its work in
seventy-two minutes, the English in sixty-six, and the American in
twenty-two minutes! A French journal at the time said of the American
machine, "It did its work in the most exquisite manner, not leaving a
single spear ungathered, and it discharged the grain in the most perfect
shape, as if placed by hand for the binders. It finished its piece most
gloriously." The contest was finally narrowed down to three reapers,
all American, and the champion won its laurels amid the most deafening
shouts of applause.

SHRIMPS.

Some one has said that he who first swallowed an oyster was a brave man,
but many will agree that the one who first devoured a shrimp bodily was
still braver. Not but that the shrimp may possess desirable nutritive
qualities--may indeed be exceedingly palatable to those whose
imaginations are proof against the sight of its jointed legs and arms
and its ugly physiognomy. But in India, at least, where dead human
bodies are often seen floating down the sacred Ganges literally covered
with these crustaceans, the appetite for them must be sensibly affected.
Many of Her Majesty's subjects there will never touch a shrimp after
once witnessing this spectacle in the Ganges. The animal, however, may
not be the common shrimp (_Crangon vulgaris_).

Catching shrimps for market is quite an extensive industry, and in
France mostly pursued by women, who wade knee deep into the water,
pushing before them a net sewed around a hoop at the end of a long
stick. A pannier or bag tied around the waist receives the animals from
the net. In winter the shrimp retires from the beach into deeper water.
It is then caught in boats with nets, made now of galvanized wire, which
resists the action of the sea-water and is a great improvement upon the
old twine net. In feeding, the shrimp grasps its minute prey by the
short rake-like appendages between the legs proper and the tail, and
passes it along up to its claws, and then to the mouth. These appendages
serve also as a brush when the shrimp makes its toilet. To do this it
stands as high as it can on the tips of its long legs, and bends its
head and claws under its body, and when these are duly brushed the lobes
of the tail are subjected to the same process.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Poetical Works of William Blake, Lyrical and Miscellaneous.
Edited, with a prefatory memoir, by William Michael Rossetti.
Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The P