limbs. Smokers, especially young smokers, a word in your ear. That saliva which you draw abnormally from the pores of your cheeks, and squirt upon the ground-sometimes, when the wind is contrary, on me-that saliva is a solution wisely and kindly provided by your Maker to aid the stomach in its appointed task of converting food into blood and flesh and bones. That precious liquid is needed within your own body, and it is not needed on our floors and railway carriages: our floors and railway carriages would be decidedly pleasanter wanting it. It hurts you to want it, and it is not agreeable to us to get it. He was a great man-they should erect a monument to his memory-who said, "You complain of your stomachs; your stomachs have more cause to complain of you."

A clever young man who liked tobacco, and therefore cultivated arguments to justify its use, attempted once to turn aside this blow, which without compunction I was dealing on his darling. "Granted," he said, "that smoking drains off vast quantities of saliva which is generated in the fauces as a necessary ingredient of the gastric juice, such is the profuse fecundity of nature, that the more you draw off to pour upon the ground, the more springs up in the multitudinous pores of the mouth; so that while he who saves all has nothing over, he who wastes most prodigally has no lack." I replied on the spot by telling a story; and I have since been informed by men of science that there is weight enough in my tale to crush the specious argument drawn from the redundancy of nature. I shall submit the facts to my readers, and leave them to judge for themselves. A long-headed, sharp-witted old man, Adam Bell by name, who fished a portion of the river Earn for salmon, and farmed a piece of land on the adjoining bank, gave me long ago a graphic description of a tea-party at which he had once been taken in. A new tenant had taken possesion of a neighbouring farm, and, to celebrate his

the mistress of the house was beyond all precedent liberal in the distribution of her tea. "Hand in your cups, gentlemen," she said, with a benignant smile, as she filled the tea-pot once more from the boiling kettle, "hand in your cups again; there is plenty here." "I did not thank her,” said Adam aside, with one eye sarcastically closed, "I did not thank her for her tea, for by that time I could have seen to spear a salmon seven fathom deep in it." Thus it may be conceded that, after all the saliva that a smoker spills on the ground, there is still some left to go into his stomach, but the oft-watered remnant is thin and pithless.

We have not wandered from our subject; indeed, there is nothing in which we are disposed to take greater pride than in the strict accuracy of our logic in these dissertations. We would rather lose the opportunity of saying a good thing than introduce it in an irregular way. Our subject at present is Drainage; and while we expatiate on the beneficent drainage of the earth, we are bound to notice also the mischievous drainage of man.

But draining is, in some forms, healthful to man, as well as to the ground he cultivates.

When water is allowed to accumulate in a

field, and not drained off, the soil becomes sour and unproductive. I think I have seen some people standing much in need of an analogous operation. In some money hoarded, and in some affections pent up, constitute the stagnant water that damages the ground. Open plenty of drains to let your guineas and your love run off, and don't fear a famine as you see them flowing.

God will open windows in heaven, and rain down plenty to supply their place. Keep the sap cir

culating in your little world, as He does in his

great one, and you will more certainly please

Him than by closing the gates, and keeping all you get.

Turn now to the parallel and converse process

In regions where rain is rarer than in the

man

British Isles, one of the chief cares of the culti

vator is to get his fields watered in a time of drought. For this purpose streams are inter

they may spread the water on the thirsty ground. Small streams are carried off bodily for this purpose, and portions of larger rivers are seduced into the service of the agriculturist. The pasture and hay-fields of Switzerland, for example, are veined like a human hand or the leaf of a tree by small ducts, which convey the water in everdiminishing bulk as the subdivision proceeds to every portion of the surface. You may see from time to time a solitary peasant stalking through the meadows with a large slate in his hand, plunging it into the sod, successively across each of the miniature rivers, compelling them for the time to overflow their banks and flood the surrounding space. The district of Colorado, in the centre of the American continent, could not, it is said, be successfully cultivated without artificial irrigation. They intercept the streams as they descend from the base of the Rocky Mountains, and train them on the valleys. Some of the canals are twenty-two miles long. The average cost to the cultivator is said to be about two shillings per acre per annum. The grain crops thus watered are abundant in quantity, and of excellent quality. Egypt, the greatest grain-producing country of antiquity, has in all ages been, and still is, entirely dependent for its fertility on irrigation by artificial canals. One peculiarity of the Egyptian system, dictated by natural conditions, distinguishes it broadly from all others. Instead of intercepting a natural flow, and leading the water in a new direction, it prepares reservoirs above the level of the river, and waits till the inundation comes to fill them.

The process has been carried out on a vast scale of late years by the British Government in India.

Canals hundreds of miles in length, and of dimensions equal to those of important rivers in this country, have been constructed, and are now carrying fertility to tracts that formerly were desert. The work has incidentally, it is said, struck another blow at the root of the national idolatry; for the multitude can scarcely be persuaded to rest so peacefully as before in the belief that the Ganges is a god, after he has consented meekly to flow in the channel which the heretical English made, and that, too, although a hundred barefooted Brahmins besought the

his dignity, and leave the impious ditches dry. The law of gravity and the spades of the navvies combined were too many for the Brahmins and their god. The mighty and mysterious Gunga, under the application of human skill, is silently accomplishing its Maker's purpose in the earth, all heedless of the dark superstitions which have for ages flourished on its brim. Thus a right understanding and use of the Creator's works may open up a way for the spread of his Word: the living water may yet flow over India in the wake of that beneficent material stream.

The Ganges, the Godavery, and other great continental streams, have been compelled to part with a portion of their ample volumes, that it may be sent on the blessed errand of converting the wilderness into a fruitful field. Considerable progress has already been made; but the capacity of the rivers, on the one hand, to give, and of the scorched plains, on the other, to receive, is so vast, that imagination fails to represent the magnitude of the result when the work shall have been completed. We have not yet replenished the earth; we have not nearly reached the limit of its productiveness,

I once heard a missionary from Southern Africa narrating a curious incident connected with praetical irrigation. The missionaries, while they taught the natives scriptural truth, endeavoured also to communicate to them the arts of civilized life. With this view they obtained for themselves a tract of ground, capable of bearing crops, but, in its natural state, liable to destructive droughts. The unskilful inhabitants, finding that the grain crops on this account were extremely uncertain, had abandoned the effort in despair. Having secured their ground and built their houses, the missionaries made it their next care to bring water from a neighbouring river, that they might be in a condition to counteract the effects of the dry season when it should arrive. With this view, they hired a band of the natives, put tools in their hands, and directed them to di a ditch for the river, along a zig-zag, circuitous tracing, and terminating conveniently on the upper verge of the farm. A small portion, next the river, was left uncut till the last. After all was ready, a gala was prepared and a procession formed

to inaugurate the work. Under the direction of the missionaries, the Caffre navvies soon dug out the sods that remained, and admitted the water of the river into the new canal. Away went the water along its unwonted course, turning every corner as if it knew the way: away went the Caffres, dancing and screaming after it like a band of children. Neither the stream nor the accompanying natives stopped till both brought up exactly where they were wanted, on the edge of the missionaries' farm. The ground was abundantly moistened, and the crops, untouched by the sun, went on to perfection. The natives, clever enough to put two things together, but baffled by the intervention of a third, reasoned among themselves, If the river by means of a long crooked ditch waters the field of the missionaries, it will in the same manner water ours. Away they went, and repeated the process. They dug a canal from the river to their own field, giving it many graceful curves, that it might be exactly like the work of their teachers, and leaving, like them, a small portion on the lip of the river till the last. When all was ready, they opened this portion with a good deal of pomp, and watched eagerly to see the water running along their well-prepared canal. But, alas! the water would not run. The poor fellows had made their ditch run up-hill, and the water refused to go.

I think I have seen some people, not Caffres, digging with great labour a channel for their trade, without regard to the law of gravity, and then wondering at their own bad luck when the stream of prosperity refused to flow.

In the valley of the Adige, among the Tyrolese, I have seen a system of irrigation well adapted to the nature of the country, combining efficiency with simplicity, and contributing, moreover, to the picturesqueness of the landscape. The valley is narrow; but wherever a level field intervenes between the root of the mountains and the stream, it is all pressed into service as a vineyard. A little higher up than the cultivated spot, a waterwheel, of slender construction but large circumference, is poised over the torrent, with a few inches of its rim beneath the water. Driven by the force of the stream, it lifts a bucket filled with water attached to each arm, and, in its revolution, pours the contents into a trough. Thence the

refreshing stream is conducted into the vineyard, and poured over all its surface. The axle of the water-wheel is a tall, straight pine-tree, cut from the neighbouring mountains. The wheel is hung on its thicker extremity; and the rest of the tree, stretching as it tapers far up the bank, is employed as a lever to raise or lower the bearings with the rising and falling of the water in the stream.

In the soaking flats of Holland you may observe the counterpart process equally ingenious and, in its place, equally useful. The water is collected in vast bulk into wide, open ditches, with its surface only a few inches lower than the surface of the ground; and the problem is to persuade the water so situated to rise and run away. A wind-mill is erected at a convenient spot, and attached to a wheel, like the Tyrolese irrigator in form, but of much smaller dimensions, with its rim dipping a few inches into the ditch. As the distended sails of the wind-mill gyrate in the air, the dripping water-wheel goes round prosaically on its axis, lapping up the water to a height from which it will consent to flow towards the sea. Along with a certain measure of similitude, the two processes present a double contrast. Here there is too much water on the land, and the industrious machine labours to draw it off: there the land has not enough of water, and the industrious machine labours to spread it on. In Holland, the wind is employed to raise the water; and in the Tyrol, the water is employed to raise the wind.

