afternoon. Many of these are disabled, some dismasted. A fishing-boat belonging to Brixham was upset in the outer harbour about eight o'clock, and two married fishermen of the town and a boy were drowned. At Elbury a new brig, the Zouave, of Plymouth, has gone to pieces, and six out of her crew of ten are drowned. Eleven other vessels are on shore at Elbury, many of the men belonging to which cannot be accounted for. One noble woman, named Wheaton, wife of a master mariner, saved two lives by throwing a rope from the window of her house, which is built on the rocks overhanging the bay at Furzeham Hill. Scores of poor shipwrecked men are wandering distractedly about Brixham and Churston, the greater part of them having lost all they possessed. The total loss of life arising from these disasters is variously estimated at from seventy to a hundred. Is not this a tremendous account of the doings of one gale? And let it be observed that we have lifted only one corner of the curtain and revealed the battlefield of only one small portion of our far-reaching coasts. What is to be said of the other parts of our shores during that same wild storm? It would take volumes instead of chapters to give the thrilling incidents of disaster and heroism in full detail. To convey the truth in all its force is impossible, but a glimmering of it may be obtained by a glance at the Wreck Chart which is published by the Board of Trade every year. Every black spot on that chart represents a wreck more or less disastrous, which occurred in the twelve months. It is an appalling fact that about two thousand ships, upwards of seven hundred lives, and nearly two millions sterling, are lost _every_ year on the shores of the United Kingdom. Some years the loss is heavier, sometimes lighter, but in round numbers this is our annual loss in the great war. That it would be far greater if we had no lifeboats and no life-saving rockets it will be our duty by-and-by to show. The black spots on the Wreck Chart to which we have referred show at a single glance that the distribution of wrecks is very unequal--naturally so. Near the great seaports we find them thickly strewn; at other places, where vessels pass in great numbers on their way to these ports, the spots are also very numerous, while on unfrequented parts they are found only here and there in little groups of two, three, or four. Away on the nor'-west shores of Scotland, for instance, where the seal and the sea-mew have the ocean and rugged cliffs pretty much to themselves, the plague-spots are few and far between; but on the east coast we find a fair sprinkling of them, especially in the mouths of the Forth and Tay, whither a goodly portion of the world's shipping crowds, and to which the hardy Norseman now sends many a load of timber--both log and batten--instead of coming, as he did of old, to batten on the land. It is much the same with Ireland, its more important seaports being on the east.