requirements of the public: though this is less
easy to understand when one reflects that the
whole supply is due to the exertions of a finite
number of small caterpillars. The multiplication
of objects, the material for constructing
which is practically unlimited, is tolerably
comprehensible; but what seems unaccountable is
the extraordinary way in which certain
products of nature—animal, vegetable, and mineral
—seem to rush into existence on the shortest
notice, whenever a demand for them springs up.

How wonderfully accommodating—to take an
instance—has Nature proved of late years in
connexion with the increased prolificness of the
Seal Tribe, or at any rate that portion of it
which furnishes the material that goes by the
name of seal-skin! It is only within the last
dozen years or so, that this particular kind of
fur has become furiously popular. It is
marvellous to observe how strangely, within that
comparatively short time, the supply has
increased and multiplied also. A few years ago,
a seal-skin cloak was an uncommon garment,
a rarity: whereas, now, during the whole of
the autumn and winter seasons, we are so
surrounded by all sorts of seal-skin garments—
cloaks, jackets, waistcoats, hats, caps, muffs,
tippets, and the like: not to speak of cigar-
cases, purses, tobacco-pouches, blotting-books,
and other miscellaneous objects—that we might
suppose seal-skin to be not merely, as Jaques
said of Motley, "Your only wear," but your
only decorative fabric available for any purpose
whatsoever. For, look where one may, it is
still seal-skin, seal-skin, seal-skin, everywhere.
On the shoulders of ladies; on the breasts
of the lords of creation; in the shop-windows;
in the circulars which are thrust into our letter-boxes,
announcing a consignment of ever so
many thousand seal-skin jackets; in the
advertisement sheets of the newspapers, from
the Times Supplement to the columns of the
Exchange and Mart—in which last journal the
yearnings of humanity after seal-skin, and its
readiness to barter all other property, of
whatsoever kind, in exchange for this idolised fur,
are more touchingly expressed than in any other
—under each and all of these aspects the seal-
skin rage is continually kept before us.

But the supply with which this phocal rage
is appeased, is the marvellous thing. How is
it that such supply has suddenly come into
existence? Or, was it always there, though there
was no demand? Has the genus phoca been
wearing seal-skin jackets ever since the creation,
retaining unmolested their possession of those
priceless wares through countless ages; or has
this obliging tribe of animals increased in
numbers of late years, out of readiness to
gratify the caprice of the fashionable world?

Then there are the kids again—what shall
we say of the kids? If it be matter of wonder
where all the seals come from, how much more
wonderful, how stupefying and stunning, is the
thought of the myriads of young goats, whose
existence is absolutely necessary to furnish the
gloves of the whole civilised world? Kids! How
is it that there exist six yards of ground
anywhere, without kids browsing thereon? One
would expect that the earth would be teeming
and swarming with kids. In every town in
England, in France, in Europe, gloves made of what
at least professes to be the skin of the kid, are
exposed for sale; while in the large capitals
the number of shops devoted exclusively to
the diffusion of kid gloves is almost incredible.
Taking Paris and London alone, and
occupying ourselves only with a few of the
principal thoroughfares, we should find enough
of such shops to suggest the existence
somewhere of such flocks of kids as would overrun
at least all the pasture lands of the civilised
earth. How many such shops are there in the
Palais Royal, the Boulevards, the Rue de Rivoli,
the Rue de la Paix; how many in Regent-street,
Oxford-street, Bond-street, the Strand, Cheapside,
and Piccadilly? How many in other great
capitals? How many in South America, how
many in Australia, how many in New Zealand?
If we take the trouble to enter on the field of
conjecture which is thus opened out before
us, we shall be cast out in imagination on
immeasurable unknown Prairies where the foot
of man has never trod (except to capture
kids), and where skipping kids disport
themselves in such prodigious numbers, that the
American herd of buffaloes who took six weeks
to pass a man in a ditch at full gallop, would
be as an every-day drove in the comparison.

I speak of the supply of the raw material, and
not the enormous multiplication and sale of the
gloves themselves. When one remembers how
many are the occasions of show and ceremony
where gloves of the palest and most delicate
tints are alone admissible, and how soon (covering
as they do a part of the human frame which
comes in continual contact with all sorts of
objects) they become soiled and unfit for use, there
is no difficulty in understanding the sale of
almost any number of gloves that can be
manufactured. It is the multiplication of the kids
of whose skins the gloves are made, that is the
staggering subject of reflection, and it is in
connexion with this, and remembering how
comparatively rare, even in France, Italy,
and Switzerland, and other goat-producing
countries, are the occasions when the traveller
encounters kids in any number, that I find
myself again and again constrained to ask, O
where, and O where are your glove-producing
kids?

Is it not a fact that there are more fair-haired
children to be seen in this country than there
used to be? Any one who can find leisure in
the early part of the day, to visit those portions
of our parks and public gardens where children
most resort, will infallibly be struck by the great
increase in the number of children whose hair is
to be classed as belonging to the group of colours
which we call "light." Now, we know that
fair hair has lately been very much the rage,
and we also know that various inventions have
been published for taking the natural darkness
out of the hair, and imparting to it a flaxen or a
golden shade. The use of such medicaments has,
however, always been confined to grown-up
people, and in none of the recorded instances of
that tampering with the natural colour of the