MOSQUITOS (Galveston-in the Autumn).

[Extracts from Journal.]

Since the late heavy rain the weather has been very hot: myriads of larger mosquitos, biting and stinging through one's clothes. Towards evening the horses and cattle are driven from the prairie into the town by these unharmonious wizzing winged little devils. During the summer months one is obliged to sleep under a "bar," or curtain of gauze. In New Orleans" bars" are made large enough to line a room. At night it is an intellectual amusement to get under one's bar, and pass the flame of a candle near their tender little limbs, burning them; and thus they are easily killed. Last night I could not sleep for these insects; and obliged, ere daylight, to leave my couch and walk about. O for a good southerly breeze, to blow all these imps to anywhere but their remaining here! Such a visitation makes a northern man wish just now to be out of the Tropics. It is midnight now that I am writing; the immense numbers of these buzzing insects keep up such a din, and with their biting, that it is almost impossible to write.

The following is from a friend at Matagorda :

"Folks without mosquito-bars have suffered awfully for two nights past; the late rain having generated for us about fifty bushels to the acre. We have been without our regular sea-breeze since the rainy weather ceased; and the murderous little villains have had it, like the bull in the china-shop,' all their own way. As soon as a good south-easter blows up, for which we are all praying, Matagorda will be relieved by them.”

The late uncomfortable and uncommon sort of weather is over; we have now fine breezes from the eastward, and a clear sky. The late heavy rains have made the prairie lands wet and travelling disagreeable. The mosquito still in great numbers. During the day time the mosquito is not very troublesome to one if walking or stirring about; but if still, reading, or writing, then they persecute by getting up one's nose, between the eye and nose, biting right and left; and if the sufferer should be sitting on an open cane-bottom chair, woe be to him. About dusk they begin to buzz, and as the evening advances their numbers and horrid din increase. When lights are brought into the room they congregate strongly. About bed-time, and the bar being fixed round the bed, then for some time a loud angry buzzing is heard from them, and apparently savage that they cannot bite and suck one's blood. Let a bar be as good as can be made, a few will get in ; and after filling their skins with your life's existence, they stick passively upon the bar and go to sleep. These little robbers are, in their turn, subject to terrible retribution There is a monster called the mosquito hawk, who swallows and cats them. I caught one of these mosquito hawks, and pinned him to the wainscoting; he was eaten up in a few hours by ants. Thus we go on cating one another. I begin to believe in cannibalism; although, according to Sir John B-w, we ought not to believe in cannibalism unless "one saw one man eat another." We have mice and rats here, but the latter vermin are in considerable numbers; and owing to the habitations being of wood, over the rooms, under, and up and down the wainscoting, afford them no inefficient promenades. During the day they may just peep out of

the holes, or take a sly walk along a dresser and walk off with a small loaf or mutton-chop, get into flour barrels or Indian corn; the last they are arrant thieves of. But these "villians" are something like the niggers-all friendly or ferocious foes. To elucidate this: At the present moment we have two great brigades of rats in my dwelling. They lived on pretty friendly terms for some time (this I judge from only hearing them parade quietly over the tops of the rooms, and their squeaking was of a placid character). But discord has arisen; and it would appear, owing to some of one party walking off rather unceremoniously with one of my patent polished shoes, and keeping possession

of it.

RED DEER.

ENGRAVED BY J. WESTLEY, FROM A PAINTING BY G. ARMFIELD.

The march of civilization, or cultivation, threatens to play a very strong hand against some of old Britain's sports and pastimes. Breaking up grass lands; reclaiming waste lands; and the general rage for railways and enclosures, will alter the character of some of our diversions a-field before long. In the mean time, then, it becomes us to pickle and preserve specimens of such as we can still put our hands on intact and unaltered.

Foremost amongst these stands the Red Deer-an animal whose pursuit in this kingdom has ever been attended with something of the grand and majestic. Stalk up to him in Atholl, or turn him out on Maidenhead thicket-the sport he affords has still ever an imposing look with it. Whether achieved amongst the wildest and most noble scenery of our island, and with the greatest skill and energy the sportsman can boast of; or, taken and retaken on the most artificial system our mighty hunters have stooped to-the red deer must yet hold high rank as "royal game.

From a variety of causes the red deer are said to be every day becoming scarcer, even in the highlands of Scotland-a territory that should be their own, and where on many domains every effort is still made to preserve them. On this side of the Border, our surest finds would be in the paddocks of Her Majesty at Ascot, or of Baron Rothschild at Tring-though one quarter certainly yet offers them a home more in accordance with their wild free taste, as more appropriate, perhaps, in the character of its scenery and disposition to the true staghunt. Many writers in this work, from the time of Nimrod and his Tours downwards, have celebrated the Forest of Exmoor, its red deer, and its glorious runs. Almost all, however, with the plaudite et valete; as too well-grounded fears are expressed that before many years this pristine and most attractive sport will die away for want of game. It is but fair, though, to give here a fact in direct contradiction to the cultivation versus rural-recreation argument with which we commenced this notice. Of all the landowners on the Exinoor, the Knight family are now, we believe, making themselves most justly famed for the immense