that branch of industry in order to promote the operation of nature. In the mean time the French flag appeared, but at long intervals, in the Mediterranean, and England had become mistress of Malta. At her instigation the Dey of Constantina admitted, in 1806, the competition of the Maltese, Jews, and Spaniards in the market where the French before had alone a right to buy. From this violation of treaties to their abolition there was but one step. In 1807 the Dey invested England with the French concessions, for an annual payment of 267,500 francs. The principal object of England in trading on this coast was the supplying the garrisons of Malta and Gibraltar, and, at a later period, her armies in Spain. This navigation she abandoned to the Greek, Sicilian, Sardinian, and Spanish shipping. As for the coral fisheries, the annihilation of the means of obtaining supplies, which had formerly existed on the coast, obliged many boats to depart in winter: the English were unwilling to bear alone the expenses of an industry, the profits of which devolved to the shipping of Italy. The fishing seasons were, therefore, determined upon. The summer season extended from the 1st of April to the 30th of September; the winter season from the 1st of October to the 31st of March. Each coral fishing boat was subjected for the former to a duty of 1,070 francs, and two rotes of coral; and for the latter to 481 francs, and one rote. These duties covered very nearly the tribute to the Dey.

Such is the origin of the regulations now existing, and it will be easily conceived that this state of things having lasted till the year 1816, the Provence people had full time to lose, and the Italians to acquire, practice in coral fishing. These vicissitudes had not stripped Leghorn of its coral trade and manufactures; but, if the workmen of that city were occupied, its fishermen had nothing to do. The discovery of very fine coral banks on the Pianosa restored to the latter, in 1807, very considerable activity; they flocked to them in crowds, and the banks were exhausted in 1814; they do not appear to have since recovered from that exhaustion. Three boats, of which it is not the exclusive occupation, suffice now for fishing in the whole Archipelago of Tuscany. This is not the only circumstance upon which those found themselves, who declare that the African coast has alone the happy privilege of reproducing coral. The coast of Sardinia, though long deserted, has not been stocked again; the submarine projection of Monte Christo, which was formerly rich in purple coral (Jania rubens) has not recovered from its exhaustion, and if we must go back to ancient times, the island of Gorgona no longer yields the beautiful black coral which was gathered there in Pliny's time. The resumption by the French of their sessions, when general peace took place, brought on no change of any importance in the fisheries. The duties established by the English were, indeed, reduced to 856 francs for the summer, and 321 francs for the winter season; but this reduction lasted but the time necessary for the restoration of some buildings. In 1817, 240 boats participated in the fishery, which was kept up despite of the attacks of the natives, and of the Tunis privateers, from 1820 to 1824. In 1821, there were 241 boats employed on it-viz, 30 Corsican, 70 Sardinian, 39 Tuscan, 83 Neapolitan, and 19 Sicilian. The coral fished amounted

altogether to 37,950 kilogrammes, being, at an average, 157 kilogrammes per boat. In 1822, 256 boats were engaged in the fishery, measuring together 2,578 tons, and manned by 2,514 sailors. They yielded 35,680 kilogrammes of coral. The exemption from duty of the French coral fishers had attracted no boats from France, the Chamber of Commerce having, on being consulted as to the means of nationalizing again coral fishing, frankly declared that a seaman's wages being forty-five francs a month in France, and only twentyseven in Italy, matters had better be left to take their own course. The coral fishing was interrupted in 1827 by the declaration of war. From the year 1817 to 1826 inclusive, the yearly average number of boats employed was 21 French, and 153 from other countries, and the yearly average of the coral obtained 29,952 kilogrammes. In the same period of ten years there was a gradual decrease in the produce of each boat, whence it may be inferred that the boats are now, perhaps, too many for the space comprised between Capes Roux and de Fer, which are the boundaries of the fishing ground. The result of the said last ten years' fishing is, that the coral fisheries regularly occupy from seventeen to eighteen hundred men, and put into circulation a raw article worth 1,500,000 francs, the average price of rough coral being fifty francs per kilogramine. During the hostilities which prevailed on the coast from 1827 to 1831 the fishing was too unimportant to deserve any notice. When resumed in 1832, it was continued on the footing adopted from 1819 to 1826. The French coral fishers are exempted from the duties, and their rivals pay 1,155 francs per boat for the summer, and 524 francs for the winter season. All the French coral fishers are from Corsica, and although freed from the duties, they do not seem to gain in the long run more than the rest. The Sardinian gondolas all start from the Gulph of Rapallo, six leagues from Genoa, and the Genoese are the most industrious and enterprising of all the coral fishers.

