Part 3

The frog is a good instance of the confusion that constantly arises from applying the same words to designate different animals in different countries. The common frog of the continent is the green frog (_Rana esculenta_), while our common frog is their red frog (_Rana temporaria_). The former is of much more aquatic habits than the latter, and is not known in Ireland. I once made an attempt to introduce it here, and when in Paris directed a basket of 100 frogs to be made up for me, giving special instructions that no _common_ frogs were to be amongst them, which order I found on returning was obeyed as understood in that country, and not a single green frog was in my lot, though I intended to have none other. As articles of food there seems to be little difference, but the preference is given to the green frog. The vulgar opinion that Frenchmen eat frogs for want of better food is quite erroneous; the contrary is the fact; for a fricassee of these animals is an expensive dish in France, and is considered a delicacy. Its chief merit appears to me to be its freedom from strong flavour of any kind; a delicate stomach may indulge in it without fear of a feeling of repletion. In this country the foolish prejudices which forbid the use of many attainable articles of wholesome food, applies with force to frogs. Our starving peasants loath what princes of other nations would banquet on, and leave to badgers, hedgehogs, buzzards, herons, pike and trout, sole possession of a very nutritive and pleasant article of food. When devoured by the heron, it is in part converted into a source of wonder to the unenlightened; for the curious masses of whitish jelly found on the banks of rivers and other moist places, and said by the country people to be fallen stars, are, so far as I have been able to observe, masses of immature frog spawn in a semi-digested state; and they seemed to me to have been rejected by herons, just as we see hawks and owls reject balls of hair, feathers, or other indigestible portions of their prey.

While on the subject of eating frogs, one of many of my adventures with the animal comes upon me with something like a feeling of compunction. When I was at school, it happened on a great occasion that a party of the ‘big boys’ were allowed to sit up much beyond the ordinary time of retiring. Finding it cold, it was proposed to adjourn to the kitchen, poke up the fire, and make warm before going to bed. Proceeding accordingly, we were startled by the repetition of some heavy sounds on the floor, and on getting up a blaze we discovered a frog of gigantic proportions jumping across the room. He was seized, and a council being held upon him, it was resolved that he should be killed, roasted, and eaten; and this awful sentence was at once put into execution--the curious for curiosity, the braggarts for bravado, and the cowards, lest they be thought so, partaking of the repast. We discovered next day that the unfortunate devoured had been for three years a settled denizen of the kitchen, where he dealt nightly havoc on the hordes of crickets and cockroaches it contained. I have had for three years a frog in confinement where his food is not very abundant, and he has grown proportionally slowly, being still of a very diminutive size. Linnæus and others distinguished ours as the mute frog, believing it did not possess a voice. They were mistaken: you hear our captive, when I press his back, give utterance to his woes; but if you desire to attend his concert, get up some bright night in spring, seek out his spawning place about the witching hour, and you will then hear sounds, of strange power, which seem to make the earth on which you stand to tremble. On investigation you will find it to proceed from an assembled congregation of frogs, each pronouncing the word _Croak_, but dwelling, as a musician would say, with a thrill on the letter _r_. When speaking of the tadpole, I forgot to allude to the fact, that recent experimenters find that by placing them in covered jars, the developement of the frog is arrested. The tadpole will continue to grow until it reaches a size as great as that of an adult frog. This has been attributed by the discoverer to a withdrawal of the agency of light; but it strikes me he has, in his anxiety to prop a theory, lost sight of the true reason, which appears to be, that while he excluded the young animal from light, he also put it in such a situation as to compel it to breathe alone by its gills, and afford it no opportunity for the developement of its lungs, and so it retained of necessity its fish-like functions. As you are probably more of a sportsman than a naturalist, you have observed in rail shooting, your pointer, after a show of setting, roll on the ground: if you had examined, the chances are you would have found a dead frog of no very pleasing perfume. Why the dog so rolled, I cannot say, unless it be, that he like other puppies wished to smear his hair with nasty animal odours. I have now I think worked out your patience; and though I could dwell much longer on the subject, and eke out much from ancient lore, I will end by a less pompous quotation of part of a well-known song--

‘A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no.’

And the catastrophe,

‘A lily white duck came and gobbled him up.’

Pray apply the moral. Had the said frog had his mind cultivated, and had he been acquainted with nature, he would not have engaged in a thoughtless courtship, that could have no good end, nor have disobeyed the voice of experience, and so met with the fate that awaited him. You may now go on your walk; and if a common frog cannot interest you, take care of the lily white duck.”

B.

GARDENS FOR THE LABOURING CLASSES.

BY MARTIN DOYLE.

