indigenous to Britain, and is met with in a wild state very commonly; while the abele is said to have been introduced from Flanders, where it is widely spread, as it is all over the continent. The two so nearly resemble each other, that they may be described together, by which the points of difference will be seen.

Russia is employed in the manufacture of morocco leather.

The Lombardy poplar (populus fastigiata), as its name imports, is indigenous to that portion of Italy, the first cuttings having been imported from Turin by lord Rochford. It is a tree of the most rapid growth. It shoots up in a spire-like The grey poplar is distinguished from the abele form, attaining the height of upwards of sixty by its leaves, which are less deeply and acutely feet in thirty years. An instance is mentioned in lobed, and its having but little of the downy sub- the "Arboretum Britannicum," of a tree at Great stance which so copiously covers the under surface Tew, in Oxfordshire, which, at fifty years old, of the leaves of the abele. It is of a grey had reached the height of a hundred and twentycolour. The leaves are also smaller and rounder five feet. It also retains, even in old age, its slenshaped. The bark of the stem becomes of a beau- der, cypress-like form; and, as might be conjectiful silvery grey hue. The catkins of the female tured from its rapid growth, soon falls to decay, grey poplar are cylindrical, those of the abele and in less than eighty years after being planted, oval; while the stigmas of the former are eight, is found to be dead, or in a state of rapid decay. those of the latter four. The branches of the grey The trunk, as is the case with those at Blenheim, poplar grow most upright and compact; and it at- planted soon after its introduction, is more furtains a very large size. Where the soil is loose or rowed than that of any other species; and the moist it will attain the height of ninety feet, the clefts, often assuming a spiral direction, gives the trunk having a diameter of from three to seven. stem the appearance of being composed of several The stigma of the female flower of the grey pop-stems united to form one spiral column. Its stiff lar is four-cleft. The seeds are numerous, furnished with capillary pappas, which act as wings to carry them by the wind: they are enclosed in a one-celled capsule. The best mode of propagating the tree is by cuttings.

It is doubted whether the black poplar (populus nigra) is indigenous. It has trowel-shaped leaves, and soon attains to a large size. The roots do not strike deep into the ground, consequently the tree frequently leans from the perpendicular, and is liable to be torn up by the wind. The foliage is of a pale green, the leaves very smooth and shining, and flutter with the gentlest breeze; thus producing ever varying shades of green, sparkling and glittering in the beams of the sun. It comes into leaf late, seldom attaining its full foliage until the end of May or beginning of June. It is very commonly met with in Lancashire and Cheshire. The bark, from its lightness, is frequently employed to buoy up fishermen's nets. It has generally a fine stem and an ample head. The wood is of a pale yellowish colour, soft, and easily worked, and is employed by turners. The bark is used in tanning, and in

appearance harmonizing so well with buildings, and its growth not being impeded by the presence of smoke, it is peculiarly adapted to become a town or city tree. From its tall and slender growth, it possesses a beauty peculiar to itself; for, when assailed by the wind, it forms a waving line. In France, however, and some parts of Italy, where it lines the roads for miles together, it is peculiarly fatiguing to the eye. It is readily propagated by cuttings. The leaves of no tree yet known have so good an effect in compost soil as that of the poplar, nor will they so soon thicken the earth on which they grow.

The black Italian or necklace-bearing poplar (populus monilifera) appears to have been first introduced into Britain from North America, A.D. 1772, by Dr. John Hope, who brought it from Canada; and again by a Scotch gentlemen a few years afterwards, who, understanding it was a native of Italy as well as America, gave it its present name. Mr. Selby regards it as by far the most valuable for its timber, for the wood is tough when seasoned, and, if dried, is very durable. It is of great size. "At Twizell" (Northumber

plete and uncertain it is true-for obtaining information on the subject, though that advantage was enjoyed only by the superior classes of the people. The various sources of authority to which recourse was had for proving births, deaths, and marriages, during the long period between the Norman conquest and the registration act of the sixteenth century, demand a cursory notice.

It is to the church, to which English history owes everything of value, that we are also indebted for the earliest attempts at registration which have descended to us. The monasteries existing at the period of the Conquest bore but a small proportion to the number founded by Norman devotion during the twelfth and following century. Each of these establishments kept its calendar or obituary, in which, together with the names of abbots and monks, appeared notes of births, deaths, and often of marriages, occurring the families of the gentry who were neighbours, and as such, generally patrons of the religious house.