On the coast of Tuscany there are but three or four masters who are owners of their boats; all the rest belong to Leghorn speculators. Some Trapanian boats come from Sicily. Both fishermen and artificers, their crews, work in winter the coral they have fished in summer; notwithstanding which their industry is on the decline.

La Torre del Greco, at the foot of Vesuvius, is the centre of the Neapolitan coral fisheries, which are the most considerable of all. A new and well-rigged Neapolitan boat is worth 800 ducats, or a little more than £134. The ordinary produce of the summer fishing is rated at 9,000 francs per boat. The fishing expenses for one season and one boat may be rated as follows::

In 1838, the coral fishing on the Bona coast employed 245 boats, measuring 3,123 tons, and 2,606 men. The value of the coral obtained was 1,983,000 francs, and the duties paid 282,884 francs. When the French African company fished alone in the Algerine waters, the superiority of the coral which it obtained there gave to the manufactures of Marseilles and the neighbourhood a decided advantage over those of Genoa and Leghorn, which cities were supplied only from the coasts of Italy and Sardinia. During the wars of the French republic and empire, the fishing boats became Italian, the industry followed its fate, and Leghorn is now the centre of the coral manufacture; it is towards that port that the boats of the coral fishers move every year. The almost fallen manufactures of Marseilles, and even those of Genoa, can scarcely be compared with those of Leghorn, which give annual employment to above 700 persons of both sexes. This advantage of Leghorn over Naples arises less from the Lazaretto facilities which determine the Neapolitan fishers to undergo quarantine in Tuscany, than from the circumstance of the trade in wrought coral being almost wholly in the hands of the Jews, who, as every body knows, are a very numerous and powerful class at Leghorn. They send large quantities of it to Russia; the remainder finds its way into Gallicia, through Brady; to India, China, and Japan, through England; and lastly into Africa, above all, through Morocco. In all these countries, save the two most distant, the Jews have trustworthy and zealous correspondents among their own persuasion.

From preference, the large coral is sent to Russia, the pink of the first quality to China, that of inferior quality to Poland, and the barbarosca and roba-chiare to India. The lowest qualities have long been used in the slave trade, which is, however, daily diminishing. The city of Algiers is one of the connecting points of that Israelite net which is spread all over the commercial world. It employs already every year about 200,000 francs worth of little bits, the carving and polishing of which occupy several Jewish families, and then sends them into the interior of Africa. The Jews of Algiers have, in Africa and in Europe, the best established connection for the extension of this branch of trade.

THE RED-DEER.

THE SEASON FOR HIND HUNTING IN DEVON AND SOMERSET.

The spring advances, and soon that faire ladye of the forest, the mate of the noble stag, will again lead the hunter a merrie chase o'er the echoing forest of Exmoor; soon she will be roused beside the greenwood-tree, and the choice pack of the "Devon and Somerset

stag hounds" convince the world that sport of the right noble description is still to be had in old England; and right happy should he be who can hark to their tuneful chiming. The hinds are numerous and strong, and much sport is expected. Operations will, therefore, be commenced in the Dulverton and Exmoor country about the 5th of April, and continue until a little after the 20th of May. And to those whose hunters are strong, and up to a stiffish country and long runs, I would recommend a jaunt into the west before they lay by for the year; they must have sport, and that of the right sort, fully commensurate to their trouble in seeking for it.

Dulverton is only about eighteen miles from the Tiverton station on the Great Western Railway, and contains superior accommodation both for man and horse-indeed our worthy host and hostess of the Lion can turn out such dinners as would not be despised by the most fastidious, not even by the "Pope" himself, their namesake. I do not mention this as an inducement to the red-deer hunter, because he is of the hardy sort, and requires not incentives of this nature to enhance his pleasures, but simply to assure the stranger that this small town can boast of as comfortable and cleanly an inn as any in the country. The stables are not bad, nor yet the attendance, and the charges are reasonable.

