work than Irish labourers whose hire is but
a shilling. But, the navvy, born in hill districts
where there is good water and fresh
air, considers that to keep himself in working
order, he must eat eleven pounds of meat
a-week, or, that if he should have less meat, he
must make up with very large quantities of
potatoes, oatmeal, and milk. Now, there is
no good reason why one part of the country
should not be as highly cultivated as another.
The soil of Dorsetshire, tilled by sixteen
thousand labourers at eight or nine shillings
a-week, ought, in fact, to employ thirty or
forty thousand at ten, twelve, fourteen,
sometimes even sixteen shillings; the highest
wages being those created by the introduction
of machines. Farmers in many counties
do not buy agricultural machines that would
be in the highest degree serviceable, because
there are in their districts no labourers fit to
be entrusted with the care of them.

"If I buy this machine," the farmer in
such a case may say to the machinist, "you
must send me a labourer to work it and take
care of it. I know none in my own parish
whom I could safely trust."

"What wages, then, do you give?"

"Eight or nine shillings."

"Ah, but those wages will not do. You
must give sixteen shillings to the man whom
you entrust with a machine of this value."

And so it is, among farmers as among
manufacturers; with the machinery comes a
demand for better labour and the offering of
better pay; with it comes, also, increase of production,
and a necessary widening of the whole
field of labour and of the resources of the working-
class; with it comes also a cheapening of
the product, therefore a more extended, a more
certain and less fitful demand, a lessening of
that fluctuation in the labour market which
makes the well-being of the workman
insecure. Great, then, proves to have been
the mistake of the poor men who twenty or
thirty years ago dragged out machines and
burnt them in the market-places of our rural
towns.

To take an illustration obvious to every
man's experience, let us suggest a
comparison between the drivers and guards of
the old coaches, and the army of well-paid
engineers, clerks of works, clerks at desks,
picked engine-drivers, station-masters, porters,
called into existence by the substitution
of machinery for horse-labour, as means
of travel. How vast has been the increase of
demand for skill and good conduct in the
labourer; how many a new field of industry
has been opened to the middle and the lower
classes, for which men are incited to qualify
their children or themselves! In the employment
of machinery, as in the employment
of hand labour—say that of needle-
women (who can pray for nothing more
desirable than success to the sewing-machine,
which may destroy their wretched calling, and
help to create a better for them)—there is
much evil, no doubt, to be corrected; but
the views we have here sketched may be a
safe assurance that, taken as a whole, the
tendency of machinery is not to convert poor
men into machines, but that the steam-engine
is in fact their steady helper, tending to no
end so much as the making of them men
indeed.

COCO-EATERS.

THE rye, barley, oats, wheat, potatoes,
chesnut, maize, rice, bread-tree, plantain, date,
and coco-eaters include, I suppose, pretty
nearly, all the varieties of the human species.
The fruit of the coco-palm is eaten by about
a hundred millions of the human family,
and by a variety of animals, representing
most of the great groups of the animal world.
The history of the coco-palm illustrates
singularly the divine combinations of vegetal,
animal, and hominal life, by which they
maintain and reproduce each other
harmoniously and continually. Life supplies the
food of life. Destroying and nourishing,
and nourishing and destroying each other,
the hominal races and the vegetal and
animal species keep up between them the
wonderful force, the sublime intelligence, the
multiform mystery, which is called Life.
The bodies of individuals are used to support
the lives of species; and in this way Death is
a means employed for replenishing the lamp
of Life. The coco-palm is an important organ
in the vital mechanism. The date-palm is
the sustenance of the desert, the plantain
of the river, and the coco-palm of the coast
populations of the warm climates. The coco-
palms are found upon the coasts chiefly, in
a band running around the world, and of a
breadth of about twenty degrees upon both
sides of the equinoctial line. There are several
combinations necessary to produce them,
which, by the grandeur and the delicacy of
their adjustments, equally mark the work of
a Divine Intelligence.

The volcanic islands of the tropics are
inimical to the growth of the coco-palms.
Generally, volcanos occur near water: there
are only about half-a-dozen in more than a
hundred and seventy known and active volcanos,
which do not open their safety-valves
in the neighbourhood of the sea. The student
of physical geography has only to recal the
distribution of the tropical volcanos to find the
coasts upon which there are no coco-palms.
There are none upon the islands of Saint
Helena, Ascension, and Gallapagos. Of the
Cape Verde Islands, San Yago is the only
one upon which the coco-palm flourishes.
Volcanos and coco-palms may have both a
predilection for the proximity of water; but
they have naturally an antagonism to each
other which is unconquerable, except by the
art, industry, and perseverance of man.
Culture, however, produces them where they
do not grow naturally; and they are produced