The aspen, or trembling poplar (populus tremula) is indigenous to Britain, extending as far north as Sutherlandshire. In the woods of Invercauld, near Braemar, Aberdeenshire, it grows at an elevation of sixteen hundred feet. Mr. Loudon states that it is very abundant near Moscow, and mentions that, after the burning of the city, in 1813, innumerable seedling plants sprung up the following year. It is the most interesting variety of the poplar tribe. The leaves are nearly orbicular, broadly toothed, and glabrous on both sides. The petioles are compressed, the young branches hairy. When it grows in a favourable situation, it is tall and elegant, and slender for its height. The leaves are of a fine rich green, within their upper side somewhat darker than the under. The leaves are in a constant tremulous motion, produced by the peculiar form of the footstalks; and in some degree the whole tribe of poplars are subject to this. This peculiar sensibility of the aspen has given rise to several superstitious notions concerning it. In the highlands of Scotland, for instance, it is asserted to be the tree from which the wood was taken to form the cross of our blessed Lord; and that for this reason its leaves can never remain still, exemplifying the disquiet of a guilty conscience, and illustrating the prophet's statement: "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." The tree grows freely in all soils except clay the roots spread near the surface, and it is therefore injurious to the neigh-privileged place in the calendar was always to be bouring vegetation. The wood is very light, white, and soft. The bark and young shoots form a favourite food of the beaver.

sea.

of "baumefoot."

PARISH REGISTERS*.

It was a common occurrence that one or more families continued for several generations to augment the conventual revenues by donations of land or otherwise, and the monastic register as commonly contained pedigrees of such benefactors, for which the best authority was supplied by the written grants of the donors, preserved in the archives of the monastery. Moreover, bequests were frequently made to a religious house on the express condition that the testators' names should be entered in its obituary; and money was left to prolong the recollection of their existence and of the day of their decease, by religious services called anniversaries or obits. As the

purchased by liberality to the church, it was not long confined solely to barons and knights: the traders of the land, increasing and prosperous, Balsam poplar, or tacamahac (populus balsami- | became in their turn benefactors to the clergy, fera). This species is a native of North America, and were recorded in the calendar or chronicle. and found by sir John Franklin to form the greatest And with the progress of the arts subsidiary testipart of the drift timber on the snows of the arcticmony was added to the pen of the churchman, by It is also indigenous to northern Asia. It the material structure of the church itself. The was introduced into England in the seventeenth graven slab, with elaborate cross or simple sword; century. The buds, which are full and large, are the monumental effigy; the quainter brass, whose protected by a highly scented gummy matter, that inscription told not only the year, but often the used to be imported from Canada under the name day of the death of the person whose memory it prolonged; while over all streamed the chequered light of the storied window, richly dight with kneeling knights and dames, and merchants' marks and accompanying labels and legends: all these-monastic calendar, effigy, brass, and window-formed a chain of evidence, not unbroken, it is true, but of moment and legality at the time; often quoted, and readily admitted in contemporary questions of descent and consanguinity, When it is considered that every ecclesiastical building of consequence in the country could, until the ravages of the Reformation, exhibit such written, graven, or painted records of the many generations which had flourished within its spiritual jurisdiction, and had crumbled to dust within its sacred precincts, it must be evident that a vast mass of evidence for illustrating the descent of the noble and wealthy had been unconsciously accumulated by individual superstition and vanity in successive ages. In the indiscriminate destruction which marked the progress of the reformers*, much

THE legal registration of births, deaths, and marriages is obviously the provision of a highly civilized state of society, and the objects of the institution such as could have been suggested only by the wants of a country both populous and settled in its government. It must, therefore, be apparent that in England at least its origin is but recent, and that the subject in its modern sense has not, like others, its very remote antiquities. Still, long before the policy of establishing any regular machinery for the purpose became evident, and its necessity urgent, it is clear that each successive generation must have stood more and more in need of such records of the existence, alliances, and other social incidents of the lives of its predecessors; and means were not wanting-incomFrom "The Historical Register."

