the soreness very great.

Next day the pain had quite gone, but the soreness continued till the day after.

The marks of the points of the spines, thirty-six in number, are still visible (March 16th).

The plate gives a sketch of the caterpillar and the cocoon, which is remarkable on account of the little holes left at each end in the weaving.

The Honorary Secretary read the following Note:DUNKIRK AND GIBRALTAR. — A HISTORICAL NOTE ON BRITISH INTERESTS ABROAD.

BY JAMES BIRCHALL.

I. DUNKIRK.

1. It has been well observed that institutions which have proved themselves to be of essential service in one age very often work perniciously in another, and that their value depends not so much upon their principles as upon the circumstances of the period in which they exist.

This remark will apply with equal aptness to what are called national interests, since it might easily be shown that those things for which a nation has at one time persistently contended, as essential to its honour or contributory to the public welfare, have at another time been regarded with indifference. So patent indeed is this fact on the page of history, that we frequently find the sons, in a later age, puzzled to know what it was that their sires really fought about.

2. The object of this Note is to prove or exemplify this statement-first, in the case of Dunkirk, a British interest

which disturbed the minds of our forefathers for about a century, and then sank into oblivion. And next, in the case of Gibraltar, which, originally of no estimation, came into importance as the other passed out, and has increased in vitality from that day to this.

3. Dunkirk may be regarded as the last vestige of English mediæval foreign policy. The prominent feature of that policy was the passion for continental dominion, from which not even the most sagacious of our rulers were entirely free. Elizabeth regretted the loss of Calais quite as keenly as her sister Mary, and one of the first conditions she proposed to the French Protestants, as the price of English assistance, was the surrender of Havre, as a guarantee for the ultimate restoration of the coveted town. Even Cromwell was unable to overcome this feeling, and his acquisition of Dunkirk was one of those triumphs which his enemies could not gainsay, seeing that it contributed, more than anything else in their estimation, to the recovery of English prestige on the continent. The town thus became a second Calais, in the eyes of Englishmen; but they prized its possession on more solid grounds than those of mere national sentiment. Dunkirk was the key to the Low Countries; and it had been, and was destined to become again, a standing menace to English

commerce.

4. In those days the most profitable branch of English trade was that which was carried on with the Levant. This trade was furthermore so extensive, that the loss of the Smyrna fleet was regarded as a national calamity. To ensure its immunity from capture, the richly-laden cargoes were generally escorted homeward by a convoy, for the Channel was as rife with pirates as the Barbary seas, and Dunkirk was the stronghold which sheltered them all. Its acquisition by England was, therefore, an "interest" of the highest consequence to our shipowners, and, it should be added, to

the Dutch also, seeing that their Smyrna fleets excelled our own in wealth and tonnage.

5. We can hereby comprehend the outburst of general indignation which greeted the base and unpatriotic, as well as mercenary, conduct of Charles II., when he sold to an aggressive and unscrupulous prince -Louis XIV.—a town and harbour whose natural advantages could be turned with such mischievous effects against the interests of his country.

It is said that Napoleon once compared Antwerp to a pistol, which could, at any time, be aimed at the head of England. Such a weapon was Dunkirk in the hands of Louis and his successors, though their opportunities were not always favourable to its use.

In the wars which presently broke out between France and this country, hosts of privateers, led by the famous Jean Bart, whose statue adorns its chief square, issued from the harbour of Dunkirk, harassed all the eastern coasts, and made great havoc in English and Dutch trade with the Baltic and the Mediterranean. It was under the shelter of its guns that more than one expedition was fitted out, in after years, for a descent upon England, while so strong were its fortifications, both by sea and land, that all attempts to capture it or blow up the works failed.

6. Diplomacy was equally unsuccessful against it. For fifty years every English treaty with France, from that of Utrecht downwards, contained a clause for the demolition of its naval defences, and the filling up of its harbour. But the stipulation, though regularly accepted, was never fairly carried out; and its reiteration in successive treaties, with constant non-fulfilment, can only be accounted for on the supposition that Dunkirk had ceased to be the terror it was to our commerce; and that the demand for its destruction as a port had become a habit with our statesmen—that it had grown in fact into an established tradition of English foreign

policy, which continued to be cherished even after the place had sunk into comparative insignificance.

7. Be this as it may, Dunkirk seems to have dropped out of the notice of diplomacy after the year 1762; and though it figures in the military annals of the French Revolutionary Wars, Napoleon passed the place by as of small importance, compared with Antwerp, when he made those formidable demonstrations for the invasion of England, which converted a nation of shopkeepers into an army of volunteers, in the early years of the present century.

1. Gibraltar first began to occupy the national mind as a British interest about the time that Dunkirk thus lost its character of a bogus to British merchants. It had then been in the possession of England for more than half a century; during which it had not been regarded with favour, and had not attained the rank and proportions of a genuine British interest.

Of course, it must be remembered that at the period now referred to, England had no Indian empire to maintain, nor any interests at stake in the East, and, with the exception of Minorca, she had no possessions in the Mediterranean. This now celebrated fortress was therefore as lightly valued as it had been easily captured-the place being taken by a mere chance in 1704.

2. The war in which this country was then engagedthat known in history as the War of the Spanish Succession -is a remarkable illustration of the observation with which this Note was opened that the contests of one age are often utterly inexplicable to the next.

Chief among the designs of Louis XIV. for the aggrandisement of his family was his project for the eventual union of Spain and France under one rule. He had married a