those mossers who, having no gardens to plant, or but small ones, become weary of the idleness of winter, and are anxious to resume their customary labor.

Before any moss is pulled, however, the "bleaching beds" are carefully prepared. For these, sandy portions of the beach near the creeks are selected. The stones thrown upon the old beds by the action of the sea are raked off into something like windrows, which divide the plats. The contents of the shanties are overhauled. Hand-barrows, pulling-rakes, turning-rakes, and washing-tubs are put in order or replaced with new articles. The boats receive careful inspection. A coat of paint or an application of tar is, perhaps, the result. These boats are frequently loaded to the water's edge, and, when the supply of the more adjacent ledges is exhausted, often perform trips of several miles with such a freight. A leaky boat would be unpleasant-not to say dangerous. The "navigation" is, however, generally very safe, notwithstanding it is over ledges of rocks that are known to all mariners as extremely dangerous to shipping.

The Chondrus-bearing ledges are all within a few miles of the celebrated Minot Ledge light-house. Seven shipwrecks have been counted at one time on this shore, all in plain view. The light-tower rises ninety feet from a submerged rock, but at this writing the sea breaks against it so high that at times it is entirely hidden from sight! Yet in a few months scores of men will be moving about among these rocks, gathering a crop that hardly one in a thousand in the States knows anything about!

The tools of the moss gatherers are few and simple. The pulling-rake is the most important. It is a long-handled rake, with long, flat, iron teeth set closely together. The tub is a half hogshead; the turning-rake, a common hay-rake; while the boats vary considerably, but are good in a sea-way, especially when handled by experienced men.

The spring tides are selected for pulling, because the tide ebbs out lower than at common or neap tides. Spring tides occur at every new and full moon, when it is always high water a little before twelve o'clock; so the pulling comes at morning or evening, or both. The spring tides also expose a superior and cleaner variety of the plant, which is "hand-pulled" and carefully cured. Apothecaries buy this, and in the form of delicate blanc-mange it finds a welcome at the table

and at the couch of the invalid.

The period of the spring tides is an exciting time with the mossers. The song of the boatman as he rows, the merry laugh and frolic of the boys, indicate that harvest time with them has come, and that before the husbandman has sown his corn! It is not intended to intimate, however, that moss-raking is as pleasant as raking red-top and clover. On the contrary, many tough farmer boys, after wading and pulling moss among the rocks on a cold morning in May, would doubtless abandon the business in disgust. A nervous man would hardly like it. There is a certain animal that roams among the rocks around, with such powerful pincers as to inspire a constant solicitude for the extremities, and woe to the luckless wight who comes in contact with them. Over a hundred thousand lobsters are taken annually by the fishermen of Scituate.

At the earliest dawn the boats are launched and rowed to the rocks, where the best quality may be found. If it is a very low ebb, the boat is forced as far among the rocks toward the shore as it will float, and the "hand-pulling" is vigorously commenced. The gatherers are not confined to the rocks immediately adjacent to the grounded boats. These exhausted, they wade to others and pick into baskets. Great care is constantly exercised to get good, clean moss, free from minute shells and tape-grass, for upon this the mosser reckons his price per pound. This pull also receives particular attention in bleaching and packing, and finally fetches two or three times as much as the common kinds.

As the tides in ebbing finally cease to expose the belt of rocks that produce the favorite variety, the marine farmer repairs with boat and rake to the outer chondrus-bearing rocks, whose abundant crops wave and surge with the swell.

Here the iron teeth do great service, coming up filled with a variety that contributes largely to the wants of the brewer and the cloth manufacturer. This moss is never so free from a living coating as the hand-pulled, and is mixed at first with tape-grass (Vallisneria spiralis) and other foreign substances. If he be an honest mosser you will, nevertheless, get a good article. Some men can scarcely fail to make good carrigeen of any gather, and they should be encouraged. Messrs. Howe & French, of Boston, are doing more in this direction than any other dealers.