This phrase is exaggerated and unfair.-ED.

of this cumbrous genealogical apparatus perished | or was defaced; window, effigy, and brass were alike shattered; but conventual registers which showed the title of conventual lands were generally spared, although the genealogist, to whom the importance of those which remain is beyond estimation, has to lament that many have since been lost by accident or neglect.

It will be seen by the preceding remarks that the efforts of individuals to perpetuate their name and memory, according to their means and the prevailing custom of their time and station, had ultimately produced a sort of unintentional registry of worthies; and, in addition thereto, the forms of law adopted upon the introduction of the feudal system provided a legal record of descent for those who enjoyed estates by direct tenure from the crown. Upon the death of a tenant of the crown, his lands were taken into the custody of a royal officer, called an escheator; whose duty it was to impanel a jury sworn to inquire, among other matters, who was the deceased's heir, and his age at the time of the inquest. If the heir were a minor, he became a ward of the crown, and, on reaching his majority, was obliged to prove before the escheator that he was of full age, before he could obtain possession of his estate. In these proofs of age witnesses were examined, by whom the monastic calendars and chronicles already noticed were frequently cited for the date of the birth or baptism of the claimant; but, when the memory of the witness was not supported by written testimony, he would speak from recollection, strengthened by events of personal or local interest which had happened on the occasion in question. One deponent had met with an accident on the very day; another had the date impressed on his mind by the occurrence of the birth on the day he lost his best horse, or in the flooding of the mill-stream, in the year of the great comet, or of the calf with two heads, or the dire murrain among cattleevents sure to be noticed in the monk's chronicle, although the chronicle itself bore no testimony to the child's birth. The inquisitions and proofs taken on these occasions were returned to the court of chancery, and, having been preserved among its records, form an existing though broken series, extending from the thirteenth century down to the abolition of feudal tenures in the reign of Charles II.

bandman were born, married, and quitted life unrecorded and unremembered, excepting so far as a traditional and inaccurate account might be current for a time in thinly-peopled districts, where the domestic incidents of every family were matters well known to the whole community. The serf and his progeny were the only individuals who of the baser class had their names preserved. The same motive that induced the abbot or baron to register the numbers of his flock, because they represented so many marks of gold and silver, caused the record to be made of the serf's name.

"GOD resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble :" and even a proud look is an abomination unto the Lord." If there is one thing more especially hateful to God than another, it would seem to be pride. This is of pride. Nothing can be more at variance not surprising, when we reflect upon the results

with the

proper state of the creature in the sight of the Creator. The relative situation of the two is destroyed by it. That which derives all that it has, and must derive all that it can hope for, from the wisdom, power, and goodness of another, ought to know no other feelings towards the Source of all good than those of the most profound humility, the most entire self-abasement, the most complete dependence. Any other feelings are utterly absurd; and they are inconsistent with that unity which was intended to subsist between the Creator and the creature, for the glory of the one and the happiness of the

other.

For similar reasons, pride, as regards our fellow-creatures, is hateful to God. If one differs from another in reality, who made him to differ? God made him to differ; and certainly he did not cause The use of armorial bearings, and the jurisdicthis difference, that the one might look down tion exercised in respect of them by the earl marupon the other. The man who entertains shal's court, afforded the privileged classes another pride impairs that unity of feeling which God and most efficient means of registering their line- intended to subsist between man and man, age and alliances. The heralds made periodical for their mutual happiness. Pride is not a circuits through the country, verifying the pedi- feeling of comfort, but of an uneasy restlessgrees and arms of all persons entitled to such dis-ness; for the proud man is not happy. tinctive badges of gentle descent. The results of

their circuits were reduced into volumes called

visitation books, of which the earliest now existing date from the end of the fifteenth century. Such visitations were finally abandoned about the close of the seventeenth century.

In this necessarily rapid detail of the various sources of evidence which in ancient times supplied the want of a legal and exact registration of

births, deaths, and marriages for every order of the nation, it must have been observed that no provision whatever was made in favour of the lower classes. The poorer burgess, artizan, and hus

And he who has to do with the proud is rendered unhappy by the sense that he is looked down upon; so that pride is the source of misery to both.

"Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall" (Prov. xvi. 18): "Before destruction the heart of man is

haughty; and before honour is humility" (Prov. xviii. 12): "Whoso humbleth himself shall be exalted; and he that exalteth himself shall be abased."