memento of the juvenile engagement which, the reader may monotonous manner, varied occasionally by a trip to the deep not be astonished to learn, bad once existed between himself sea fisheries. and Caroline Manning. This souvenir, whether accidentally The shad is a member of the family of Clupeidæ, a family overlooked in the return of letters at Mr. Manning's desire, which, though not numerous in species, includes a series of fish or withheld purposely, was evidence unimpeachable of the fact of the highest importance in an economical point of view. The and the character of said connection. It was nothing less than herring, anchovy, pilchard and sprat belong to it, as does also a letter penned in Caroline's own hand, addressed to her boy- that favorite of London epicures, the whitebait. All of these lover, and glowing with all the inconsiderate ardor of a love- fishes have small mouths, and either very small teeth or uone lorn inaiden in her fifteenth year.

at all, and they are therefore but ill adapted to prey on other This was the effusion which Horace Miller's burning gaze fishes, and are mostly obliged to find their subsistence in the now scanned ; its every line branding with the grossest deceit myriads of minute animals diffused throughout the waters of and direct mendacity the being he had worshipped. Galling as the ocean, or lurking among the weeds at the bottom. They its phrases of undisguised tenderness were to his proud, deli- are all of them eminently migratory in their habits, traversing, cate spirit, this was as nothing in comparison with the blight- at different seasons, the entire ocean, and performing their ing conviction that his idol was the basest clay-one for whom journeys in immense schools, to which fact one of them, bis pity must be mingled with contempt.

the herring, owes its name, it being derived from the German “ If she had but told me-if she had owned the truth, were word heer, signifying army. Cuvier separated the shad from it a thousand times more humiliating-I would huve loved her Clupeidæ proper from the circumstance of there being a notch all the same,” he said to his sister that night; “I told her so or emargination in its upper jaw, not observable in the other when I mude inquiry about this girlish folly-for it was only a branches of the family, and assigned to it the name Alosa. In folly, Ellen-the faaciful dream of a sentimental schoolgirl. other respects the generic characters are identical in both. The The whole sin was in its concealment, in the premeditated de- shad is found in Great Britain and Europe as well as in this ception of him who hid nothing from her. I have not deserved country, but is by no means so great a favorite there as here. this at her hands."

The English shad is a coarse and insipid fish, but there is a Ellen was much moved, but less surprised than her brother ; peculiar species caught in Scotland, called the Alice shad, which

is much esteemed. the scales had not fallen so suddenly from her eyes. Feeling that all might as well be told, that the wisest and most merci

The sbad is sometimes called in Eogland mother of herrings, ful policy towards the sufferer was to complete his disenchant- and sometimes rock herrings, the first of which names may, ment by abundance of testimony, she related her story. perhaps, be intended for mouther of herring3, shad having a disTo her, the scene in which Caroline and Mary Chester had acted agreeable habit of feeding upon the small individuals of their such different parts, was but the commencement of similar de

own class, when crustacea, of which they are most fond, are not velopments, the key to incidents hitherto inexplicable, each readily available. With regard to the young shad, there has illustrative of this heinous defect in the disposition and conduct been much doubt manifested as to what manner of fish they of the misguided girl.

were, and until the year 1828 it was supposed in England that And thus Caroline Manning lost lover and friend, gaining in the whitebait and the young shad were identical. Yarrel detheir place a memory replete with wretchedness and shame un

monstrated the incorrectness of this supposition, and decided availing ; the blind commiseration of those cognisant of the the whitebait to be an independent species, which it has ever punishment, and not the sin ; the displeasure and distrust of since continued to be, to the great satisfaction of certain corporathe few whose esteem she most valued; the lasting reproba- tions of the city of London, who repair annually to the towns tion of him concerning whom, and in whose behalf she had of Greenwich or Blackwall, on the Thames, to partake of a

whitebait dinner. sacrificed more of truth than for any other cause or creature besides. For was it not to screen their loves from the pro

