ly appropriate to offer a
passing word on the genial subject of soot. Without speculating on
its origin and parentage, whether derived from the cooking of a
Christmas-dinner, or the production of the beautiful colors and odors
of exotic plants in a conservatory, it can briefly be shown to possess
many qualities both useful and ornamental.

When soot is first collected, it is called "rough soot", which,
being sifted, is then called "fine soot", and is sold to farmers for
manuring and preserving wheat and turnips. This is more especially
used in Herefordshire, Bedfordshire, Essex, &c. It is rather a costly
article, being fivepence per bushel. One contractor sells annually as
much as three thousand bushels; and he gives it as his opinion, that
there must be at least one hundred and fifty times this quantity (four
hundred and fifty thousand bushels per annum) sold in London. Farmer
Smutwise, of Bradford, distinctly asserts that the price of the soot
he uses on his land is returned to him in the straw, with improvement
also to the grain. And we believe him. Lime is used to dilute soot
when employed as a manure. Using it pure will keep off snails, slugs,
and caterpillars from peas and various other vegetables, as also from
dahlias just shooting up, and other flowers; but we regret to add that
we have sometimes known it kill or burn up the things it was intended
to preserve from unlawful eating. In short, it is by no means so
safe to use for any purpose of garden manure, as fine cinders and
wood-ashes, which are good for almost any kind of produce, whether
turnips or roses. Indeed, we should like to have one fourth or fifth
part of our garden-beds composed of excellent stuff of this kind.
From all that has been said, it will have become very intelligible
why these Dust-heaps are so valuable. Their worth, however, varies
not only with their magnitude, (the quality of all of them is much
the same,) but with the demand. About the year 1820, the Marylebone
Dust-heap produced between four thousand and five thousand pounds. In
1832, St. George's paid Mr. Stapleton five hundred pounds a year, not
to leave the Heap standing, but to carry it away. Of course he was
only too glad to be paid highly for selling his Dust.

But to return. The three friends having settled to their satisfaction
the amount of money they should probably obtain by the sale of the
golden miniature-frame, and finished the castles which they had built
with it in t