tinder; for this is all the value that can be attached to them.  Shall we call for them back again, lest the Duke and the Duchess should lose their recovered treasure?  I am not disposed to dispute their right; for even if they were the perquisite of the housekeeper, I am convinced that she would not get a farthing emolument for those tattered remnants of nobility.  Of one thing I am well assured, that there is not a sufficiency of sound linen in the whole to make lint enough to cover the wound that the reputation of the noble Duke and Duchess has sustained in this disgraceful prosecution.  Gentlemen, I will trouble you no further—­I confidently expect your verdict.”  And the woman was acquitted:  and from that day the powers of Thurlow, in voice, sarcasm, gesture, and all the superior intonations of browbeating, which raised him to the most dangerous pinnacle of legal greatness, became known, and rapidly advanced him to fame,[14] and the grandchildren of his father to be enrolled among the established peers of our realm.

[14] “The foregoing anecdote was told to the writer by the late James Burton, Esq., of Lockeridge House, a seat of the Marquess of Aylesbury’s, near Marlborough.  Mr. Burton married a daughter of the celebrated actress, Mrs. Cibber, by General Sloper, a man of the highest fashion of his day, from whom, I believe, Mr. Burton received the account; the particulars of which, as I have narrated, no doubt, many persons of Mr. Burton’s acquaintance still remember.”

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY.

ON THE POTATO.

BY T.A.  KNIGHT, ESQ., F.R.S., PRES.  HORT.  SOC.

Mr. Knight is convinced by the evidence of experiments, “that the potato plant, under proper management, is capable of causing to be brought to market a much greater weight of vegetable food, from any given extent of ground, than any other plant which we possess.”  There is no crop, he says, “so certain as that of potatoes; and it has the advantage of being generally most abundant, when the crops of wheat are defective; that is, in wet seasons.”  The following observations are extremely interesting:—­

“I think I shall be able to adduce some strong facts in support of my opinion, that by a greatly extended culture of the potato for the purpose of supplying the markets with vegetable food, a more abundant and more wholesome supply of food for the use of the labouring classes of society may be obtained, than wheat can ever afford, and, I believe, of a more palatable kind to the greater number of persons.  I can just recollect the time when the potato was unknown to the peasantry of Herefordshire, whose gardens were then almost exclusively occupied by different varieties of the cabbage.  Their food at that period consisted of bread and cheese with the produce of their gardens; and tea was unknown to them.  About sixty-six years