The Second Minute Book Of The Lodge Of Industry, Gateshead.

a P . M . of 706 , Bro . AV . Dalziel , acting as secretary . No less than 10 members of 614 were proposed as joining members . On the 29 th day of January 1845 , a meeting was held to consider the propriety of removing the Lodge to Gateshead

, when in was adjourned to February 3 . On that date it was decided to remove the Lodge to Gateshead , and something like 20 brethren were elected as joining members .

Since that time the Lodge of Industry lias had a' prosperous career , and is now most flourishing . But these minutes serve to show how carelessly our old brethren kept their minute books , how much was done of which no record is preserved , and

how careful we must be not to press the evidence arising from Minute Books too far , as it is , at the best , but fragmentary and incomplete , and governed by the great characteristic of Masonic reserve . Indeed the argument that because we do not find

in minute books as the early ones in Scotland , any mention of the second or third degree and that therefore these degrees were unknown , has always appeared to me , I confess , utterly untenable .

The writer of this jiaper , who was permitted , as AA . M . of a nei ghbouring Lodge of hi gh repute , to take part in the removal of the Lodge of Industry , thirty years ago , and the installation of the W . M . at Gateshead , begs to express his thanks to the

AV . M . and officers and brethren of the Lod ge of Industry for the great privileges accorded to him . and , not the least , ° to Bro , P . M . Robson . He offers his best wishes for the welfare and progress of the Lod ge of Industry .

Treed By A Tiger.

TREED BY A TIGER .

BY JUSTUS LAWSON . "I ' always heard , " remarked I to my taend , Lieutenant M , as we sat over ° ur late tea , in Samarcand , at a table put r 'ght out in the open street in front of his quarters

, after the primitive Eastern fashion , J - je always heard that that belt of hugh eeds along the Syr-Daria , just opposite « nmaz , wasagreat place for tigers ; but fle u I passed through it the other day , on y way here , I didn't see one , although

the reeds were broken every here and there , as if by the passing and repassing of some large beast . " " AVell , they are pretty rare now , but you still meet with them occasionally ; its only a few years since an officer of ours

killed two of them in the very place you ' re speaking of . There used to be a good many , too , in the jungle around Fort Perovski ; but now the likeliest place for them is along tne Hi , up toward the Chinese border—they fairly swarm there .

You see , we havn ' fc disturbed that region much as yet ; there ' s only one post road through the whole of it ; but when we begin to improve it likewise , Messieurs les Tigres will have to emigrate . " " Have you ever fallen in with any of them yourself ?" " I have indeed , and in a way I didn't

much like . One night I was camping otlt on the road from Vernoe to Kouldja , and slept , if you can call it so , in the jungle , with the damp creeping into my very bones , and the musketoes about me by thousands upon thousands . When morning cameand there was just light enough

, to see where things were , I was startled by my horse shying suddenly , and trembling all over . And there , not thirty yards from where I stood , I saw , grinning through the bushes , the head of a full-grown tiger . " " AVell , before he could make a spring ,

I made another—which was up into my saddle—and away as hard as I could pelt ; for , having no weapon but my revolver , and no one with me but my Tartar guide ( who was worth nothing in a fi ght ) , I judged the best tactic to be ' an orderl y retreat . '"

" I quite agree with you there ; but was that your last experience of them 1 " "No , indeed—I'd a much more serious adventure about a year later . But , before I begin to tell it , let ' s have the glasses filled again . Ostap , more tea !" Ostap ( a tall , wiry Cossackwith the

, scar of a Bokhariote yataghan across his low forehead ) refills the tumblers , out of which tea is always drunk by Russians j and the lieutenant , after sipping in silence for a minute or two , strikes into the second part of his story :

"It was in the summer of 1871 , when we were going against the Tarantohis before Kouldja—the time when we beat them in that great batDle among the moun-