The long-continued and severe drought of some late seasons, has suggested to some agriculturists the propriety of a general system of irrigation for this country under the control of Government. With our plentiful supply of the raw material and our great skill in all kinds of construction, the work might be undertaken with a good prospect of success. It may, indeed, be urged, in disparagement of the scheme, that in our moist climate the risk of a scorching season is not great. But this consideration is, in part at least, balanced by another, that with our limited territory and dense population, the value of land is greater here than anywhere else in the world; and consequently the gain is greater if, even at intervals, a season's crop, which would have been

partially lost, can, by irrigation, be completely saved. On the whole, considering the comparative rarity of lengthened drought in these islands, the vast fields, both in the East and the West, from which in years of scarcity we may draw supplies,

and the immense facilities for rapid transportation presented in modern times by railways and ocean steamships, it is not probable that the expense of irrigation will ever, on a great scale, be incurred in our happy and sappy land.

HE winter of 1871-72 will be long remembered, marked as it is in the book of memory by the sad lines that record the passing of a fatal epidemic over our communities and congregations. The number of promising young men who were suddenly cut off by it was a fact much remarked. Solemn and touching incidents of this kind came under my own notice, but the one I record on this page was not directly connected with my own flock. The subject of it had grown up in our neighbourhood, and had engaged the Christian interest of a dear friend of mine, who called my attention to the story, when grace and an early death had finished it. Peter, the gardener's lad, as we called him, was the eldest boy in the family of an honest labouring couple who rejoice, through their tears, over his memory. From a child he had something about him unusually attractive. When grown up to his early manhood, he was strikingly graceful both in his face and figure; his mind and character were naturally pleasing, and when grace had taken possession of his heart, his look was like a bright gleam of sunshine. More than a year and a half ago he went out from his rural home beside us to one of the larger manufacturing towns. There the Lord's mercy arrested him, and there, like a cluster soon ripe, he was gathered by the Husbandman into his own bosom.

The great change came to Peter's soul not long after he left our district for the town alluded to. It was during a series of evangelistic meetings there that he was first thoroughly awakened, and as he told the minister who waited on him in his last hours, the question of John xxi. 15 was particularly used from the mouth of that minister to drive the arrow into his heart-"Lovest thou me?" But the story of his conversion will be best told by his own letter to his parents on the occasion. We give its simple and graphic sentences unaltered:

"48 SOUTH T-STREET, Saturday night.

"DEAR PARENTS,-I have news for you such as you never before received from my pen, and I request of you, one and all, to praise the Lord for these news. The Lord has been dealing graciously with me for some time past, so that there was no rest for my mind, especially when I committed sin either by word or thought or

action. I went about praying now and then, but could not pray to please myself, and often forgot to pray altogether; but I was daily taking less pleasure in sin, and got afraid of it. I then got into the company of some godly men, showed them my difficulty, but was little better. I got a little book from one of them and read it, and came to the conclusion that there was nothing there that applied to my case, and resolved to attend the church and pray that I might get a deeper conviction of sin to make me feel my burden heavier, that I might pray more earnestly to get a sight of myself as God saw me; but all to no purpose. As I got on my boots on Sabbath for the first time after my feet being sore, and went to church, I prayed that God would bless the preaching of the Word to me. I went out at night to a prayer-meeting, and met one of the men I spoke of, and he spoke to a missionary who was there about me. So he conversed with me, and a minister who was preaching came and took me aside, and questioned me for some time. I told him that if God should require of me my soul that night, I would be launched intowhere-ah! into that place where God has forgotten to be gracious. But I thought it did not give me enough of concern yet. So after he had questioned me, he said that I must ask God to give me to realize my position. So I went home and listened to the man who lodges with me reading a book, and as I was going to bed he read a passage which runs thus:-'If ye regard iniquity in your hearts, the Lord will not hear you.' So I prayed that if I was regarding it in my heart that He would show it to me. And this he in his unspeakable mercy condescended to do. I then prayed with all my heart to take it away out of my sight. I no sooner asked than it was done-but I could not believe. I could not trust Jesus with my soul, and I tossed myself hither and thither on my bed, and prayed and wrestled with God to give me faith to trust in him and to cast my burden on him, and in my mind's eye I saw Jesus standing beside me urging me to take a pardon he held out to me. I could not believe it was to me, but the Holy Spirit said to me, 'You make God a liar then." The thought terrified me, and the passage came home to me 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.' I thought I saw Jesus on the Cross as if he was slain again for me, so I looked up to him and cried for mercy; and he came again with a sheet of

white paper, holding it out to me, and I tried to see what was written on it but could not, so I got it into my hand (the hand of faith) and read

'It is finished.'

