ars; but it requires care in pruning, as it produces its
fruit generally at the points of the branches, which should therefore
never be shortened. Phillips says: 'Cherries bear the knife worse than
any other sort of fruit-trees, and we would therefore impress on the
pruner, that though the fruit was won by the sword, it may be lost by
the knife!' The other species of cherry is the bird-cherry (_Cerasus
padus_), a pretty little smooth-branched tree, with doubly-serrate,
acute leaves, and beautiful white blossoms, which grow in long-shaped
racemes, hanging in pendulous clusters, and forming an elegant
ornament to the hedges and woods in May. It grows chiefly in Scotland
and the north of England, where the peasants call the fruit, which is
small, black, and harsh, 'hagberries.' This fruit can scarcely be
called edible, but it gives an agreeable flavour to brandy; and in
Sweden and other northern countries is sometimes added to home-made
wines. There is, or was, a feast celebrated in Hamburg, called the
Feast of Cherries, in which troops of children parade the streets with
green boughs ornamented with cherries, to commemorate a triumph
obtained in the following manner:--'In 1432, the Hussites threatened
the city of Hamburg with immediate destruction, when one of the
citizens, named Wolf, proposed that all the children in the city, from
seven to fourteen years of age, should be clad in mourning, and sent
as suppliants to the enemy. Procopius Nasus, chief of the Hussites,
was so touched with this spectacle, that he received the young
suppliants, regaled them with cherries and other fruits, and promised
them to spare the city. The children returned crowned with leaves,
holding cherries, and crying "Victory!"'

THINGS TALKED OF IN LONDON.

_September 1852._

Progress, in one or other of the many forms in which it has of late
presented itself, is now the prime subject of talk; and if the
progress be real, it would not be easy to find a more satisfactory
cause of conversation. Go-ahead people take much interest in the ocean
steam-boat question; and now that the Collins line of steamers is
supported by a grant from the United States government, double the
amount of that paid to the British line, it is said that we are to be
irrecoverably beaten in the passage of the 'ferry,' as Jonathan calls
it, between Liverpool and New York. East sailing is no doubt an
essential desideratum in these