Little is known of the habits of the had beyond the fact of fanation of vulgar remark, that the lie of policy slipped from its periodical migrations to the fresh-water rivers for the purher tongue ere she was alive to its formation in thought? That pose of depositing its spawn, in which respect it differs from she might shine brighter, stand higher in the respect of him the herring and pilchard, which spawn on the coast, in salt and his, was not the tinsel lie of vanity paraded? To spare tion between salt and fresh water. Like the salmon, it lingers

water, and seldom ascend rivers above the mean line of separahim a feather's weight of vexation, an atom of added not the lie of affection been earnest and repeated ? To escape

some time in brackish water before ascending to the fresh-an his anger, to retain his love, was the lie of fright a whit less important fact in its natural bistory. It is well known that the plausible and convincing than the rest ? Truly, her labors had

water at the mouths of rivers is usually warmer by several debeen neither few nor small, and here was their reward! The grees, than that of either the river or the sea in those neighfly in the ointment had fulfilled its mission, and the once exult- borhoods, owing to the want of compenetration of the two ing possessor of the precious casket flurg it from him with sor

liquids, on account of their different densities. The shad finds rowful loathing.

it necessary to resort to this warm water for the development of its spawn,

and accordingly several weeks usually elapse between Would that this tale were all fiction, or that it treated of the the time of its first appearance in the bay and its arrival at the only golden phial thus polluted into a rank offence to those who, the spawning-place. It is at this time that its flesh is in best in this age of gaudy coloring and intense refraction, still cherish, order for the table, and it deteriorates rapidly as the roes as one of the holiest of sentiments, a genuine Heaven-commanded mature and spawniug time approaches. love of truth, for itself and as it is!

Ælian says that the shad have acute organs of hearing, and that they are very susceptible to the sounds of musical instru

ments, by means of which they may sometimes be attracted to THE SHAD FISHERY.

the surface. According to the same writer, they are also affect

ed by thunder, and upon hearing it, while ascending rivers, Ar about this season of the year, sometimes a little earlier, a will turn about and basten to the depths of the ocean. large number of men are actively employed in the shad fishery have said, our information on the subject of the shad's peculiariaround the shores of Long and Staten Islands, and up the river ties is meagre, for notwithstanding that by its peculiar organizaas far as Albany. Large numbers of men and youths migrate tion it is able to live in fresh as well as in salt water, few from the higher waters of the Hudson, and waking froin the attempts have been made that we know of to breed it, and the half torpid state of inactivity in which they have passed the little information we have of its habits is mostly based on the winter, set to work with a zeal and energy worthy of the high- traditions of the fishermen. est cause.

Persons crossing by the ferry to Jersey City may often have Rough and ready customers are these men, and not perhaps wondered for what possible use are those rows of poles just over-refined, but boisterous and jolly on the approach of spring, arieing above the surface of the water. These are part of the their harvest-time, the rest of the year being spent in a more apparatus of the shad fishermen, and form no inconsiderable item

caie, had

As we

in the expenses of the “ boss," costing from three dollars to these there are between twenty and thirty decked smacks which five dollars each, and sometimes as high as ten dollars has been convey the fish from the boats to the wharf. A great number paid for them. They are of great length, varying from forty are also brought up by the cars and steamboats. to a hundred and twenty feet ; the longer ones, which are used On one day in 1858 the number brought to the wharf at for the deep water, are formed of one or two lengths spliced the foot of Barclay street was seventy-one thousand, which were together.

then selling at twelve cents, producing an aggregate sum of The method of setting these poles are as follows: A party eight thousand five hundred dollars. of four or five men row out in the stream to the spot selected by them previously, towing after them another boat laden with poles. The principle on which they select a site is that the

FLOWER LEGENDS. deeper the water the more fish they will catch. The poles are each carefully lowered endwise to the bottom, and when one Among the ancients, the qualities of a tree, the attitude of a end reaches the soft mud at the bottom of the water, a spar is flower, the etymology of its name, inspired the lively imaginafastened to the pole horizontally at some distance above the tion of the men of old with a fable, or embellishments of a water, and upon this the whole boat's crew jump with all their simple history, which received from them a kind of pleasant weight, and the huge pole is speedily sunk to the required acceptance, a willing credence. All the poets who sing well of depth, descending sometimes three feet at a jump. The nets flowers have secured a good hearing; the very names of plants are set against these poles, and when the shad come up with the “smell sweet and blossom in the dust” of old literature and in tide, they are forced against the nets, which are taken up at the almost forgotten songs. The Persians press their sentiments food. This species of net is called the gill net. There are also into the months of flowers, and arrange their bouquets gramtwo other methods of taking the shad, namely, by drift nets and matically. In all civilized nations they are the types and symfykes.

