children in life, must be rather a gratifying reflection for parents. The process of bumbareeing is very simple. It consists in buying as largely as your means will afford of an auctioneer, hiring a stall for sixpence, and retailing the fish at a swingeing profit. I think that if I were not a landed gentleman, a Middlesex magistrate, and a member of the Court of Lieutenancy—vainly endeavouring, meanwhile, to ascertain my parochial settlement, in order to obtain admission to a workhouse as an unable-bodied pauper—that I should like to be a bumbaree. Plaice, soles, haddocks (fresh), skate, maids, cod, and ling (the two last-mentioned fish in batches of threes and fours, with a string passed through the gills), are the only fish sold by auction. Fresh herrings are sold from the vessel by the long hundred (130). They are counted from the hold to the buyers in “warp” fives. Twopence per hundred is charged to bring them on shore. Eels are sold by the “draft” of twenty pounds weight—the price of the draft varying from three shillings to fifteen. Twopence per draft is paid for “shoreing” or landing the fish from the vessels. Sprats are sold on board the ships by the bushel. A “tindal” is a thousand bushels of sprats. When we come to consider the vast number of these oily, savoury little fishes that a bushel will contain, the idea of a “tindal” of them seems perfectly Garagantuan; yet many “tindals” of them are sold every week during the winter season—for the consumption of sprats among the poorer classes is enormous. What says the Muse of the Bull at Somers Town—what sweet stanzas issue from the anthology of Seven Dials?— “O! ’tis my delight on a Friday night, When sprats they isn’t dear, To fry a couple of score or so Upon a fire clear. “They eats so well, they bears the bell From all the fish I knows: Then let us eat them while we can, Before the price is rose.” (Chorus—ad libitum) “O! ’tis my delight,” &c.