these persons to receive
1,000_l._ a year, the whole income of the medical profession in
London would be 3,474,000_l._ annually.

_Poor Rates._

About the close of the seventeenth century, the poors' rates of England
and Wales were stated, on the authority of parliamentary documents, to
amount to 665,362_l._; and the population of both to 5,475,000. In
1821, the poors' rates amounted to about 7,000,000_l._, and the
population to 12,218,000. Dividing the greater rates 7,000,000_l._
by the lesser 665,362_l._, we have about 10-1/2 to 1, which is the
proportion in which the poors' rates have increased in the last 127
years. And dividing the greater population 12,218,000 by the lesser
5,475,000, give about 2-1/2 to 1, which is the proportionate increase of
population during that space of time.

_Van Dieman's Land Wasp._

The wasp of Van Dieman's Land is a smaller but much more splendid insect
than the English wasp; it has four orange-coloured wings, and horns and
legs of the same colour, a hard body, and a formidable sting. It is an
inhabitant of the forest, and is at war with a spider that makes its
hole in the sandy places, and which is armed with a cap or door, which
it pulls over on the approach of its enemy, or in rainy weather. The
wasp hovers close over the ground, prowling from one hole to another.
Having seized its prey, it immediately kills the spider, and carries it
off to its own hole, when it is said to devour the limbs, and to deposit
its egg in the body to be hatched by the putrefaction that ensues, and
which furnishes food for the young insect produced.

* * * * *

THE SKETCH-BOOK.

No. XLVIII.

* * * * *

HIGHLAND SUPERSTITION.

There is an extraordinary superstition connected with the M'Alister
family. Ages ago,--for I have never yet got a date from a Highlander as
to the transactions of long past times,--but many generations back, in
the days of a chief of great renown in the clan, called M'Alister More,
either from his deeds or his stature, there was a skirmish with a
neighbouring clan that ended fatally for the M'Alisters, though in the
contest at the time they were victorious.

A party of their young men set out once upon a foray; they marched over
the hills for several hours, and at last descended into a little glen,
which was rented as a black cattle farm by a widow woman and her two
sons. The sons were absent