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[Illustration:  A Pair of ’Eels.]

From numerous sources of information, we learn that prime English beef is underdone, which causes rather a run on mutton. Revenons, &c., is the watchword in many households.  Poultry flies rather high for the time of year, and grouse is also up.  Grice—­why not? plural of mouse, mice—­grice, we say, are growing more absent, and therefore dearer.  Black game is not so darkly hued as it is painted, and a few transactions in wild duck are reported.  Lard is hardening, as usual in frosty weather.  Hares are not so mad as in March, still, on the approach of a passer-by, they go off rapidly.  Rabbits, especially Welsh ones, are now excellent.  As Christmas recedes, geese have stopped laying golden eggs.  Turkey (in Europe, at least) is in high feather.  Brill is now in brilliant condition; soles are right down to the ground, whilst eels begin to show themselves in pairs.  Halibut is cheap, but sackbut is scarce, and psaltery requires such prolonged soaking before it is fit for the table, that purchasers fight shy of anything but small parcels.  As for plaice, a large dealer tells us he has been driven to the conclusion that there is “no plaice like home.”

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We hear of a curious incident in connection with the revival of Henry the Eighth at the Lyceum.  On Saturday night, a gentleman who had witnessed the play from the Stalls and carefully sat it out, demanded his money back as he went out.  He did so on the ground that he had always understood that Henry the Eighth was by SHAKSPEARE, and found it credibly asserted that that gentleman had no part in the authorship of the piece.  Mr. BRAM STOKER, M.A., was called to the assistance of the box-keeper, and ably discussed the point.  Whilst declining to commit himself to the admission that SHAKSPEARE had no hand in the work, he quoted authority which assigned the authorship to FLETCHER and MASSENGER; in which case, he ingeniously argued, the authorship being dual, the price of the Stalls ought to be doubled.  Conversation taking this turn, the gentleman, whose name did not transpire, withdrew.

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Miss JANE COBDEN, ex-Alderman of the London County Council, who has long pluckily championed Woman’s Rights, has now, according to an announcement in the papers, determined to assert her own, and get married. C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas—­Aldermanic.

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A telegram from Berlin states that Dr. PFEIFFER, a son-in-law of Professor KOCH, has succeeded in discovering the cause of influenza and its infection in a bacillus, which, when seen under the microscope, appears in the shape of a most minute rod.  The best thing that can be done with this rod is to put it in pickle, and keep it there.

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