al of
the field having cried out, "Let them pass, let them pass," the seconds
retired. The combatants instantly mounted their horses, and the contest
commenced.--_Foreign Review_.

* * * * *

SUPERSTITION RELATING TO BEES.

On further inquiry, it has been found that the superstitious practice,
formerly mentioned,[1] of informing the bees of a death that takes place
in a family, is very well known, and still prevails among the lower orders
in this country. The disastrous consequence to be apprehended from
noncompliance with this strange custom is not (as before stated) that the
bees will desert the hive, but that they will dwindle and die. The manner
of communicating the intelligence to the little community, with due form
and ceremony, is this: to take the key of the house, and knock with it
three times against the hive, telling the inmates, at the same time, that
their master or mistress, &c., (as the case may be,) is dead!

[1] See page 75.

Mr. Loudon says, when in Bedfordshire lately, "we were informed of an old
man who sung a psalm last year in front of some hives which were not doing
well, but which he said would thrive in consequence of that ceremony. Our
informant could not state whether this was a local or individual
superstition."--_Magazine of Natural History_.

* * * * *

NOTES OF A READER

LAW REFORMS.

We copy the following eloquent and impassioned paragraph from the last
_Edinburgh Review_:--

"Thanks unto our ancestors, there is now no _Star-chamber_ before whom may
be summoned either the scholar, whose learning offends the bishops, by
disproving incidentally the divine nature of tithes, or the counsellor,
who gives his client an opinion against some assumed prerogative. There is
no _High Commission Court_ to throw into a gaol until his dying day, at
the instigation of a Bancroft, the bencher who shall move for the
discharge of an English subject from imprisonment contrary to law. It is
no longer the duty of a privy councillor to seize the suspected volumes of
an antiquarian, or plunder the papers of an ex-chief justice, whilst lying
on his death-bed. _Government licensers of the press_ are gone, whose
infamous perversion of the writings of other lawyers will cause no future
Hale to leave behind him orders expressly prohibiting the posthumous
publication of his legal MSS., lest the sanctity of his name should be
abu