The advancing tide or a laden boat compels a return to the shore. The boat is shot upon the beach, and the hand-barrows come into use. Two men soon carry away the load to the top of the beach, where it is spread on the bleachingbeds to dry. The remaining process any good housewife of the olden time well understands. Like the linen at the spring, it must be alternately wet and dried until the proper degree of whiteness is attained.

The washing is done in the tubs on the banks of the creeks which intersect the marshes and often approach the beach. Salt-water alone can be used, as the moss is very soluble in fresh. The tubs are quickly filled with a "longhandled" bucket, which must be an Irish invention, taking rank with the longhandled shovel. It is, albeit, a very expeditious method of filling half-a-dozen half hogsheads. In the "wash" the moss is well rinsed, and all floating pieces of tape-grass picked off. The water is then allowed to drain off, provided there be any unabsorbed, and the tub thrown on to its chine and dexterously rolled back to the beds. The spreading is repeated and, presently, the whole is turned with a rake, the curer, if he be a careful one, still picking out the poor pieces. The mosser gives a great deal of attention to the bleaching, which, in fine weather, is accomplished in about six washings. At low tide he still continues the pull with the boat and rake.

When the beds are covered with moss the heavens are as anxiously scanned as ever in hay time, and on the approach of rain a bustle is incident that is only equalled by that of the haymaker. The moss, if dry, is snugly cocked up like hay and covered with canvas. If the bad weather continues some time, it is as fatal to the carrigeen as to the hay, and is bound to turn out a damaged article, if circumstances are not the most favorable. If exposed to a long rain it rapidly dissolves.

At the spring tides the beds are generally covered with the freshly-gathered moss, looking black and uninviting; brt as the bleaching advances, the peats first appear to turn to a delicate red-color, and finally assume a yellowish whiteness that is very pleasing to the eye. When the carrigeen is properly cured it is stored in bulk in the shanties. As leisure comes, it begins to find its way into barrels. This is a time of temptation. A barrel of well-cured and honestlypacked moss should certainly never exceed a hundred pounds, and the average weight should be less than that. They frequently are made to weigh one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Specimens of our beach sand have doubtless been admired wherever Irish moss has found a consumer. Sometimes the moss gathers dampness at packing time, which is the more singular, as the weather is generally dry.

The careful mosser still picks over, and sorts as he picks, and his moss is now a white, clean, and salable article. A boy "treads in" as the final picking goes on. The nails that jingle in his pockets to the tune he whistles will hold the hoops and heads in their places. The barrel then awaits shipment, per packet, to Boston.

About the first of September the majority of the mossers close up their work on the beach, and fit out for the herring fishing. A few linger and cure another pull, if the weather favors.

As the number of men who make it their business to collect and cure this plant is increasing every year, the question is often asked, "Will it run out?" It is

not certain that the rocks, like some well-tilled soils, are increasing in depth and fertility, but it is certain that the moss grows of a better quality and quite as quickly the oftener it is pulled.

ITS USES.

There is always a demand for a prime article of Irish moss for culinary purposes, but the amount thus consumed is comparatively small, as a limited quantity of moss yields a large amount of jelly. In the form of blanc-mange, it is an agreeable and nutritious article of food.

In Ireland carrigeen is highly esteemed for its medical virtues, being regarded by some as a universal panacea. It was once a fashionable remedy in consumptive cases. As a demulcent for colds and fevers, it is very effective. Carrigeen has been much confounded with Cetraria islandica, (Iceland moss,) which contains starch along with a bitter principle, used as a tonic and demulcent. This opinion has extensively prevailed, and many still assert that the edible alge of Ireland and the lichen of Iceland are identical.