Lynmouth and Lynton, which are well known, and much frequented for their splendid scenery, are about eighteen miles further west, and easily accessible by way of Dulverton, or from the Taunton station. When the hounds hunt in the Brendon part of the country, which they do during a portion of the season, it will be necessary to quarter here. Mrs. Blackmore's most comfortable lodgings, and Jones's stables at Lynmouth, as also the "Valley of Rocks" Hotel at Lynton, can be recommended, but particularly Mrs. Blackmore's quiet abode, where we have often been regaled as comfortably as in our own home after a day's hard work with hounds; she has, however, no stables, but they are easily obtained at Jones's, or other houses in the place.

My purpose is not to instruct the experienced stag-hunter in this noble art of venery, but simply to inform those who are strangers to it that the red-deer is here hunted in his wild state with one of the best-bred packs of hounds in the kingdom, often showing extraordinary sport from the length of the runs, besides producing to the hunters some of the most romantic country in the land; and I wish by this to enable them to participate in it, and having once tasted its pleasures, I'll warrant a return to them during ensuing seasons.

It is strange that the sport should be so little known and not more extensively enjoyed by those who live remote, for in this "go-a-head" age it is most easily obtained by means of railways, which bid fair, ere long, to enable us to breakfast comfortably over our own fireside, and hunt the same morning with our friend in the antipodes. To illustrate the facility and speed with which one may traverse the distance between even the metropolis and this land of the red-deer, I will only mention that last season a worthy member of Parliament, who takes no little interest in the hunt, was in his place in the House until

near midnight, wishing I believe to vote on some question of importance, but he was the next morning at his own coverside in Exmoor before the tufters had been thrown into it, much to the astonishment of the field. Notwithstanding the havoc which some of the railways have made in one or two hunting countries, they are still a boon to the sportsman in many respects, enabling him to do things which but for them he could never accomplish, and fully compensate for the trouble and difficulty which they create, but which I trust will, ere long, some way or other be rectified. Who but for them could keep his hunters fifty, or even a hundred miles from his residence, and yet hunt regularly with his favourite pack?

I will now add a few words concerning the localities in which the red-deer exist, and then briefly describe the mode adopted in hunting him, and right glad shall I be if by so doing I can induce a few of my readers to join in the sport; and if they do so with hearts bent on long and severe runs, I'll engage that they shall not often be disappointed, and that after the season is over they shall be enabled to return to town quite early enough for fashionable life.

Recently the red-deer have been so extensively preserved on Exmoor and the north of Devon and Somerset, that a blank day is one of the rarest occurrences, and a run of twenty or thirty miles not the least frequent; indeed I could tell of such as have not ended until forty miles and more have been crossed in fresh pursuit of a deer. Several extraordinary runs were had during the stag-hunting season of the past autumn, the length of which would astonish many from our crack countries; one in particular, when a stag was found at Haddon, which made for the Quantocks by Monksilver, and fairly beat a very select field, by continuing his course until long after Sol had been lost in the far west; and the night being moonless and dark, it was necessary to stop the hounds, which then had to retrace their steps full thirty miles to their kennel, from which they had been taken in the morning to the rendezvous. It is no uncommon thing to run a stag till all is dark, and then be obliged to draw off; but sometimes the "yellow moon" will favour us, and light us on our way rejoicing. "The devil's in the moon for mischief;" they who have seen a stag taken, killed, and broken up by the light of her pale beams, will tell you that nothing on earth is so enchanting and destructive of melancholy. In olden times our worthy progenitors would also often run their stag till dark, and, with their slow hounds, renew the chase at break of day on the following morning from the spot where they had left off, seldom failing to take him. This continuation of the chase, however, is not observed with the hounds of the present day, and properly so; for a stag, after resting the night following a severe run, is stiff and incapable of showing sport. I will not, however, continue these reflections-I might add wanderings from my subject, but at once recur to it.

The forest of Exmoor, and particularly the northern limits towards Brendon, is our stronghold for the continuation of the breed of the red-deer in England; here they flourish, and are more numerous than in any other part of the hunt, through the liberal instrumentality of Mr. Knight, of Simonsbath, whose property it is, and