Chapter XII: Part 12

Equally curious are the habits and manners of the harvesting ants, the species which Solomon seems to have had specially in view when he advised his hearers to go to the ant—a piece of advice which I have also adopted as the title of the present article, though I by no means intend thereby to insinuate that the readers of this magazine ought properly to be classed as sluggards. These industrious little creatures abound in India: they are so small that it takes eight or ten of them to carry a single grain of wheat or barley; and yet they will patiently drag along their big burden for five hundred or a thousand yards to the door of their formicary. To prevent the grain from germinating, they bite off the embryo root—a piece of animal intelligence outdone by another species of ant, which actually allows the process of budding to begin, so as to produce sugar, as in malting. After the last thunderstorms of the monsoon the little proprietors bring up all the grain from their granaries to dry in the tropical sunshine. The quantity of grain stored up by the harvesting ants is often so large that the hair-splitting Jewish casuists of the Mishna have seriously discussed the question whether it belongs to the landowner or may lawfully be appropriated by the gleaners. “They do not appear,” says Sir John Lubbock, “to have considered the rights of the ants.” Indeed our duty towards insects is a question which seems hitherto to have escaped the notice of all moral philosophers. Even Mr. Herbert Spencer, the prophet of individualism, has never taken exception to our gross disregard of the proprietary rights of bees in their honey, or of silkworms in their cocoons. There are signs, however, that the obtuse human conscience is awakening in this respect; for when Dr. Loew suggested to bee-keepers the desirability of testing the commercial value of honey-ants, as rivals to the bee, Dr. McCook replied that “the sentiment against the use of honey thus taken from living insects, which is worthy of all respect, would not be easily overcome.”

There are no harvesting ants in Northern Europe, though they extend as far as Syria, Italy, and the Riviera, in which latter station I have often observed them busily working. What most careless observers take for grain in the nests of English ants are of course really the cocoons of the pupæ. For many years, therefore, entomologists were under the impression that Solomon had fallen into this popular error, and that when he described the ant as “gathering her food in the harvest” and “preparing her meat in the summer,” he was speaking rather as a poet than as a strict naturalist. Later observations, however, have vindicated the general accuracy of the much-married king by showing that true harvesting ants do actually occur in Syria, and that they lay by stores for the winter in the very way stated by that early entomologist, whose knowledge of “creeping things” is specially enumerated in the long list of his universal accomplishments.

Dr. Lincecum of Texan fame has even improved upon Solomon by his discovery of those still more interesting and curious creatures, the agricultural ants of Texas. America is essentially a farming country, and the agricultural ants are born farmers. They make regular clearings around their nests, and on these clearings they allow nothing to grow except a particular kind of grain, known as ant-rice. Dr. Lincecum maintains that the tiny farmers actually sow and cultivate the ant-rice. Dr. McCook, on the other hand, is of opinion that the rice sows itself, and that the insects' part is limited to preventing any other plants or weeds from encroaching on the appropriated area. In any case, be they squatters or planters, it is certain that the rice, when ripe, is duly harvested, and that it is, to say the least, encouraged by the ants, to the exclusion of all other competitors. “After the maturing and harvesting of the seed,” says Dr. Lincecum, “the dry stubble is cut away and removed from the pavement, which is thus left fallow until the ensuing autumn, when the same species of grass, and in the same circle, appears again, and receives the same agricultural care as did the previous crop.” Sir John Lubbock, indeed, goes so far as to say that the three stages of human progress—the hunter, the herdsman, and the agriculturist—are all to be found among various species of existing ants.