bols of loveliness, innocence and freshness, of unquestioned and The drift nets are made with meshes about an inch square, unquestioning beauty. and their dimensions are usually about two hundred and fifty When Venus first appeared rising from the froth of the sea, fathoms long by five fathoms deep. They are provided with roses were said to have sprung simultaneously from the earth, floats on the one edge and leads on the other. In setting these and the graces hastening to attend her, crowned themselves nets a gang of men row out into the fishing grounds, with the with the novel flower, in honor of the new divinity. The roses net placed on a wooden way or platform, on the boat. One end which then appeared were white ; and none displayed any other of the net is placed in the water, and the boat is then rowed tint till the death of Adonis, when Venus bastening barefooted gently acri:ss the stream until the whole length of the net is to the assistance of her beloved, trod upon a rose which wounded set. This process is one requiring great care and judgment, her with its thorns, and being stained with her blood, ever after otherwise the set will be of no avail. When the whole of the retained the crimson hue. Aet is thus set, a rope is carried from one end of the net to the

Associated with the Narcissus, we nave the following: boat, and by rowing down the stream the net is made to assume

Narcissus was a youth of Bæotia, of whom Tiresias, the sootha slightly curved form.

sayer, foretold that he should live happily until he saw his own The fishes now swimming up the bay in the direction of fresh face, but that would be fatal to him. On account of his surwater encounter the net, and before they are aware of its pre- passing beauty, the nymph Echo become desperately enamored sence run their heads through the meshes and are unable to of him, but he slighted her love, and she pined away with grief extricate themselves, the size of their bodies preventing their till nothing remained of her but her voic?, and even that lost going forward, and their gills presenting an insurmountable the power of utterance beyond repeating the last syllable of a obstacle to their retreat. After drifting in this manner for sintence. Narcissus, heated by the chace, went to drink from some time-often as long as seven or eight hours—the net is a clear calm rivulet, and there, for the first time, beheld his carefully raised from the water, which is done by first lifting own image reflected in the water. He became so fond of himthe end to which the rope is attached and then rowing slowly self, that he would never leave the spot where his beauty bad toward the other end, raising the rest of it on the way. As the been revealed to him, but gazing till he had wasted away, pet is drawn from the water it is coiled, the fishes still hanging changed by the gods into the flower that bears his name. in the meshes, in the large tray in which it was brought from Hyacinthus, being beautiful and accomplished, was so highly the shore, and by this means it is prevented from becoming esteemed by Apollo, that Z-phyrus, incensed at the youth's tangled and torn. Upon reaching the shore the tray is handed coldness and indifference, determined on his destruction. One over to the boys, who immediately set to work to disengage the day, when Apollo and Hyacinthus were playing quoits, Zephyfish, in doing which every fold of the net is examined and every rus, hidden among the fleecy clouds, directed with his breath snarl carefully undone.

the quoit flung by Apollo full upon the head of the unfortunate The fykes are a species of tunnel nets, that is of a conical shape, prince, who instantly fell dead. Great was the grief of the sunwith wings on each side. The shad coming up with the stream god, who, to commemorate his victim by tbeir grace and beauty, go into these tunnels and are unable to return; they are taken caused hyacinths to spring from his blood. out at low water. The fykes are used about Staten Island, the In connection with flowers comes in the lovely legend of the gill nets from the Narrows to Sing Sing, and the drift nets from Rape of Pro:erpine ; who, on the Nysian plain, accompanied by Sing Sing to Albany.

the ocean nymphs, was plucking flowers; she culled the rose, The fish caught in the gill nets are considered the best, those the violet, the crocus, the hyacinth; and beholding a narcissus from the drift nets rank next, and those from the fykes are of rare size and beauty, she stretched out her hand to gather it, esteemed the least.

