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it is equivalent (as is usual in international affairs) to an admission of her right to it. But the Spruce is not pre-empted; it is a beautiful and valuable tree, eminently easy of conventionalization and use in decoration, etc. Let us adopt it.

30. The St. John alms house, which was partially burned on the night of 1st March, 1829, stood at the south-western corner of Carmarthen street and King street (east), where the stables for the city's horses now stand. I was a very young child when that fire. occurred, yet I distinctly remember being held up at a window that I might have a view of it. Indeed, I have never since witnessed a fire at night without having clearly revived the impression which the sheets of flame rising through the black volumes of smoke over that burning building, and the lurid light cast upon the sky, made upon my infant mind. Only the upper portion of the old alms house was destroyed, at that time; the fire having originated through a defective or over-heated stove-pipe that passed up to the attic storey. The building, a good, solid brick structure, was soon repaired, and was used for many years afterwards, until the present alms house was erected on the farther side of Courtenay Bay. Then the old house, together with some wooden buildings that had been put up adjacent to it, was leased by the city for a term of years, during which the lessee converted the whole property into a number of cheap tenement houses. When, at last, these buildings had all been demolished, the Common Council provided quarters on that ground for the Hook and Ladder Company of the Fire Department. After the great fire of 1877, which swept away that building, the vacant lots were used for some time as a station for the stone-crushing machine belonging to the city. But the neighbors complained so strongly against the nuisance caused by the noise and the smoke