Its most important use is as sizing, it being used in the manufacture of cloth, paper, and felt, and straw hats. The poorer qualities of moss are bought up for size. The hand-pulled moss, however, contains more starchy matter than the variety which is never exposed to the air. The second quality of moss is sold to the brewers. All beers when well brewed and sound, after a certain repose, become transparent or "bright," as, it is sometimes termed. When, however, beer is sent out very new, it is necessary to "fine" it, or impart to it that "brilliant transparency," which is so agreeable to the eye. This is done by means of finings. In Europe isinglass is used for this purpose, and a lengthy formulæ is given for its preparation; but in this country Irish moss performs the same service without any preparation other than that given it by the curer. A certain amount of the moss is boiled up with the beer. The fluid gelatine unites with the tannin of the hops and forms a flocculent mass, which, enveloping the suspended feculencies, produces the clarifying action desired. The impurities are removed in the form of scum, while, with isinglass, they are carried to the bottom in the form of sediment. The beer is called "stubborn" by the brewers when a disengagement of carbonic acid gas occurs, the flocculent particles being thereby kept moving about without clearing the beer.

It is also used for fining coffee, and if it has no other recommendation, it is certainly cheaper than eggs.

Thus we have briefly glanced at some of the most useful algæ. Their production along the shores or in the deeps of the ocean, where no eye ever penetrates, is not in vain. The beautiful florideæ, whose crimson frond waves many a fathom down; the duller fuci, that float like pennants "where the tides and billows flow;" and the green and silky confervæ, all serve a purpose.

FEMALE LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR.

BY MRS. LAVINIA K. DAVIS, WARNER, NEW HAMPSHIRE.

WE are all more or less familiar with the various criticisms launched upon us, as a nation, by foreign, and especially by English travellers, and are amused or indignant, as the case may be, by the frequent want of fidelity and candor which marks such comments on American life and manners.

These "journalists" steam through a few of our principal cities, dine with a

few of our literary people, receive, as their just homage, the attentions and adulations of our hero-worshipping population, and go home fully convinced that they can show at once their gratitude and their superior powers of observation by an almost indiscriminate censure of everything they have seen, heard, or queried at, in their hasty tour.

With such specimens of modern friendly criticism before our eyes, we are led to form wonderful opinions of the courtesy and fairness of those very ancient times when the "patient man of Uz" wished that "his adversary had written a book" about him.

We all know how frightfully "new" we are; how "audacious," how "parvenu" we appear to eyes used to Old World notions and views, and we care very little for these grumblings. Youth is a thing that mends itself with years, and we shall, undoubtedly, be an "old nation" too, in the course of centuries.

What it does behoove us to note, however, (for there must, of course, be some grains of truth amid all this chaff of criticism,) is the oft-reiterated assertion of foreigners, sustained and confirmed, it must be admitted, also by our own travelled countrymen, that there is in beauty, youthful appearance, health, and life itself, a most untimely and unaccountable decay among American women. Nor can we, who come ourselves into the category of American women, deny the charge, however indignantly we may resent it. We have been too often pained by seeing girls, whose early youth was the personification of joyousness and radiant bloom, broken down with four or five years of housekeeping and motherhood cares-faded, pallid, spiritless creatures, whom necessity or conscientiousness alone supplies with vitality enough to carry them on for a few years longer, when they sink into carly and too soon forgotten graves.

The contrast between English and American young ladies is, perhaps, generally admitted to be in favor of the latter.

It is doubtful if the world presents finer specimens of rounded, graceful, beautiful girlhood, from seventeen to twenty-two, than are to be found in most of our towns and villages; but from thence onward the universal verdict favors the English maiden. "Soon ripe soon gone," applies only too fully to our daughters, who attain maturity of loveliness at twenty-three, at furthest, (save the exceptions that help to make the rule,) while their English sisters, at that age, are just coming into a perfection of bloom that shall continue unimpaired for years.

What can be the cause of this premature decay? Is it our "climate," whose dryness, or other peculiar properties, makes us, of necessity, a "fast," excitable people, wearing out strength and brain, with a superabundance of nervous energy? Is it the "red-hot stove," burning up the healthful oxygen of the air, and leaving behind a deleterious compound, injurious alike to heart and lungs? Is it the hot bread," eaten from Maine to Minnesota, indigestible as putty, full of headache and dyspepsia, sudden startings and restless sleep, that makes us thin, sallow, and sickly? Is it any of these suggested evils, or all combined, that make us what we are? or are these and other accredited ills aggravated and made deadly by our almost utter neglect of the out-of-door air and exercise which the Old World people know too well the worth of to despise as we do?