when the carth opened, and Pluto arising in his golden chariot, Large hauls, sometimes amounting to some hundreds are seized her and bore her away. Ceres, her mother, hears her male during thc height of the season, but they decrease as the cries, but knows not who has stolen her, nor whither she has seasun draws to an end. When the shad grow scarce, when i fled. Helius, however (the sun), betrays the secret, and tells the hauls are smaller, and especially when intelligence is re- her that Jove permitted it. " Then Ceres, disgusted, deserted ceived of the presence of shad up the river, the fishermen leave heaven and dwelt among mortals.” But she would not allow the bay to try their luck further up the stream, ind to the corn to sprout, and threatened with the destruction of bis

1 code ivor tr head off the fish on their way to the spawning subjects on earth, Jove beseeches her to return to heaven, to grounds, but the shad which are taken higher up the river are which she consents on one condition-the restoration of her iu vari ibly smaller than those of the bay.

daughter, who at length returns, but not till she has eaten it The number of men employed in the shad fishery is estimat- pomegrante given her by Pluto; through which she was coined tu le at leist three thousand, irrespective of those on shore, pelled to return and pass a third of the year with her infernal such :1n commission merchants, retail salesmen and the like. husband ; " for Pluto dwelt in Hades." And what is Proser

The fishermen work in gangs composed of six men, headed pine but seeil corn, which being cast into the ground, remains {y :: boss. Euch gang employs three boats, and in aldition to there till it appears upon the surface, and though not delaying

was

i

1

a

to sprout for a third of a year, yet it is about that time from the

AN ORIENTAL PROCESSION. sowing of the grain to its ripened fulness of the ear.

Turning to the Christian era, we find that the priests of the BARBARic splendor is associated with the East, and there can be early church enlisted flowers into their service. They compiled no doubt that climate has much to do with the development a catalogue of flowers for each day, dedicating each to some of magnificence. The frigidity of the North brings man down particular saint on account of its flowering about the time of to the sober reality of broadcloth and tight-fitting garments ; the saint's festival. Every one knows the aspen, ever moving, while the glowing sun of the South is provocative of gorgeous ever trembling in the calmest summer day, the legend of which display and bright-colored vestments. runs as follows: As the angel of death neared the cross on

Milton sayswhich He hung who “considereth the lilies how they grow,” he

High on a throng of gorgeous state, which far dashed the cup of bitterness fuil at its foot; and the aspen that

Outsbone the gems of armies or of Ind ;

Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand, grew near, for out of one of them the cross was made, shud

Showers on her kings barbaric pearls and gold : dering at the daring of the deed, inherited for ever the trembling throes of the dying Deity.

while Shakespeare in his description of Cleopatra, in her burThe Shamrock, the national emblem of one of Britain's fairest nished barge as it proceeded in imperial state down the Nile, les, has its Christian legend thus : St. Patricius, unable to has excelled every poet in describing Fastern splendor. make his hearers comprebend the meaning of the word Trinity,

In nothing do the East so much excel as in their processions, despairingly cast his eyes on the ground in prayer for some

a faint idea of which .may occasionally be caught by the glitmeans whereby he might "lighten the Gentiles,” when spying tering imitation of a grand spectacle at a first-class theatre ; the little trefoil-shamrock at his feet, he plucked it, and hold- but, of course, the natural exhilaration of sunlight, almost beit up on high, pointed to three leaves on one stem as the wildering in iis brightness, and the splendid azure of the sky, emblem of his doctrine, to the easy comprehension of his with the heichtened nature all around is wanting, and only a

faint notion can be got of that wealth of cumbrous grandeur listeners.

