eater part of his existence
had been passed. Besides this, James Starr belonged to the Scottish
Antiquarian Society, of which he had been made president. He was also
included amongst the most active members of the Royal Institution; and
the Edinburgh Review frequently published clever articles signed by him.
He was in fact one of those practical men to whom is due the prosperity
of England. He held a high rank in the old capital of Scotland, which
not only from a physical but also from a moral point of view, well
deserves the name of the Northern Athens.

We know that the English have given to their vast extent of coal-mines
a very significant name. They very justly call them the "Black Indies,"
and these Indies have contributed perhaps even more than the Eastern
Indies to swell the surprising wealth of the United Kingdom.

At this period, the limit of time assigned by professional men for
the exhaustion of coal-mines was far distant and there was no dread
of scarcity. There were still extensive mines to be worked in the two
Americas. The manu-factories, appropriated to so many different uses,
locomotives, steamers, gas works, &c., were not likely to fail for want
of the mineral fuel; but the consumption had so increased during the
last few years, that certain beds had been exhausted even to their
smallest veins. Now deserted, these mines perforated the ground with
their useless shafts and forsaken galleries. This was exactly the case
with the pits of Aberfoyle.

Ten years before, the last butty had raised the last ton of coal from
this colliery. The underground working stock, traction engines, trucks
which run on rails along the galleries, subterranean tramways, frames to
support the shaft, pipes--in short, all that constituted the machinery
of a mine had been brought up from its depths. The exhausted mine was
like the body of a huge fantastically-shaped mastodon, from which all
the organs of life have been taken, and only the skeleton remains.

Nothing was left but long wooden ladders, down the Yarrow shaft--the
only one which now gave access to the lower galleries of the Dochart
pit. Above ground, the sheds, formerly sheltering the outside works,
still marked the spot where the shaft of that pit had been sunk,
it being now abandoned, as were the other pits, of which the whole
constituted the mines of Aberfoyle.

It was a sad day, when for the last time the workmen quitted the mine,
in which they had lived for so