The Saüba ants of tropical America carry their agricultural operations a step further. Dwelling in underground nests, they sally forth upon the trees, and cut out of the leaves large round pieces, about as big as a shilling. These pieces they drop upon the ground, where another detachment is in waiting to convey them to the galleries of the nest. There they store enormous quantities of these round pieces, which they allow to decay in the dark, so as to form a sort of miniature mushroom bed. On the mouldering vegetable heap they have thus piled up, they induce a fungus to grow, and with this fungus they feed their young grubs during their helpless infancy. Mr. Belt, the “Naturalist in Nicaragua,” found that native trees suffered far less from their depredations than imported ones. The ants hardly touched the local forests, but they stripped young plantations of orange, coffee, and mango trees stark naked. He ingeniously accounts for this curious fact by supposing that an internecine struggle has long been going on in the countries inhabited by the Saübas between the ants and the forest trees. Those trees that best resisted the ants, owing either to some unpleasant taste or to hardness of foliage have in the long run survived destruction; but those which were suited for the purpose of the ants have been reduced to nonentity, while the ants in turn were getting slowly adapted to attack other trees. In this way almost all the native trees have at last acquired some special means of protection against the ravages of the leaf-cutters; so that they immediately fall upon all imported and unprotected kinds as their natural prey. This ingenious and wholly satisfactory explanation must of course go far to console the Brazilian planters for the frequent loss of their orange and coffee crops.

Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of the Darwinian theory (whose honors he waived with rare generosity in favor of the older and more distinguished naturalist), tells a curious story about the predatory habits of these same Saübas. On one occasion, when he was wandering about in search of specimens on the Rio Negro, he bought a peck of rice, which was tied up, Indian fashion, in the local bandanna of the happy plantation slave. At night he left his rice incautiously on the bench of the hut where he was sleeping; and next morning the Saübas had riddled the handkerchief like a sieve, and carried away a gallon of the grain for their own felonious purposes. The underground galleries which they dig can often be traced for hundreds of yards; and Mr. Hamlet Clark even asserts that in one case they have tunnelled under the bed of a river where it is a quarter of a mile wide. This beats Brunel on his own ground into the proverbial cocked hat, both for depth and distance.

Within doors, in the tropics, ants are apt to put themselves obtrusively forward in a manner little gratifying to any except the enthusiastically entomological mind. The winged females, after their marriage flight, have a disagreeable habit of flying in at the open doors and windows at lunch time, settling upon the table like the Harpies in the Æneid, and then quietly shuffling off their wings one at a time, by holding them down against the table-cloth with one leg, and running away vigorously with the five others. As soon as they have thus disembarassed themselves of their superfluous members, they proceed to run about over the lunch as if the house belonged to them, and to make a series of experiments upon the edible qualities of the different dishes. One doesn't so much mind their philosophical inquiries into the nature of the bread or even the meat; but when they come to drowning themselves by dozens, in the pursuit of knowledge, in the soup and the sherry, one feels bound to protest energetically against the spirit of martyrdom by which they are too profoundly animated. That is one of the slight drawbacks of the realms of perpetual summer: in the poets you see only one side of the picture—the palms, the orchids, the humming-birds, the great trailing lianas; in practical life you see the reverse side—the thermometer at 98°, the tepid drinking-water, the prickly heat, the perpetual languor, the endless shoals of aggressive insects. A lady of my acquaintance, indeed, made a valuable entomological collection in her own dining-room, by the simple process of consigning to pillboxes all the moths and flies and beetles that settled upon the mangoes and star-apples in the course of dessert.

