HOLLY FOR PROFIT.
There is only one thing on my estate that pays," a land- owner said to me the other day, " and that is holly." He sells tons of it, berried at one price, unberried at another on the old principle of" a penny plain and tuppence coloured." The cutters not only give good money but trim his bushes and hedges ; for holly rejoices in the knife. Now I have heard more or less recently three similar boasts or laments : in each case the only thing that pays—or so it is alleged—is something utterly unessential. One landowner in the Midlands "only makes money out of his pheasants ' a number of farmers in the west" would have been bankrupt but for the rabbits " ; and a farmer in the north-west declared that this year he "only made money on the crop on which he spent nothing, to wit mushrooms." Such claims are a humorous comment on a depressed subject. May they not perhaps indicate that those who have traffic with the land are not always suffi- ciently ready to exploit its infinite variety? The paying pheasant indicates the paying poultry ; and how many French maraichers have founded their fortunes on the mushroom ?
W. BEACH TII03LAS.
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