A severe dearth began in May, 1315, and proceeded to the utmost extremity, until after the harvest of 1316. In July, 1316, the quarter of wheat rose to 30_s_., (equal to 22_l_. 10_s_.;) and in August reached to the enormous price of 40_s_. or 30_l_. the quarter. A loaf of coarse bread, which was scarcely able to support a man for a single day, sold for 4_d_., equal in value to 5_s_. now. Wheat rose in Scotland at one time to the enormous sum of 100_s_. the quarter, equal to 75_l_. of the present currency. This dearth continued, but with mitigated severity, until after the harvest of 1317; but great abundance returned in 1318. This famine occasioned a prodigious mortality among the people, owing to the want of proper food, and employment of unwholesome substitutes. The rains set in so early in 1315, and continued so violently, that most of the seed of that year perished in the ground; the meadows were so inundated, that the hay crop of that year was utterly destroyed. H.B.A. * * * * * OLD ADVERTISEMENTS. Puffing is by no means a modern art, although so extravagantly practised in the present day. Of its success two hundred years since, _E.S.N._ of Rochester, has sent us the following specimens:-- At the end of an old medical book which I have in my possession, are the following, among other advertisements:--"_The new Plannet no Plannet_, or the Earth no _Wandring_ Star. Here, out of the principles of divinity, philosophy, &c. the earth's immobility is asserted, and _Copernicus_, his opinion, as erroneous, &c. fully refuted, by _Alexander Ross_, in quarto." "_A Recantation of an Ill-led Life_, or a discovery of the highway law, as also many _cautelous_ admonitions, and ful instructions how to know, shun, and apprehende a _thiefe_, most necessary for all honest travellers to peruse, observe, and practice; written by _John Clavel_, gent." * * * * * ENGLISH FASHIONS. Our constant changes of habit were the subject of ridicule at home and abroad, even at an early period. Witness the ancient limner's jest in 1570, who, being employed to decorate the gallery of the Lord Admiral Lincoln with representations of the costumes of the different nations of Europe, when he came to the English, drew a naked man, with cloth of various colours lying by him, and a pair of shears held in his hand, as in rueful suspense and hesitation; or the earlier conceit, to the same effect, of "Andrew Borde of Physicke Doctor," alias "Andreas Perforatus," who, to the first chapter of his "Boke of the Instruction of Knowledge," (1542,) prefixed a naked figure, with these lines:-- "I am an Englishman, and naked I stande here, Musing in minde what rayment I shal weare: For nowe I wil weare this, and now I will weare that-- And now I will weare I cannot telle whatt." * * * * * THE GATHERER. "A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles."