the Comstock lead, prove that the ore is there in large quantities, and the stimulus has now been applied which will rapidly bring it to light. With the increasing facilities between San Francisco and Hong-Kong the bulk of this must go to China direct, instead of the roundabout course by which it has reached the East through London. But these are questions that hardly attract attention at present in Shanghai, or among the Shanghai bankers, whose shops we were talking of as met with here and there in the open street. Next to one of these respectable, long-tailed gentlemen we found a first-class apothecary, whose shop and mode of business were widely different from those of one of the guild at home. The ceilings were swarming with swallows, whose chattering rivalled that of the folks below, conspicuous among whom was a fat, greasy old chap, in the dignity of a gray mustache and a monstrous pair of colored spectacles, the glasses of which were an inch and a half in diameter, rimmed with horn, and tied by a string to his ears. He was gravely busy in compounding a prescription on a piece of paper large enough to cover the side of a chest of tea, and closely written over with Chinese characters. We lounged by his side as he put up packet after packet of dried roots and simples, tasting many of them with his consent. Calamus and liquorice were among them, and camphor, too. Each packet was of the size of a pound paper of Stuart's candy (any child can tell you what size that has), and when the entire prescription was filled, the unfortunate sick man became possessed of no less than twenty-three of these packages, enough to keep famine from his door for a week at least, to judge from their bulk. They filled a goodly basket. It was not one man alone who carried away such a heap of medicines; but before each applicant, as the prescriptions spread on the counter were ticked off, rose a pile of similar packages, which bid fair to become as high as that which had excited our curiosity. All these drugs were put up neatly in the light-yellow paper we are accustomed to see round our packs of fire-crackers, and as neatly sealed with a little gum arabic. Indeed, it is shrewdly suspected by Father Hue, from this prodigious liberality of drugs, that the physicians feel bound to give a man all he pays for, in the hope that out of a multitude of remedies some may chance to suit his case. The foreign residents of Shanghai aver that the doctors take contracts to cure their patients in a certain time, and if unsuccessful at the stipulated day, their patients relieve their minds by a little elegant abuse of their physician, and take the contract to the next in their neighborhood.