There still remains to be described branch of the Irish street-trade which is peculiar to the class—viz., the sale of "refuse," or such fruit and vegetables as are damaged, and suited only to the very poorest purchasers.

In assorting his goods, a fruit-salesman in the markets generally throws to side the shrivelled, dwarfish, or damaged fruit—called by the street-traders the "specks." If the supply to the markets be large, as in the pride of the season, he will put his several kinds of specks in separate baskets. At other times all kinds are tossed together, and sometimes with an admixture of nuts and walnuts. The Irish women purchase these at a quarter, or within a quarter, of the regular price, paying from to a bushel for apples; to for pears; to for plums. They are then sorted into halfpenny-worths for sale on the stalls. Among the refuse is always a portion of what is called "tidy" fruit, and this occupies the prominent place in the "halfpenny lots"—for they are usually sold at a halfpenny. Sometimes, too, a salesman will throw in among the refuse a little good fruit, if he happen to have it over, either gratuitously or at the refuse price; and this, or course, is always made the most conspicuous on the stalls. Of other fruits, perhaps, only a small portion is damaged, from over-ripeness, or by the aggression of wasps and insects, the remainder being very fine, so that the retail "lots" are generally cheap. The sellers aim at "half profits," or cent. per cent.

The "refuse" trade in fruit—and the refusetrade is mainly confined to fruit—is principally in the hands of the Irish. The persons carrying it on are nearly all middle-aged and elderly women. I once or twice saw a delicate and pretty-looking girl sitting with the old "re- fuse" women; but I found that she was not a "regular hand," and only now and then "minded the stall" in her mother's absence. She worked with her needle, I was told.

Of the women who confine themselves to this trade there are never less than , and frequently . Sometimes, when the refuse is very cheap and very abundant, as many as fruit-sellers, women and girls, will sell it in halfpenny-worths, along with better articles. These women also sell refuse dryfruit, purchased in Duke's-place, but only when they cannot obtain green-fruit, or cannot obtain it sufficiently. All is sold at stalls; as these dealers seem to think that if it were hawked, the police might look too inquisitively at a barrow stocked with refuse. The "refusesellers" buy at all the markets. The poorer street-sellers, whose more staple trade is in oranges or nuts, are dealers in it.

Perhaps the regular refuse-buyers are not among the poorest class, as their sale is tolerably quick and certain, but with the usual drawbacks of wet weather. They make, I was told, from to a day the year round, or perhaps or a day, Sunday included. They are all Roman Catholics, and resort to the street-sale after mass. They are mostly widows, or women who have reached middle-age, unmarried: Some are the wives of street-sellers. of their best pitches are on and in . It is somewhat curious to witness these women sitting in a line of or , and notwithstanding their natural garrulity, hardly exchanging a word with another. Some of them derive an evident solace from deliberate puffs at a short black pipe.

A stout, healthy-looking woman of this class said:—"Sure thin, sir, I've sat and sould my bit of fruit in this place, or near it, for twinty year and more, as is very well known indeed, is it. I could make twice the money twinty year ago that I can now, for the boys had the ha'pinnies more thin than they has now, more's the pity. The childer is my custhomers, very few beyant—such as has only a ha'pinny now and thin, God hilp them. They'll come a mile from any parrut, to spind it with such as me, for they know it's chape we sill! Yis, indeed, or they'll come with a fardin either, for it's a ha'pinny lot we'll split for them any time. The boys buys most, but they're dridful tazes. It's the patience of the divil must be had to dale wid the likes of thim. They was dridful about the Pope, but they've tired of it now. O, no, it wasn't the boys of my counthry that demaned themselves that way. Well, I make some days, and some, and some, and I have made , and I have made nothing. Perhaps I make or a week rigular, but I'm established and well-known you see."

The quantity of refuse at the metropolitan "green" markets varies with the different descriptions of fruit. Of apples it averages -

The Irish street-sellers, I am informed, buy full -thirds of all the refuse, the other being purchased by the lower class of English costermongers—"the illegitimates,"—as they are called. We must not consider the sale of the damaged fruit so great an evil as it would, at the blush, appear, for it constitutes perhaps the sole luxury of poor children, as well as of the poor themselves, who, were it not for the halfpenny and farthing lots of the refusesellers, would doubtlessly never know the taste of such things.

