm with scaly life.
On the great Ning-po river the same principle is used on a more
extended scale with boats and nets. The boats are ready for the flow
of the tide to take them in crowds up the river, and when they halt,
the nets are thrown out, and the oars and sculls beat the water with a
loud plashing noise. After resting in the same place for ten minutes or
a quarter of an hour, they move on again to another station, and there
repeat the beating and splashing. The noise on the surface is meant for
an alarm, as in the case of the fish-catcher; and it is said that this
mode of fishing soon loads the nets.
Another curious method employed by the Chinese is generally practised
at night, and depends upon a peculiar power which a white screen,
stretched under the water, seems to possess over the fishes, decoying
them to it and making them leap. A man, sitting at the stern of a long
narrow boat, steers her with a paddle to the middle of a river, and
there stops. Along the right-hand side of his boat a narrow sheet of
white canvas is stretched; when he leans to that side it dips under the
surface, and if it be a moonlit night, gleams through the water. Along
the other side of the boat a net is fastened so as to form a barrier
two or three feet high. The boatman keeps perfectly still. If another
boat passes by, he will not speak; he is only impatient at the slight
breaking of the silence. While he keeps thus without a sound or stir,
the fish, attracted by the white canvas, approach and leap, and would
go over the narrow boat and be free in their native waters on the other
side, but for the screen of netting, which stops them, and throws them
down before the man's feet.
Every one must have heard of the fishing cormorant, which is actually
trained in China to catch fish. A man takes out ten or twelve of these
web-footed birds in a boat, and as soon as the boat stops, at his word
they plunge into the water and begin at once searching for and diving
after fish. They are most diligent workers, for if one of them is
seen swimming about idly, the Chinaman in the boat strikes the water
near the bird with the end of a long bamboo; and, not touched, but
recalled to a sense of duty, the cormorant at once turns to business
again. As soon as a fish is caught, a word from the man brings the
bird swimming towards him. He draws it into the boat, and it drops
its prey from its bill. There is always a straw or string tied round
the neck, to prevent the fish from being swallowed, and this string
requires the nicest adjustment, lest it may choke the bird--a result
which would certainly follow if it slipped lower down on the neck. The
sagacity and workman-like method of the birds are shewn when they get
into difficulties. If the fish caught is too large for one beak to
secure, another cormorant comes up to the struggle, and the two with
united efforts bring their prize to the boat. On the rivers and canals
near Ning-po, Shanghae, and Foo-chow-foo, the employment of these
birds is by no means an uncommon sight; but they are never to be seen
fishing in the summer months, their work being in the winter, beginning
always about October and ending in May. The birds have of course to be
subjected to a system of training, which is carried on in the cormorant
breeding and fishing establishments, one of which is at a distance of
thirty or forty miles from Shanghae.
Some tribes of Indians catch fish by drugging them. They make the soft
branches of the Indian milk-bush or the euphorbia into pulp, and throw
it into the water of the ponds. When the fish taste it, they lose
the power of swimming, and are easily taken floating helplessly in
the water. They also mix with dough a powder made from the _Cocculus
Indicus_, the effect of which is that when thrown into the water it
intoxicates the fish, and they swim in circles on the surface, where
they can be caught in a hand-net. Lime is sometimes used in the same
way; but the disadvantage of that system is that it causes such
wholesale slaughter that there is danger of small ponds being rapidly
cleared.
A still more singular practice is to be found amongst the Chonos
Indians, who train dogs to help them on their fishing expeditions in
much the same way as the shepherd's dog helps the shepherd. The net
is held by two men standing in the water, and the dogs, swimming out
far and diving after the fish, drive them back towards it. They enjoy
their work just as a good horse, though hard pressed, seems to enjoy
the hunt; and every time they raise their heads from the water they
tell their pleasure by clamorous barking. The Fuegians, one of the
most miserable and degraded races on the earth, train their dogs in a
similar manner to assist them in catching birds. They have a wonderful
contrivance for killing the sharks which abound off their coasts. A log
of wood shaped so as to appear something like a canoe is set afloat,
with a rope and large noose hanging from one end of it. Before long
a shark attacks the supposed canoe, swimming after it, and is caught
in the noose hanging from the stern. It closes on him so that he
cannot extricate himself, and the weight of the log keeps him swimming
slowly without being able to sink. Then the Fuegians in their canoes,
generally steered by women, approach at their leisure and finish the
shark with their spears.
