The remark introduced a conversation on the practice of laying a bunch of rue before persons on trial at Newgate—an impertinent practical pun on their unfortunate position at the bar. While discussing the subject, Mr Moggridge made a sudden rush to a plant with small slender leaves, being the one he was in quest of, and seemed to feel more happy in securing a specimen of it than if he had fallen upon a mine of the precious metals. ‘I daresay it is a valuable plant that you have got hold of,’ said I; ‘unfortunately, I am not able to see anything remarkable about it; that, of course, is my ignorance. I go in for admiring the rosemary, which is flowering hereabouts in great profusion; so, “for remembrance,” I will take the liberty of carrying off a sprig in my button-hole.’ Glancing down the steep, I observed a donkey climbing a pathway under a load of sticks, with a lad behind driving it. ‘What a wonderfully useful animal the ass is in this mountainous region,’ I observed. ‘I don’t see how the people could get on without it. And so patient, so docile is the creature, I am sometimes sorry for it. Talking of that, I have heard the donkey-women address a few words to the animal, as if to cheer it on, which I did not understand. The words sounded like _alla eesa_. Can you tell me what they mean?’ ‘Yes,’ was the reply. ‘The meaning is a pious exclamation of kindly import from the Arabic, and is traced to the Saracens, who at one time held possession of parts of the country along the coast. The hill-dwellers certainly take the work out of their donkeys, but on the whole treat them kindly; they are, in fact, their companions, their friends, their dependence.’ Conversation now turned on the remarkable absence of wild animals, particularly birds, along the whole Riviera. There was, doubtless, no deficiency of butterflies, but this only confirmed the notion, that insects injurious to plants had gained in numbers by the vicious practice of shooting almost every kind of small bird.