on the Continent, but nowhere on so large a scale. The screen or framework of brushwood through which the salt ley trickles, is about forty feet high, and extends almost half an English mile in length, or above 1460 yards.

I found a comfortable little country inn at this place, and proceeded next day to Holmestrand, a small town very romantically situated at the foot of a remarkable cliff of basaltic rock which skirts this side of the fiord for some miles. This locality deserves the attentive examination of the geologist. It appears to contain three distinct formations, one of primary granitic rock, one of later formation deposited upon the first, and containing in its limestone and clay-slate, numerous impressions of the extinct molluscæ, and a third more recent formation of porphyritic rocks to which this basalt belongs, which has tilted up, broken and displaced the strata of the second, and altered, at the points of contact, the nature of the first.

Drammen, May. I found the Norwegians in the midst of great rejoicings. They have just received the royal sanction to use their own national flag in all seas. The history of this flag business throws a light upon the policy and relations of Sweden with Norway. By the articles of their union, each nation is entitled to its own commercial flag, and as a war flag, the two countries were to use a union flag common to both. The share of each country in this common flag not having been defined, it was ordered to be the old Swedish flag, blue with a yellow cross, and with a little patch of

C

red with a white cross in one corner, to denote the

Norwegian part in it. This was considered by the Norwegians as no fair representation of the union of two independent countries under a common flag, but having so few ships in the public service, it was not much regarded. The Norwegians used only their own flag, red with a white cross, on their own vessels. Under pretext, however, that this Norwegian national flag would be in danger of capture by the Algerine or other Barbary powers who had no treaty for respecting this flag, but only the Swedish, all Norwegian vessels going to the south of Cape Finnisterre were required by a royal edict to use this union flag only, and to sail with Swedish Mediterranean passports. This arrangement was highly offensive to both nations. The Swedes are justly proud of their old national flag, and saw with indignation that it was prostituted to cover property, not truly Swedish — the fish cargoes of the Bergen merchants. The Norwegians considered. it as an insidious attempt to do away with their national independence in the eyes of other nations, to give Sweden a false importance as a commercial country at their expense; and as an alarming infringement of their constitution, by giving the effect of law to royal edicts without the concurrence of their storthing. By the French conquests in Africa, the piratical states were in fact suppressed, and vessels under the Hamburgh, Bremen, and Prussian flags, navigate the Mediterranean without passports, fees, or treaties, and at the same rate of insurance as other vessels. The very pretext,

therefore, of the order had fallen to the ground, and the disgust in Norway at the unconstitutional continuance of it, had arisen to an alarming pitch. The sudden dissolution of the last storthing was attributed to the apprehension that resolutions setting aside the royal edict on this subject would be proposed. Some independent ship-masters of Arendal cut the matter short. They sailed to the Mediterranean under their own flag, and without a Swedish pass, and insisted that there was no law obliging Norwegians to sail under any flag but their own, or to pay fees to a Swedish bureau at Stockholm for useless papers. One whose vessel was detained at Lisbon by the Swedish consul, brought an action against him for illegal detention. The whole Norwegian shipping prepared to follow the example, and the obnoxious edicts and proclamations had to be hastily rescinded, the act of the consul at Lisbon disavowed, and all Norwegian vessels allowed to use their own flag in all seas, in order to get out of the awkward dilemma of having the royal edicts set at defiance as illegal, and transgressed with impunity; and with the law as well as the feeling of the country on the side of the transgressors. The Swedish merchant shipping simultaneously resumed their own ancient flag without the Norwegian spot in it. These flags show how the wind sits.

It is difficult to account for the policy of government in these frequent, sharp, and unnecessary collisions with the Norwegian nation, unless on the supposition that there are two powers at work in

the cabinet one rushing blindly and arbitrarily into these awkward positions, and the other striking in, when matters have gone too far, and prudently getting out of the scrapes. A little of the wisdom displayed in withdrawing from these positions, would have prevented the getting into them. The loyalty of the Norwegians attributes the errors to a ministerial influence, and the rectification of them to the wisdom of the monarch himself. This-or the reverse- may, in fact, be the real solution of the vacillating policy of this reign in Norwegian affairs.

May. The snow was still covering the ground, and sledges driving about in the first half of this month; and until grass had grown, and roads become dry, travelling was scarcely practicable. The season for tillage and sowing is so short in this climate, that horses cannot be spared from field labour, and the traveller even with a courier or forbud to order horses, will be detained. at every post station for several hours. I made several short excursions in this beautiful neighbourhood. I was surprised to find some implements of husbandry in common use here, which are not generally found even in our best farmed districts. The harrow with spiked rollers is universally used. I also saw a harrow of which every two teeth were in a clump of wood which had an iron eye at each end. Iron rods pass through these eyes, as in connecting two light harrows with us, so that each row of tines plays upon an iron rod, and be the land or rig ever so much heaped up, rounded, or sloping,

the whole harrow embraces and acts upon it. There is also a good practice in harrowing, not so common in many parts of Scotland as it ought to be. Instead of dragging round the harrow at the end of each rig, in order to go up the next, by which the earth in the head rigs is accumulated in time like a dam-dyke around a field, they unhook the swingle trees, turn round the horses only, and hook them on again at the opposite corner of the harrow, using a short stick with a crook at the end, to save stooping to unhook and hook on the swingle-trees. These are not attached to ropes or iron chains by which the horses draw, but by hooks and eyes to light birch poles, which are fastened to the back harness or saddle very simply, by a hole in the other end. It looks as if the horses were working in shafts, but these poles are intended merely to save rope or chain traces, and are more manageable than loose ropes or chains trailing about the feet of the horses. There are curious savings of rope by birch poles among the country people. I have seen a large boat on the Myosen lake rigged with two shrouds on each side of the mast, which were light birch poles hooked on with swivel hooks and eyes, to the mast and gunwales. In the last dressing of the fields here, after the seed is sown, the fluted roller is in common use. This is a common roller with narrow slips of wood nailed lengthwise upon it, at the distance of half an inch from each other. The field rolled with this implement, is crimped into little ridges, like a lady's frill. This is good husbandry. All the benefit of compressing the