All these contrivances of savage nations or of the strangely civilised
Chinese, are meant to kill or seize the fish by natural means. It
is much nearer home that we have to look to find the element of
superstition prevailing, and useless customs invested with the
importance of charms. An instance may be found in the case of the
Sicilian fishermen, who, when in search of sword-fish, chant a jargon
of words the meaning of which even they themselves do not know. The
song is supposed to be some old Greek verses, which, by time and use
among those ignorant of their meaning, have become so altered as to be
almost unrecognisable. The fishermen regard the medley as a sure means
of attracting the sword-fish, which they harpoon from the boat, when
the charm, as they suppose, has brought them within reach.
Far away in northern regions there is a novel method of fishing under
ice, which shews more ingenuity than the simple lowering and fastening
of a net. A small square hole is cut in the ice, and in this is placed
an upright stick, supported by a cross pin run through it and resting
at each side on the ice; the end of the stick below this cross pin is
short, and to it the line is fastened with the bait and hook attached,
while at the top of the stick is a piece of coloured rag. Now, though
we have called the stick upright, it is meant to fall from that
position and lie along the ice, until a fish seizing the bait pulls
its lower end, when with a jerk it rises. This contrivance is called a
'tip-up,' from the movement which is certain to follow the seizure of
the bait. The fluttering of the coloured rag, as the stick rises, tells
of the capture; and a great number of these self-acting fishers and
indicators may be placed near together, each having its own hole in the
ice; and each, by the fluttering rag, telling its own tale the moment a
fish is caught.
The tip-up not only saves the fisher the trouble of holding his line
in position and watching with particular care, but also makes the fish
itself 'strike' and announce that it is ready to be pulled out! In fact
its ingenuity is only surpassed in the old tale of the Irish monastery,
where at the neighbouring salmon-leap a large pot was hung so as to
be just clear of the falling water, but in the way of any salmon that
leaped recklessly; and a bell was placed so that the fish could not
fail to ring its own knell as it fell; thus announcing to the good
brothers at the monastery that he was there, not only secured, but
actually in the pot, ready to be boiled for dinner.
For the following curious fishing items we are indebted to a writer in
_The Field_. Regarding fishing in the Japanese seas, he says:
'Through an inlet on this coast our small boat is sculled by two sturdy
Japanese fishermen, who drive the light craft across the shadows of
the hills with speed remarkable. Standing on their feet, they swing
with wonderful power a long heavy oar poised on a pin on the quarter;
and while we go, these men are watching the tangle sheltering their
prey--the octopus, the cuttle-fish, and the sea-cucumber. With bodies
blackened by the sun to the colour of the sea-weed, these almost
naked men were incommoded by neither the rain nor the winds. Like the
fishermen of all lands, their restless eyes were wandering from the sea
to the heavens. With no guides but the stars by night and the blue edge
of the land by day, there was need for keen eyesight and watchfulness.
In all the Eastern seas there is no more adventurous race than these
men.
'We could see the floats of burnt wood which buoyed the ends of our
fishermen's lines, and to the nearest of these we were sculled. A kind
of wood, light and buoyant, and with some resemblance to cork, is used
for such floats. It grows in the forests thereabouts, and after being
shaped and charred to prevent decay, lasts, without further trouble,
for a longer time than bladders or skins. With some impatience the
black buoy and the line attached are brought on board. Like an inverted
bell-shaped flower-pot comes the first earthenware jar, hardly the
size of a child's head, attached to the line. Mouth downward, the jar
is pulled up from the bottom, and when all the water has been poured
out, the fishermen give a look inside. No occupant being found, the
jar is once more lowered into the sea by the attached string, which is
overrun till the next jar is pulled up, brought on board, and similarly
examined. When six or seven are examined, and no occupant is found in
any of these, the fishermen shew no impatience. But presently from a
jar an octopus is jerked upon the floor of the boat, and with some
satisfaction the Japanese watch its tentacles wriggle all about the
planks and cling round their legs. Changing its hues, the disgusting
cephalopod loses its redder blotches for paler patches, and eventually
crawls into a darker corner to coil itself away. Pouring the water more
carefully from the inverted pots, the fishermen secure a few more of
these animals, which crawl and twine about with snake-like contortions.
The long string of pots took time to overhaul, but the spoils were
reckoned reward for the trouble. When the fishing was completed, and
the black floats were again left to mark the spot, our boat was sculled
somewhat farther down the land.