To that beautiful little flower the Forget-me-not, with its which oppresses instead of satisfies the mind. blue, like the tint of a summer sky, and its golden eye, bright of the East are astonished at the commonplace bareness of the

That this is the effect of education we all know, since natives as hope, is attached a legend known to most of our readers, grandest of European processions. Dwarganath Tagore observed though it will not be amiss to repeat it. A German knight, to an English friend during his stay in England, that the only with his lady-love, were walking on the banks of the Danube, thing he saw in London at all worthy of being looked at was when the fair one saw the tuft of the myosotis in the stream, the Lord Mayor's show-a mountebank procession, in which and expressed her wish for it. With all chivalrous alacrity, the there is an amusing mixture of incongruous ages. It would knight in full array, plunged in and gathered the prize ; but thus seem as though the feudal and the Eastern had symthe eddies of that treacherous river drew him down in their pathies in common. fatal grasp ; and sinking, he threw the flowers on shore to his

On page 512 we give a picture of an Eastern Indian prince distracted mistress, with the well-known words," Vergiss mein riding through one of his cities ; and it requires little imaginanicht !"_" Forget-me-not.”

tion to realize how widely civilized man differs, not only in his The Yew-tree, stil: to be met in many an English churchyard, moralities, but in his surroundings. That the latter moulds the was not only planted there as a type of immortality, but that former is the lesson taught by all experience, and accounts for the proper wood for bows, when archery was at its height and the comparative ease with which the men of Northern latitudes firearms unknown, might he preserved from the ruthless hand overthrow those of the Southern and Eastern-indeed, of all of the woodman, and cut only at certain times, and by those sültry climes. The indolence of the Oriental has passed into a appointed for that purpose. Our ancestors, even two centuries proverb, as well as his magnificence, and will doubtless remain ago, evinced by the names they gave to many plants the high so to the end of time. estimation in which they held them ; such as rosemary, majoram An English poet says(margery), basil, &c., and the botanical names still in use show

The Eastern satrap rides along, the healing properties ascribed to each-properties which have

In gaudy pride and idlo state, for the most part been lost sight of, though the European

Who on his bidding tremb ing wait ; peasant preserves traditionally the uses and application of some

His dancing-girls and guards are thereto the present day.

And all save Man himself is fai-. The sight of some particular flower will often recall early

Oh, gorgeous earth and purple skies, associations, and it is not many years since that, on the intro

Wbat fatal spell upon ye lies,

That nature shall be Paradise : duction of a single root of the “pale” primrose into the most

While man, who rules this beauteous scene, flourishing of the British colonies by an emigrant, so great a

Should be a thing, s) base and mean? crowd assembled to catch a glimpse of that dear-remembered flower, that a body of police had to guard it on its passage

from

THERE was a beautiful instance of fine horsemanship displayed the ship. What memories of the past, what recollections of shady lanes and spring flowers plucked in early youth, to be at a late review at Vienna, upon the occasion of the fiftieth angiven to loved ones long since passed away, must have been niversary of the establishment of the military order of the Maria

Theresa, when some thirty thousand cavalry were in line. A called up at the sight of that modest flower in a foreign land !

little child in the front row of the spectators, becoming frightInnocent as flower-legends are, they are fast passing away be- ened, rushed forward just as a squadron of hussars were chargfore the so-called “march of civilization.” All the good old ing at full tilt-swooping down with maddening velocity, nay, “ legendary lore” is becoming like the mistletoe of the Druids almost on the child. Terror paralyzed alike the spectators and oak, almost lost.

the mother of the child, while the lovely and amiable Empress

almost fainted with horror, for the child's destruction seemed They are flown, Beactisul fictions or our fathers; wovo

inevitable. The little one was almost under the horse's feetIo superst tion's web, wh n time was young,

another instant would have sealed its doom-wheu a bussar, And fondly 'ore l and cherished; they are flown

without lessening his speed or loosening his hold, threw bimself along his horse's neck, and seizing the child placed it in safety, in front of his saddle, without so much as changing the pace or

breaking the alignment in the least. A hundred thousand CHARITY IN JUDGMENT. - Never let it be forgotten that there voices hailed with pride and joy the deed, while two voices oould is scarcely a siugle moral action of a single human being of but sob their gratitude ; the one a mother's, the other that of which otber mer have such a knowledge—its ultimate grounds, her sympathizing and beloved Empress. A proud moment its surrounding incidents, and the real determining causes of its that must have been for the hussar when his Emperor, taking merits—as to warrant their pronourcing a conclusive judg- the enamelled cross of merit, attached it to his breast—a proud ment.

moment alike for the sovereign and the man.

The foremost of a tinselled throng

Before the wand of science.