His reverence returned to his home, muttering denunciations upon Watty’s devoted head; and Watty went his way, laughing immoderately at the success of his joke. He had given his spiritual director a ride of a mile or so without his breakfast, which no clerical stomach, Catholic or Protestant, could put up with, unless with a wedding breakfast in prospective. And he told but the truth after all. Young Costigan and handsome Kate had that morning given the knowing old ones the slip, and got married in Wexford; and Dennis, our portly friend Dennis, since he couldn’t have the “belle o’ the barony” for his bride, put a good face on the matter, and received her as his daughter-in-law. Twelve rejected suitors were at the “hauling home;” amongst them Counsellor Shiel of course, who favoured the company with a song made for the occasion, the concluding lines of which we give: “Now industrious agriculthure transplants the “Flower of Forth,” To a cosy situation all shelthered from the North!” M. G. R. ON THE FOLLY OF SOWING BAD SEEDS BECAUSE THEY ARE CHEAP. BY MARTIN DOYLE. A few months ago I saw in the shop window of a petty seedsman near Dublin, an advertisement announcing the sale of grass seeds at two shillings and eightpence per barrel of four bushels. I had the curiosity to examine those seeds, which, as may be supposed from their price, were a compound of the germs of weeds, with a small proportion of grass seeds intermixed. I have no doubt that some poor and uncalculating petty farmers were silly enough to purchase this trash on the penny-wise and pound-foolish principle, and I well know that there is no point on which greater ignorance prevails than on that of a proper selection of grass seeds, although they should be sown with an accurate regard to the nature of the soil, the number of years during which the land is to be left in meadow or in pasturage, each of which conditions also requires a different description of seeds. The successful establishment of grass seeds depends materially, besides the clean and pulverised state of the land, on their adaptation to the soil; and if that be in a state perfectly fit for their reception, a much smaller quantity of seed will be sufficient than under the opposite circumstances; and if the land be in a foul state previously to laying it down, it is clear that the sowing of weed seeds, with a trifling and uncertain admixture of true grass seeds, cannot render it cleaner.