'We had then time to learn something more of this fishing for tako, as
the octopus is named by the Japanese fishermen. Through our friends,
we learn that the tako needs no bait to entice it to enter the earthen
jars used by the fishermen to entrap it; but crawling about on the
bottom, or shooting itself through the sea by the expulsion of water,
it finds in the dark earthen jar "a comfortable house," and so occupies
it until the fisherman finds it and captures it. The tako is largely
eaten in Japan, where all the products of the sea are accounted equally
wholesome with those of the land; and beneath an ugly skin the flesh
of this speckled monster is thought very good, cooked in several ways,
and eaten with or without soy or vinegar. Nevertheless, as if to
vindicate the dread its constantly changing hues excite, the eating of
the octopus is not unattended with danger. Through some poisonous taint
either occasionally or always present, but modified by the process of
cooking, people sometimes die from eating this animal. And yet the
knowledge of this interferes but to a trifling extent with the use of
food having such a questionable reputation--indeed at certain seasons
it is largely used by the Japanese, when the cuttle-fish are far more
plentiful and also more wholesome. Caught by trolling a small wooden
fish barbed with hooks, they make good sport, chiefly to the older
fishermen, who are not active enough to go off to sea.'
A RELIC OF ANTIQUITY.
Owing to various causes, the relics of antiquity in our Great
Metropolis are year by year becoming fewer and fewer in number. The
utilitarianism of the age has, doubtless, much to answer for; but much
harm is done by pure carelessness and neglect. Only a few days back the
house in which John Milton lived was pulled down; for that act some
excuse on the ground of public improvement may doubtless be urged; but
none surely can be successfully pleaded for allowing so interesting a
relic as the ancient Pyx Chamber in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey
to go to ruin. Judging, however, from what the Warden of the Standards
states in his recently published Report, this seems likely to be the
case, unless he can induce the Office of Works to do something for its
preservation. We hope that success may attend his efforts. This ancient
historical chamber is so interesting from its associations, and so
curious as a rare specimen of early Norman architecture, that we shall
perhaps be pardoned for abridging some brief particulars respecting it
from the Report alluded to.
This ancient crypt, which forms part of the Saxon or very early
Norman substructure of the outbuildings of the Abbey, is certainly
as old as the time of Edward the Confessor, and is believed to have
been constructed in his reign. It has also been known as Edward the
Confessor's Chapel. The vaulted and groined ceiling is supported by
massive stone pillars, and the building is one of the very earliest
Norman works in the country. The floor is paved with ancient coloured
tiles. After the Conquest, this chamber was used as one of the king's
treasuries, as a sacred place of deposit. The remains of an altar
at the east end, and of a _piscina_, seem to indicate its original
sanctity. There is, however, a tradition that what has the appearance
of a stone altar is the tomb of Hugolin, the Confessor's chamberlain.
In 1303, the thirty-first year of King Edward I., the whole of the
king's treasures were deposited in this ancient chamber, the entrance
to which, on the west or cloister side, was at that time, as now,
secured by two massive doors with seven locks. During the king's
absence in Scotland, when engaged in war, the northern wall of the
chamber was broken through by some of the monks of Westminster Abbey,
and the whole of the treasure carried off. It included four crowns,
with the king's rings, sceptres, jewels, gold and silver coin, and
plate, &c. The greater part of the booty was, however, afterwards
recovered, and the monks tried and found guilty. The depositions at
their trial still exist amongst our ancient records, but the actual
punishment inflicted on the thieves is not recorded; some significant
evidence, however, still remains of what was probably their fate,
inasmuch as an old door on the north side of the chamber, opening into
the passage to the chapter-house, has portions of a human skin still
fastened to it! It would appear that, in consequence of this robbery,
the approach to the chamber on the north side was walled off, and the
room was reduced in size by one-third. After the Restoration, the
regalia and other similar treasures of the sovereign were removed to
the Tower, and the chamber was then known as the 'Treasury of Leagues,'
the original parchment documents of commercial leagues with foreign
states being deposited there. Several large oak presses are still in
existence in which these leagues were kept; some of them are furnished
with drawers, and bear inscriptions on parchment or merely in chalk,
indicating the nature of their former contents. There are also several
large ancient coffers or chests still remaining in the chamber, in one
of which the Standard trial-plates of gold and silver for trials of the
pyx were formerly kept, whence the chamber became known as the 'Pyx
Chapel.' At the present time, no official documents or articles of any
value are kept in the Pyx Chamber, and its interior has been allowed to
get into a very dirty and decayed state; indeed, Mr Chisholm goes so
far as to aver that nothing has been done to it during his period of
public service, now more than fifty-one years!
THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS' SCHOOLS.
A wish has been expressed, in reference to our article 'The Commercial
Traveller,'[2] for a brief notice of the admirable schools belonging to
that praiseworthy body of men at Pinner, near Harrow.
The Institution was founded about thirty years ago; but the present
building dates from 1855, when the ceremonial opening was conducted
by the late Prince Consort. Wings were added afterwards; and in its
present form the establishment accommodates about three hundred boys
and girls--say two hundred of the former and one hundred of the latter.
The Institution clothes, maintains, and educates the destitute orphans
of deceased commercial travellers, and fatherless children of the
necessitous members of the craft. No favouritism would suffice for the
admission of children other than those belonging to this category. As
the Institution is wholly supported by donations and subscriptions, the
donors have rightfully a voting power for the admission of children.
Governors, managers, trustees, &c. are appointed in the manner usual
in analogous institutions. Children are admitted by ballot-voting
twice a year; they begin at various ages, but all quit the Institution
at the age of fifteen, when they are assisted with an outfit and
aid in obtaining suitable situations. The education given is really
excellent, comprising (for boys) reading, writing, arithmetic, algebra,
geometry, geography, map-drawing, grammar, English composition, Latin,
French, English history, class-singing, and instrumental music; and
for girls, most of the above branches, with needlework and domestic
duties. A juvenile band is maintained by the boys, under a professional
bandmaster. Diet and clothing are good and plentiful. A project has
recently been started for an enlargement of the building by adding a
new wing, with fifty-two additional beds, a laundry, swimming-bath, and
infirmary, at an estimated cost of eighteen thousand pounds.
In our former article we spoke of the onerous duties that press upon
many commercial travellers, and of the necessity for probity, energy,
and intelligence on their part. It is well to know what is thought
on these points by those who have the best means of knowing. At the
last anniversary of the Institution, a partner in one of the great
City firms said: 'I spent some of the happiest days of my life among
commercial travellers. They are a worthy, industrious, painstaking
body of men. They are subject to temptations to which hardly any other
class is subject; often leaving home very young, very inexperienced,
with frequently a large command of money, thrown upon their own
resources, without that best safeguard against temptation--home
influence. They must work in all weathers, their energies strained to
the utmost against a great force of competition. Their sea of life
is never smooth, their work never done, a fresh struggle and battle
with the world every half-hour. Sometimes with sickness at home, and
the head of the family away, dreading misfortune which he might have
prevented or alleviated. A traveller, to be successful, should be
sickness-proof, accident-proof, bad-debt proof; and he should be a most
wise and temperate man, moderate in all his ways.' If the 'commercial'
approaches anything near this picture, he must indeed be an excellent
fellow.
The Commercial Travellers' Benevolent Institution, to aid aged and
necessitous members of the body, is another praiseworthy offshoot.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _Chambers's Journal_, Dec. 16, 1876.
TO THE COMING FLOWERS.
Awake, dear sleepers, from your wintry tombs;
The sun has turned the point of Capricorn,
And 'gins to pluck from Winter's wings the plumes
Of darkness, and to wind his silver horn
For your return. Come to your homes, forlorn
In absence of your odours and your faces;
Like Rachel weeps for you the reaved morn,
As often as she views your empty places,
Erewhile the daily scene of her and your embraces.
Come, pensile snowdrop, like the earliest star
That twinkles on the brow of dusky Night;
Come, like the child that peeps from door ajar,
With pallid cheek, upon a wasteful sight:
And shouldst thou rise when all around is white,
The more thou'lt demonstrate the power of God
To shield the weak against the arms of might,
To strengthen feeble shoulders for their load,
And sinking hearts 'mid ills they could not full forebode.
Come, crocus cup, the cup where early bees
Sip the first nectar of the liberal year,
Come and illume our green, as similes
Light up the poet's song. And O ye dear
March violets, come near, come breathing near!
You too, fair primroses, in darksome woods
Shine forth, like heaven's constellations clear;
And come, ye daisies, throng in multitudes,
And whiten hills and meadows with your saintly hoods.