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174 poor creatures seemed to be driven from one herb and root to another, using nettles, turnip-tops, chickweed, in their turn, and dying at last on these miserable substitutes. Many a child sitting in a muddy cabin has been interrogated, what she or he had eat, "nothing but the turnip, ma'am," sometimes the "turnip-top;" and being asked when this was procured, sometimes the answer would be, "yesterday, lady" or, "when we can get them, ma'am."

BLACK BREAD.

We turn from the turnip and see what virtue there is in black bread; and my only regret is, that my powers of description are so faint, that I cannot describe one-half of what might be told of that novel article used for many a month in the county of Mayo. The relief officers there were under government pay, and, as they asserted, under government orders; but it is much to be doubted whether the government, had they been served with a loaf of that bread, would have ordered it for either man or beast. The first that greeted my wondering eyes was in a poor village between Achill and Newport, where, while stopping to feed the horse, a company of children who had been at school, and received a few ounces of this daily, came in with the boon in their hands. The woman of the house reached a piece to me, asking if I ever saw the like. Indeed, I never had, and had never tasted the like. Supposing it must have been accidental, and that no other of the kind had ever been made, I said,