And oh! it is indescribable, the joy. I then said, 'Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief,' and came out of my bed and went on my knees, and praised and thanked God for his mercy as vouchsafed to me, and sang in my heart for joy. Dear father, mother, brothers, and sisters, there is no joy in these worldly pleasures. They only disgrace the name, and they bring no peace. But the peace which a simple trust in Jesus brings truly passeth all understanding, and I would only spoil the beauty of it to attempt to explain it...Now, dear parents, do not say, I doubt the truth of that statement of Peter's, but the rather thank God and give him all the glory. I cease not daily to pray for you all, to the end that you may be saved. I might have wrote sooner; but if I had wrote, for instance, on Monday night, I would have been afraid that I was laying a stumbling-block before you, because you might have come to the conclusion that it had been only a passing idea. But, thanks be to God, it is not. He is giving me to realize that I am not my own, but that I am bought with a price, therefore I must work for him who came to this world to endure the wrath of God, the cursed death of the cross, and to pour out his life-blood for me, and who has received me after trampling under foot that Blood, and uttering blasphemies against his holy name. I can only cry out with wonder and admiration

'O matchless love, to bleed and die

For such a guilty one as I;

O thou my soul, bless thou the hour

In which I came to know His power.'

When I write this, I go to a throne of grace to lay my wishes before one who both hears and answers prayer.

So help me God.

"Good-bye, and may the God of heaven send an answer speedily to my humble petitions. Amen.Your ever loving son, PETER.

"P.S.-Please send this to M. with the joyful news."

Another letter to his parents, written with reference to the Sacrament of the Supper, breathes the same spirit of holy ardour in the faith of his Lord, and anxiety for the salvation of his kindred.

"Peter's short life in Christ upon earth," adds the pastor and friend above alluded to, "seemed to be unbroken sunshine. There was no groaning and sighing, no gloom and despondency. He seemed like a little child without hesitation to believe whatever his heavenly Father told him. Particularly he appeared to enter into the full enjoyment of regarding the Lord as good, and only good; not only in grace but also in providence. Whatever the Lord sent was good and right, and matter

of heartfelt thankfulness. When he was out of a situation, a lady said to him, 'It is a pity, Peter, you have no employment.' To which he replied, 'Oh, it's no pity at all. If the Lord says, Peter, you are not to get a situation for some time yet, I'm quite willing to wait.'"

Besides this practical faith, so simple and yet matured, he had a great thirst for the Word. His face when he entered the church and sat down seemed to light up the place where he sat. To meet him was refreshing. "No wonder he was invariably happy, for he had always something to say about the Master." The same friend con

tinues :

"On the Saturday evening, two days before he 'fell asleep,' a message was left at my house, that he was not expected to live. I at once set out for the L-- hospital. Finding my way with difficulty in the darkness to the gate and inquiring for him, I was asked if I wished to see him. I replied, 'I would like to see him if he is conscious;' and to ascertain this, sent a message to him by the nurse. 'Tell Mr. M- -,' he said, 'if he likes to come in I'll be glad to see him; but if not, tell him I'm going on my way rejoicing.

"I entered the long ward, and what a spectacle presented itself to my gaze! On the right side and on the left lay men who recently were hale and strong, but now reduced to extremities by this terrible malady. Only one face in that long ward was recognizable, the others were truly humiliating and pitiable to look upon. When Peter was pointed out to me, being taken to his bedside, I said

"Well, Peter, how are you?'

"Oh, I am quite well,' he said, making the words 'quite well' very emphatic.

"You mean you are quite well spiritually,' I said, 'for you are very ill in your body.'

"Yes, but I'm all right as to that; I am in the Lord's hands.'

"Would you not like to be restored to health?' "Well, I'm wearying to go home; but if the Lord pleases to restore me, I'll be glad to live to serve him.' Again he added, I'm just praying that my death may be blessed to my friends.'

"Then, instead of my needing to comfort him with texts assuring him of Christ's presence and unchanging love toward him, he expressed the gratitude and confidence of his heart in the most glowing manner by quoting several precious portions of God's Word. We repeated between us the hymn, 'For ever with the Lord;' then I engaged in prayer, much of it being thanksgiving for God's exceeding great goodness to his dear servant. How eagerly would most have desired to be restored to health-to be delivered from dying in such circumstances! There he lay sick and nearly blind; scarcely able to swallow even a mouthful of water; surrounded by men in the same pitiable condition; he, a youth just entering upon manhood, when life is most enjoyable; his a loving heart surrounded by strangers; a warm, outspoken Christian surrounded, so far as I