white in winter. This view has since received scientific acceptation, but Captain Reid was the first to challenge the contrary opinion, which until then had held the field as an undisputed fact. Captain Reid was a great croquet player, and in 1863 wrote a treatise on the rules of the game, which he afterwards found was being issued with sets of Cassiobury croquet, as by "An Old Hand." The Captain brought a successful action against Lord Essex, with whom the responsibility rested. Not long before his death, which occurred on October 22, 1883, Captain Reid was contributing a series of articles on the distinguishing features of "Rural Life in England" to The New York Tribune, in which he treated with good-humoured satire the "customs of the country," in such matters as, for instance, "Public Dinners," a chapter in which his observations are acute and amusing. Until a few days before his last illness, he was engaged in completing the "Land of Fire," which he was not destined to live to see published. His "Mexican War Memories," which promised to be of great interest, were never finished. A posthumous novel of his has appeared, entitled "No Quarter" (Captain Reid always chose effective titles), a romance of the Civil Wars, in which moving incidents by flood and field are detailed with his well-known military accuracy and accustomed force, and the excitement maintained unflaggingly to the end.
Frogmore, Ross.
The American Government have recently despatched a scientific expedition to explore the Colorado Death Valley. Captain Reid visited this fatal valley nearly fifty years ago, and graphically described his perilous journey, and the physical peculiarities of this terrible desert, in the "Scalp Hunters," forty years ago.
When, at the age of sixty-five, Captain Mayne Reid passed away, the Press of every shade of opinion rendered due recognition of the remarkable imaginative genius who had for thirty years held spell-bound the youth of many lands. The Times, too, which the dead novelist had so often and fiercely attacked, contained a generous and appreciative notice of the career of its old adversary. When the proud, intrepid heart ceased to beat, and the indomitable spirit was laid to rest, died a hunter, explorer, naturalist, soldier, novelist, and—remembering his courageous deeds and love of danger, it may be added—a hero.
Part II.—A Reminiscence.
Nearly thirty years ago it was my good fortune to become personally acquainted with Captain Mayne Reid under somewhat singular circumstances. I was then a boy of fifteen, with all the undefined longings and aspirations of that age. "The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts," and the future was to me the mystic time to come, to which I trusted (ah! how vainly) to bring the realisation of my young dreams. I read books on every variety of subject that I could either buy or borrow; and my father having at that time a publishing house in Fleet-street, my opportunities of
