PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. Volume 109, 24th August, 1895. _edited by Sir Francis Burnand_ [Illustration: IN MEDIO TUTISSIMUS! "WHAT! NEVER BEEN ILL SINCE YOU WERE BORN! I SUPPOSE YOU'RE A TEETOTALLER?" "OH NO! BEEN A MODERATE DRUNKARD ALL MY LIFE!"] * * * * * SCRAPS FROM CHAPS. THE IRISH YOLK.--In the name of the Profit--eggs! Irish co-operators have already made giant strides in the production of milk and butter, and now the Irish Co-operative Agency has decided, so says the _Cork Daily Herald_, to "take up the egg-trade." We hope the egg-traders won't be "taken up," too; if so, the trade would be arrested just when it was starting, and where would the profit be then? "It is stated that many Irish eggs now reach the English market dirty, stale, and unsorted," so that wholesale English egg-merchants have preferred to buy Austrian and French ones. Ireland not able to compete with the foreigner! Perish the thought! A little technical education judiciously applied will soon teach the Irish fowl not to lay "shop 'uns." * * * * * Feathers in Scotch Caps. "The railway race to the North, like the race across the Atlantic, has placed beyond challenge that on land as well as on sea Scotch engines break the record."--_North British Daily Mail._ Did not Lord BYRON anticipate this when he wrote (in _Mr. Punch's_ version of his poem on "Dark Lochnagar"):-- Yes, Caledonia, thy engines _are_ scrumptious, Though even in England some good ones are seen; And, if the confession won't render you bumptious, We sigh for your flyers to far Aberdeen! But if Caledonia is inclined to boast about its locomotives, let it ponder its tinkers, and learn humility. The Glasgow "Departmental Committee on Habitual Offenders, Vagrants, &c.," reports that the nomad tinkers of Scotland number 1702, and of these 232 "were apprehended for some crime or other during the year." _They_ don't do 151 miles in 167 minutes, like the locomotives--no, they do a couple of months in Glasgow gaol; and they break the laws instead of breaking records. There are 725 tinker children, who get practically no education. Bonnie Scotland, land of grandeur, where the thousand tinkers wander, you must catch these children, and educate them! The adult tinker may be irreclaimable, but at least the children should have a chance of something better--a choice of being soldier, sailor, tinker, or tailor, as they prefer. If, after all, they elect to tink, tink they must. * * * * *