The advantage which the working man, possessed of a little patch of land at a moderate rent, has over him who is without any, or holds it at a rate greatly above its value (a common case with the Irish labourer), can only be fully understood by those who have narrowly observed in England the respective conditions of the field labourer, with his allotment of a rood or half a rood of garden, and the workman in a town factory. It is very obvious that the garden gives healthful recreation to the family, young and old, who have always some little matter to perform in it, and if they really like the light work of cultivating kitchen vegetables, fruits and flowers, they combine pleasure with profit. Here is something on which they can always fall back as a resource if a day’s work for hire is interrupted--they can make up at home for so much lost time--the children have something rational and useful to do, instead of _blackguarding_ about roads and streets--they help to raise the potatoes and cabbages, &c., which with prudent management materially assist their housekeeping.

The benefits which have arisen to the labourer and all the rural poor in England who have obtained from ten to forty perches of garden from land-proprietors or farmers, or those who have the privilege of encroaching upon commons for the purpose, is truly surprising. Much of this is attributable to the exertions of the London Labourers’ Friend Society, who, in an age when party violence divides man from his fellows, and excites from some quarter or other opposition to every system designed for the common good, have quietly but steadily pursued their own way.

I have had occasion more than once to press upon the attention of those who have the disposal of land in Ireland, the great benefits which would result to our poor if they would act upon the principle which actuates this benevolent society; and strange though it be, the fact is, that some landlords possessing estates both in England and Ireland are at pains to secure to the English labourer advantages which they take no trouble to provide for the labourer on the soil of Ireland.

I have referred to the _principle_ which guides the society. It is, that the labouring classes should have such allotment of land as will not interfere with their general course of fixed labour, nor render them at all independent of it, but merely give them employment during those hours which they have at command in the intervals of their more profitable occupations. I have myself seen innumerable instances of the happy effects of giving to the labourer or _little_ mechanic even half a rood of land, which he generally has in the highest state of productiveness, and from it his table is frequently supplied; while gooseberry and currant trees, in luxuriant bearing, and flowers _close to the road_, and without a higher fence than a paling or hedge three feet high, attest the high degree of honesty and decorum which the habit of having such productions in this unprotected way undoubtedly generates.

The local poor-rates have in all instances been greatly lessened by this mode of enabling labourers to help themselves; and if in this country the compulsory system of providing food or employment for the sick or hungry poor had prevailed long ago as in England, the landlords would have found means to guard against those dreadful realities of destitution with which we have been familiarized. Not that it is desirable to give a very open invitation to the parish manger, for this destroys the feeling of self-dependence and weakens the motives to economy and industry. But there should have long since been more _practical_ exertion to place the labourer within reach of reasonable comforts.

What are the circumstances of tens of thousands of working people in the great manufacturing towns of Great Britain, in which no land can be given to them? Families so circumstanced wear out their health and existence in unvarying labour--not requiring much immediate exertion of strength, it is true; but wearisome from its continued sameness, which gives no exercise whatever to the mind.

The many pictures presented to us of the mental and physical condition of a great portion of our fellow-creatures kept at the slave-like labour of the factory, are appalling, and I fear they are true: _this_ is unquestionably so, that children from nine to twelve years of age (and many _have_ been worked from the age of _five_) are locked up for six days in the week, for twelve hours every day, in a warm artificial temperature, instead of breathing the free air of heaven; they are looked upon as parts of the machinery, and must move accordingly; with this difference, that while human genius is always at work to devise improvements in inanimate complications, and to keep them in the highest state of order, the condition of the living soul and body is in too many instances neglected altogether. There is a wear and tear of human life, and an accumulation of moral corruption, which it is frightful to think of.

When work is in good demand, the joint labours of the parent and their children earn considerable weekly wages. There is then plenty of bread and butter and some bacon for the children, and beer and gin besides for their parents; but nothing is saved for less prosperous times, and the family is not eventually the better for the short run of high earnings.

The want of a bit of land is more serious than many will believe, not only in its effect upon health, but upon moral conduct also.

Among some facts published by the London Labourers’ Friend Society, are the details of the complete reformation of twelve men, who had been severally committed to gaol for different offences of a very serious nature, in consequence of their obtaining portions of land, varying from two acres and a half to one rood; and I may add, that out of eighty occupants of land-allotments in the same neighbourhood, there has been only one case of robbery within seven years.

Some of the foregoing remarks tend to show that the Irish poor would not gain in happiness by the establishment of the modern British factory system among them, unless the advantage of a _little_ land could be afforded them at the same time. A proof of this exists in the altered circumstances of the people who were once employed in the domestic manufacture of linen in Ulster. These had a patch of land, to which they could at pleasure turn from the loom and the reel; and as the labour of their children was not prematurely demanded, they could enjoy the green fields or the garden, and be employed in school, with a certainty of substantial food (instead of bad coffee and adulterated tea), until they attained the age of thirteen or fourteen, when they could take an active part in the labour of the loom.