Before leaving this part of the subject, it may be as well to say a few words concerning the curious revelations made by the returns from , Covent-garden, and the other London markets, as to the diet of the poor. In the place, then, it appears that in the matter of fish, herrings constitute the chief article of consumption—no less than lbs. weight of this fish in a "fresh" state, and lbs. in a "dried" state, being annually eaten by the humbler classes of the metropolis and the suburbs. Of sprats there are lbs. weight consumed—and these, with the addition of plaice, are the staple comestibles at the dinners and suppers of the ichthyophagous part of the labouring population of London. of the reasons for this is doubtless the extraordinary cheapness of these kinds of fish. The sprats are sold at a penny per pound; the herrings at the same rate; and the plaice at a fraction less, perhaps; whereas a pound of butcher's meat, even "pieces," or the "block ornaments," as they are sometimes called, cannot be got for less than twopence-halfpenny or threepence. But the relative cheapness of these kinds of food can only be tested by the proportionate quantity of nutrition in each. According to Liebig, butcher's meat contains per cent. of solid matter, and per cent. of water; whereas, according to Brande, fish consists of parts of solid matter, and parts water in every . Hence it would appear that butcher's meat is per cent more nutritive than fish—or, in other words, that if the were equally cheap, the prices, according to the quantity of nutrition in each, should be for fish penny per pound, and butcher's meat not farthings; so that even at twopence-halfpenny the pound, meat is more than twice as dear an article of diet as fish.

But it is not only on account of their cheapness that herrings and sprats are consumed in such vast quantities by the labouring people of London. Salmon, eels, herrings, pilchards, and sprats, Dr. Pereira tells us, abound in oil; and oleaginous food, according to Leibig, is an "element of respiration," consisting of nearly per cent. charcoal, which burns away in the lungs, and so contributes to the warmth of the system. Fat, indeed, may be said to act as fuel to the vital fire; and we now know, from observations made upon the average daily consumption of food by soldiers of the Grand Duke of Hesse Darmstadt, in barracks, for a month—which is the same as men for day—that an adult taking moderate exercise consumes, in the act of respiration, very nearly a pound of charcoal every day, which of course must be supplied in his food. "But persons who take much exercise, or labour hard," says Dr. Pereira, "require more frequent and copious meals than the indolent or sedentary. In the active man the number of respirations is greater than in the inactive, and therefore a more frequent supply of food is required to furnish the increased quantity of carbon and hydrogen to be consumed in the lungs." "A bird deprived of food," says Liebig, "dies on the day; while a serpent, with its sluggish respiration, can live without food months, or longer."

Captain Parry, in his account of of the Polar expeditions (), states, that both himself and Mr. Beverley, the surgeon, were of opinion, that, in order to maintain the strength of the men during their harassing journey across the ice, living constantly in the open air, and exposed to the wet and cold for hours a day, an addition was requisite of at least onethird to the quantity of provisions daily issued. So, in the gaol dietaries, the allowance to prisoners sentenced to hard labour for months is - more than the scale for those sentenced to hard labour for days—the former having ounces, and the latter only ounces of solid food served out to them every week.

But the hard-working poor not only require more food than the non-working rich, but it is mainly because the rich are better fed that they are more lethargic than the poor; for the greater the supply of nutriment to the body, the more inactive does the system become. From experiments made a few years ago at the , it was found, that, by feeding the animals twice, instead of once, in the hours, their habits, as regards exercise, were altered—a fact which readily explains how the fat and overfed are always the least energetic; fat being at once the cause and consequence of inaction. It is well to hear an obese citizen tell a hollow-cheeked man, who begs a penny of him, "to go and work—a lazy scoundrel;" but physiology assures us that the fat tradesman is naturally the laziest of the . In a word, he is fat because he is lazy, and lazy because he is fat.

The industrious poor, however, not only require more food than the indolent rich, but, getting less, they become more susceptible of cold, and, therefore, more eager for all that tends to

The returns as to the other articles of food sold in the streets are equally curious. The spent yearly in fish, and the comparatively small amount expended on vegetables, viz., , is a circumstance which seems to show that the labouring population of London have a greater relish for animal than vegetable diet. "It is quite certain," says Dr. Carpenter, "that the most perfect physical development and the greatest intellectual vigour are to be found among those races in which a mixed diet of animal and vegetable food is the prevalent habit." And yet, in apparent contradiction to the proposition asserted with so much confidence by Dr. Carpenter, we have the following curious fact cited by Mr. Jacob Bentley:—

It is, indeed, a fact worthy of remark, and one that seems never to have been noticed, that throughout the whole animal creation, in every country and clime of the earth the most useful animals cost nature the least waste to sustain them with food. For in- stance, all animals that work, live on vegetable or fruit food; and no animal that eats flesh, works. The all-powerful elephant, and the patient, untiring camel in the torrid zone; the horse, the ox, or the donkey in the temperate, and the rein-deer in the frigid zone; obtain all their muscular power for enduring labour, from Nature's simplest productions,—the vegetable kingdom.

But all the flesh-eating animals, keep the rest of the animated creation in constant dread of them. They seldom eat vegetable food till some other animal has eaten it first, and made it into flesh. Their only use seems to be, to destroy life: their own flesh is unfit for other animals to eat, having been itself made out of flesh, and is most foul and offensive. Great strength, fleetness of foot, usefulness, cleanliness and docility, are then always characteristic of vegetableeating animals, while all the world dreads flesheaters.