Another objectionable habit of the tropical ants, viewed practically, is their total disregard of vested interests in the case of house-property. Like Mr. George and his communistic friends, they disbelieve entirely in the principle of private rights in real estate. They will eat their way through the beams of your house till there is only a slender core of solid wood left to support the entire burden. I have taken down a rafter in my own house in Jamaica, originally 18 inches thick each way, with a sound circular centre of no more than 6 inches in diameter, upon which all the weight necessarily fell. With the material extracted from the wooden beams they proceed to add insult to injury by building long covered galleries right across the ceiling of your drawing-room. As may be easily imagined, these galleries do not tend to improve the appearance of the ceiling; and it becomes necessary to form a Liberty and Property Defence League for the protection of one's personal interests against the insect enemy. I have no objection to ants building galleries on their own freehold, or even to their nationalising the land in their native forests; but I do object strongly to their unwarrantable intrusion upon the domain of private life. Expostulation and active warfare, however, are equally useless. The carpenter-ant has no moral sense, and is not amenable either to kindness or blows. On one occasion, when a body of these intrusive creatures had constructed an absurdly conspicuous brown gallery straight across the ceiling of my drawing-room, I determined to declare open war against them, and getting my black servant to bring in the steps and a mop, I proceeded to demolish the entire gallery just after breakfast. It was about twenty feet long, as well as I can remember, and perhaps an inch in diameter. At one o'clock I returned to lunch. My black servant pointed, with a broad grin on his intelligent features, to the wooden ceiling. I looked up: in those three hours the carpenter-ants had reconstructed the entire gallery, and were doubtless mocking me at their ease, with their uplifted antennæ, under that safe shelter. I retired at once from the unequal contest. It was clearly impossible to go on knocking down a fresh gallery every three hours of the day or night throughout a whole lifetime.

Ants, says Mr. Wallace, without one touch of satire, “force themselves upon the attention of everyone who visits the tropics.” They do, indeed, and that most pungently; if by no other method, at least by the simple and effectual one of stinging. The majority of ants in every nest are of course neuters, or workers, that is to say, strictly speaking, undeveloped females, incapable of laying eggs. But they still retain the ovipositor, which is converted into a sting, and supplied with a poisonous liquid to eject afterwards into the wound. So admirably adapted to its purpose is this beautiful provision of nature, that some tropical ants can sting with such violence as to make your leg swell and confine you for some days to your room; while cases have even been known in which the person attacked has fainted with pain, or had a serious attack of fever in consequence. It is not every kind of ant, however, that can sting; a great many can only bite with their little hard horny jaws, and then eject a drop of formic poison afterwards into the hole caused by the bite. The distinction is a delicate physiological one, not much appreciated by the victims of either mode of attack. The perfect females can also sting, but not, of course, the males, who are poor, wretched, useless creatures, only good as husbands for the community, and dying off as soon as they have performed their part in the world—another beautiful provision, which saves the workers the trouble of killing them off, as bees do with drones after the marriage flight of the queen bee.

The blind driver-ants of West Africa are among the very few species that render any service to man, and that, of course, only incidentally. Unlike most other members of their class, the driver-ants have no settled place of residence; they are vagabonds and wanderers upon the face of the earth, formican tramps, blind beggars, who lead a gipsy existence, and keep perpetually upon the move, smelling their way cautiously from one camping-place to another. They march by night, or on cloudy days, like wise tropical strategists, and never expose themselves to the heat of the day in broad sunshine, as though they were no better than the mere numbered British Tommy Atkins at Coomassie or in the Soudan. They move in vast armies across country, driving everything before them as they go; for they belong to the stinging division, and are very voracious in their personal habits. Not only do they eat up the insects in their line of march, but they fall even upon larger creatures and upon big snakes, which they attack first in the eyes, the most vulnerable portion. When they reach a negro village the inhabitants turn out _en masse_, and run away, exactly as if the visitors were English explorers or brave Marines, bent upon retaliating for the theft of a knife by nobly burning down King Tom's town or King Jumbo's capital. Then the negroes wait in the jungle till the little black army has passed on, after clearing out the huts by the way of everything eatable. When they return they find their calabashes and saucepans licked clean, but they also find every rat, mouse, lizard, cockroach, gecko, and beetle completely cleared out from the whole village. Most of them have cut and run at the first approach of the drivers; of the remainder, a few blanched and neatly-picked skeletons alone remain to tell the tale.