If the Frenchwoman has, unfortunately, a less agreeable abode, which we call "home," but for which she has no such name, she certainly gains a tolerable equivalent for it in the increased health, brilliant spirits, and sparkling vivacity, which only the outer air she dwells in can bestow.

Who has not been charmed by Sterne's description (in his "Supper and Grace") of the honest French peasant, who "gathered every evening, with the sound of his violin, on the esplanade before his cottage door, his children and grandchildren to dance and rejoice," believing, he said, that "a cheerful, contented mind was the best thanks to Heaven that an illiterate peasant could pay." The theology of the aged Frenchman may be questioned, the peculiar form of

amusement may be objected to, but the indisputable fact still remains that the simple-hearted old man had learned, from long years of observation and experience, that the innocent enjoyment of the outer world of nature was wonderfully conducive to health, cheerfulness, gratitude, and morality; and so far as these go, (and they constitute more of the real spirit of piety than we are apt to believe,) to religion itself.

The German ladies sit in their public gardens, or in the open doors of their own houses, for hours daily, knitting, chatting, or enjoying, in silent delight, the breath of the pure ether which surrounds them; while, in the rural districts the farm labors are carried on largely by the female portion of the community.

Though Americans are shocked by this reversal of their chivalric notions of the "sweet seclusion" due to woman, such work-a-field cannot be so very hard or distasteful to those of the softer sex who engage in it, since it is notorious that among the German emigrants who settle in our western States, and whose sturdy daughters would be such valuable "help" to our slender, overworked housewives there, scarcely any can be induced to enter service as domestics, they so much prefer keeping up the habits of the "faderland," and working out of doors. The fact of this preference is corroborated by the following from Rev. A. B. Grosh, of the Department of Agriculture:

"I well remember hearing the women and girls among our native German farmers in Pennsylvania contend who should be permitted to go to work in the hay and grain fields in harvest time. Nearly every one preferred tedding hay, and raking and binding grain, to cooking or washing in-doors-preferred the heat of the sun in the open air to the heat of the fire in the kitchen or washhouse-preferred the lively companionship of the harvesters to the solitude of the house. In many cases the labors had to be divided, by a system of rotation, so as to satisfy each claimant for out-door freedom and health in turn. This was before the notion crept in that in-door labor was more 'genteel' for women than out-door work."

And so, in respect to living in the open air, is it in Spain, Italy, and most European countries. Who ever thinks of the senorita of the flashing eye and coquettish fan, except as she appears dancing with her young companions beneath the orange trees, to the tinkling of the shell-like castanets, or gliding along the public promenade, her charms of face and figure, less hidden than revealed, beneath the folds of the all-covering black mantilla? Or who dreams of Italy's dark-eyed daughters as shut up, even in the palaces they become so well, but rather as in the lovely gardens, among classic ruins, or sailing over the bright waters that enchain and beautify their land?

The Swiss of both sexes, living in mountainous regions and herding their flocks on perilous peaks, and breathing the clear air of those serene heights, learn to love intensely those airy homes, and are scarcely less agile of limb or sound of lung than their light-footed neighbors, the chamois of the rocks. The English, however, seem to have systematized the securing of this great boon of Heaven, the free use of the free air, more thoroughly and entirely than any other people. It is not with them as with dwellers in southern climes, the instinctive homage paid to cloudless skies and lovely landscapes-the dolce far niente that comes unconsciously to those who live "where the olive and citron are fairest of fruit." The humid atmosphere of the British isle, its oft-recurring clouds and storms, offer no such inducements to the idle rambler; and it is undoubtedly owing to the deliberate conviction that outer air and exercise are a necessary part of the training of girls, as well as of boys, and to the carrying out of this belief in practice, that the better classes of English (not the nobility, merely) are the most thoroughbred physically, if not mentally, of any people under the sun. Nor do they deem this desideratum a thing to be achieved in carly years and laid aside forever after. It is not supposed there that being mistress of a house does away with the necessity for the invigorating breeze of