Of vegetables we have seen that the greatest quantity consumed by the poor consists of potatoes, of which lbs. are annually sold in the streets; but of potatoes are only equal in nutritive power to of butcher's meat, which contains - more solid food than fish,—so that a pound of fish may be said to equal of potatoes, and thus the lbs. of vegetable is dietetically equivalent to nearly lbs. of fish diet. The cost of the potatoes, at for , is, as we have seen, ; whereas the cost of the same amount of nutritive matter in the form of fish, at per pound, would have been only , or upwards of -thirds less. The vegetable of which there is the next greatest street sale is onions, upon which are annually expended. This has been before accounted for, by saying, that a piece of bread and an onion are to the English labourer what bread and grapes are to the Frenchman—oftentimes a meal. The relish for onions by the poorer classes is not difficult to explain. Onions are strongly stimulating substances, and they owe their peculiar odour and flavour, as well as their pungent and stimulating qualities, to an acrid volatile oil which contains sulphur. This oil becomes absorbed, quickens the circulation, and occasions thirst. The same result takes place with the oil of fish. It not only proves a stimulant to the general system, but we are told that the thirst and uneasy feeling at the stomach, frequently experienced after the use of the richer species of fish, have led to the employment of spirit to this kind of food. Hence, says Dr. Pereira, the vulgar proverb, "Brandy is Latin for Fish." Moreover, the classes of food are similar in their comparative indigestibility, for the uneducated palates of the poor not only require a more pungent kind of diet, but their stronger stomachs need something that will resist the action of the gastric juice for a considerable time. Hence their love of shell-fish.

The small quantity of fruit, too, sold to the poor is a further proof of what is here stated. The amount of the street sale of this luxury is no criterion as to the quantity purchased by the London labourers; for according to all accounts the fruit-buyers in the streets consist mostly of clerks, shopmen, small tradesmen, and the chil-

I have no means of ascertaining the average number of ounces of solid food consumed by the poorer class of the metropolis. The of the fish, fruit, and vegetables, sold to the London costermongers, is not disposed of in the London streets—many of the street-sellers going, as we have seen, country excursions with their goods. According to the result of the Government Commissioners of Inquiry, the labourers in the country are unable to procure for themselves and families an average allowance of more than ounces of solid food—principally bread— every week; hence it has been justly said we may infer that the man consumes, as his share, ounces ( bread and meat). The gaol dietaries allow ounces, or nearly twice as much to all prisoners, who undergo continuous hard labour. In the construction of these dietaries Sir James Graham—the then Secretary of State—says, in his "Letter to the Chairman of Quarter Sessions" (), "I have consulted not only the Prison Inspectors, but medical men of the greatest eminence possessing the advantage of long experience." They are proposed, he adds, "as the amount which can be safely afforded to prisoners without the risk of inflicting a punishment not contemplated by law and which it is unjust and cruel to inflict; namely, loss of health and strength through the inadequacy of the food supplied." Hence it appears not that the thief gets too much, but the honest working man too little—or, in other words, that the labourer of this country is able to procure, by his industry, only half the quantity of food that is considered by "medical men of the greatest eminence" to be "the amount" that can be afforded for the support of the criminals—a fact which it would be out of place to comment upon here.

word concerning the incomes of the London costermongers, and I have done. It has been before shown that the gross sum of money yearly, in the streets, by the sale of fish, fruit, and vegetables, amounts, in round numbers, to million pounds—a million and a half being expended in fish, and a quarter of a million upon fruit and vegetables respectively. In estimating the yearly receipts of the costermongers, from their average gains, the gross "takings" of the entire body were concluded to be between a million and a quarter and a million and a half sterling—that is to say, each of the street-sellers of fish, fruit, and vegetables, was supposed to clear a week all the year through, and to . But, according to the returns furnished me by the salesmen, at the several metropolitan markets, the weekly "" of the men and their families—for often both wife and children sell—cannot be less than per week all the year round, out of which it would seem that the clear weekly are about . (Some costers we have seen take pounds in a day, others—as the nut and orange-women and children—only a few shillings a week; some, again, make cent. per cent. profit, whilst others are obliged to sell at a loss.) This, from all I can gather, as well as from a comparison of the coster's style of living with other classes whose weekly income is nearly the same, appears to be very close upon the truth.

We may then, I think, safely assert, that the gross yearly receipts of the London costermongers are millions of money; that their clear annual gain, or income, is ; and that the capital invested in their business, in the form of donkey-carts, barrows, baskets, weights, and stock-money, is ;—half of this being borrowed, for which they pay upwards of interest per annum.