When field or garden labour can be combined with factory work, the miseries of the manufacturing system are much removed, and manufactures in such a case become serviceable under judicious and moral management: the present state of the town of Lancaster affords some illustration of this. It verges on a purely agricultural district, and now contains both manufacturing and farm labourers. Upon the introduction of cotton manufactures (and half the few mills now existing there were established only seven years ago), the wages of each individual workman were rendered less than they had been before, _but_ the earnings of his _whole family_ increased considerably. Children before that period were burdensome to their parents, who when making application for parish aid pleaded the number of their family. Now children are sources of increased comfort to such parents; and even step-children, grand-children, nephews, and nieces, who were formerly pressed into the list of mouths to be fed from the parish rates, are now studiously kept out of sight, because they earn wages, and contribute to the support of those who would otherwise shift them off their hands. On the _whole_, those with families are better off than if without them; and the children themselves, except in times of very hurried work, and allowing for occasional abuses by employers and parents over-working them, are better off than formerly. The comparatively good state of the Lancaster operatives arises front the circumstance, that in times of difficulty in the factories many of the work people have farm work to turn to, and numbers of them have allotments of their own.

In proportion as the labouring poor of any community are deprived of the advantage of gardens, is a decrease in their health, happiness, and moral state. Of this, as regards another nation, I have a proof before me in the letter of Mr T. Bastard, who in a communication from Germany (I shall only give a portion of it) to the editor of the Labourers’ Friend Magazine, says, “In regard to the allotment system in particular, as a mode of giving the labourer ‘a stake in the hedge,’ I have learnt nothing here which induces me to change my opinion of its value: on the contrary, I feel rather confirmed in the belief, that where population and capital exist in a high degree, no other practicable mode has yet been proposed, so calculated to prevent the labouring classes from falling into the degraded position, with all its train of ill consequences, of being mere machines in the hands of the capitalists; or if they have already so fallen, so adapted to restore them to a higher moral state.

I believe that a much greater proportion of the labouring classes of Saxony possess some ‘stake in the hedge’ than those of England. … I am sorry, however, to add, that Saxony appears to me, by the increase that is taking place in her population, and by her efforts to push her manufactures, to be approaching the evil which we have long suffered under in England, that of having the sole interest of a great portion of her people dependent entirely on the amount of weekly wages that they can obtain.

During three months of last year I resided in a village at some distance from Dresden, and in every sense a rural one, the occupations of the inhabitants, of which there were between seven and eight hundred living in about one hundred houses, being confined to agriculture, with the exception of some handicraftsmen, such as shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, &c. and a few who worked in some stone quarries. Besides two considerable estates belonging to two persons who stood in the position of esquires, and shared the manorial privileges, the land was much divided, two or three persons having as much as 140 acres, but the greater part only from one to five acres, which were held under a sort of feudal tenure; and all the cottages had at least gardens. The appearance of general comfort and happiness certainly exceeded that which I have ever seen in an English village of the same kind and size. The inhabitants were healthy-looking: their houses were all good substantial ones, provided (at least several that I entered) with decent furniture, and they were invariably well clothed. The two latter points are remarkable in Saxony. I have never seen a row of cottages, or rather _huts_ here, and very rarely a raggedly-dressed person. I will here add, also, that the Saxons who visit _rich_ England are particularly struck with the numbers of persons they see in rags and tatters. I found, however, that there were several persons, and even families, who had merely lodgings in the cottages without any land, and these were invariably in bad circumstances. In fact, they were dependent solely on wages; and here was the commencement of that evil to which I have before adverted, and for which I can think of no other effectual remedy than the allotment system.”

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IRISH BRAVERY AND HONOUR.--On the surprise of Cremona by Prince Eugene in 1702, when Villeroy, the French general, most of the officers, military chests, &c. were taken, and the German horse and foot in possession of the town, excepting one place only, the Po Gate, which was guarded by two Irish regiments commanded by O’Mahony and Bourk, before the Prince commenced the attack there, he sent to expostulate with them, and show them the rashness of sacrificing their lives where they could have no probability of relief, and to assure them if they would enter into the imperial service, they should be directly and honourably promoted. The first part of this proposal they heard with impatience, the second with disdain. “Tell the Prince,” said they, “that we have hitherto preserved the honour of our country, and that we hope this day to convince him that we are worthy of his esteem. While one of us exists, the German eagle shall not be displayed upon these walls. This is our deliberate resolution, and we will not admit of further capitulation.” The attack was commenced by a large body of foot, supported by five thousand cuirassiers, and after a bloody conflict of two hours the Germans retreated: the Irish pursued their advantage, and attacked them in the streets. Before evening the enemy were expelled the town, and the general and the military chests recovered.

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Printed and Published every Saturday by GUNN and CAMERON, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.--Agents:--R. GROOMBRIDGE, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London. SIMMS and DINHAM, Exchange Street, Manchester. C. DAVIES, North John Street, Liverpool. J. DRAKE, Birmingham. M. BINGHAM, Broad Street, Bristol. FRASER and CRAWFORD, George Street, Edinburgh. DAVID ROBERTSON, Trongate, Glasgow.