small gains, and understand how many other things are to be done with the broad acres, besides growing wheat at a monopoly price. The coast-trade brings English eggs in large numbers into the London markets. Scotch eggs are also an article of import. The English eggs, according to the ‘Price Current,’ fetch 25 per cent. more than the Scotch or Irish. The average price of all eggs at the present time, in the wholesale London market, is five shillings for 120—exactly a halfpenny each. In the counties by which London is surrounded, the production of fresh eggs is far below the metropolitan demand. Poultry, indeed, is produced in considerable quantities, but there is little systematic attention to the profitable article of eggs. Where is the agricultural labourer who has his half-dozen young hens, from which number, with good management, nine hundred, and even a thousand eggs may be annually produced, that will obtain a high price—three times as high as foreign eggs? These six hens would yield the cottager a pleasant addition to his scanty wages, provided the egg-collection were systematised, as it is in Ireland. Mr. Weld, in his ‘Statistical Survey of the County of Roscommon,’ says, ‘The eggs are collected from the cottages for several miles round, by runners, commonly boys from nine years old and upwards, each of whom has a regular beat, which he goes over daily, bearing back the produce of his toil carefully stowed in a small hand-basket. I have frequently met with these boys on their rounds, and the caution necessary for bringing in their brittle ware with safety seemed to have communicated an air of business and steadiness to their manner, unusual to the ordinary volatile habits of children in Ireland.’