As I wish to be considered a veracious historian, I will not retail the further strange stories that still find their way into books of natural history about the manners and habits of these blind marauders. They cross rivers, the West African gossips declare, by a number of devoted individuals flinging themselves first into the water as a living bridge, like so many six-legged Marcus Curtiuses, while over their drowning bodies the heedless remainder march in safety to the other side. If the story is not true, it is at least well invented; for the ant-commonwealth everywhere carries to the extremest pitch the old Roman doctrine of the absolute subjection of the individual to the State. So exactly is this the case that in some species there are a few large, overgrown, lazy ants in each nest, which do no work themselves, but accompany the workers on their expeditions; and the sole use of these idle mouths seems to be to attract the attention of birds and other enemies, and so distract it from the useful workers, the mainstay of the entire community. It is almost as though an army, marching against a tribe of cannibals, were to place itself in the centre of a hollow square formed of all the fattest people in the country, whose fine condition and fitness for killing might immediately engross the attention of the hungry enemy. Ants, in fact, have, for the most part, already reached the goal set before us as a delightful one by most current schools of socialist philosophers, in which the individual is absolutely sacrificed in every way to the needs of the community.

The most absurdly human, however, among all the tricks and habits of ants are their well-known cattle-farming and slaveholding instincts. Everybody has heard, of course, how they keep the common rose-blight as milch cows, and suck from them the sweet honey-dew. But everybody, probably, does not yet know the large number of insects which they herd in one form or another as domesticated animals. Man has, at most, some twenty or thirty such, including cows, sheep, horses, donkeys, camels, llamas, alpacas, reindeer, dogs, cats, canaries, pigs, fowl, ducks, geese, turkeys, and silkworms. But ants have hundreds and hundreds, some of them kept obviously for purposes of food; others apparently as pets; and yet others again, as has been plausibly suggested, by reason of superstition or as objects of worship. There is a curious blind beetle which inhabits ants' nests, and is so absolutely dependent upon its hosts for support that it has even lost the power of feeding itself. It never quits the nest, but the ants bring it in food and supply it by putting the nourishment actually into its mouth. But the beetle, in return, seems to secrete a sweet liquid (or it may even be a stimulant like beer, or a narcotic like tobacco) in a tuft of hairs near the bottom of the hard wing-cases, and the ants often lick this tuft with every appearance of satisfaction and enjoyment. In this case, and in many others, there can be no doubt that the insects are kept for the sake of food or some other advantage yielded by them.

But there are other instances of insects which haunt ants' nests, which it is far harder to account for on any hypothesis save that of superstitious veneration. There is a little weevil that runs about by hundreds in the galleries of English ants, in and out among the free citizens, making itself quite at home in their streets and public places, but as little noticed by the ants themselves as dogs are in our own cities. Then, again, there is a white woodlouse, something like the common little armadillo, but blind from having lived so long underground, which walks up and down the lanes and alleys of antdom, without ever holding any communication of any sort with its hosts and neighbors. In neither case has Sir John Lubbock ever seen an ant take the slightest notice of the presence of these strange fellow-lodgers. “One might almost imagine,” he says, “that they had the cap of invisibility.” Yet it is quite clear that the ants deliberately sanction the residence of the weevils and woodlice in their nests, for any unauthorised intruder would immediately be set upon and massacred outright. Sir John Lubbock suggests that they may perhaps be tolerated as scavengers; or, again, it is possible that they may prey upon the eggs or larvæ of some of the parasites to whose attacks the ants are subject. In the first case, their use would be similar to that of the wild dogs in Constantinople or the common black John-crow vultures in tropical America: in the second case, they would be about equivalent to our own cats or to the hedgehog often put in farmhouse kitchens to keep down cockroaches.

The crowning glory of owning slaves, which many philosophic Americans (before the war) showed to be the highest and noblest function of the most advanced humanity, has been attained by more than one variety of anthood. Our great English horse-ant is a moderate slave-holder; but the big red ant of Southern Europe carries the domestic institution many steps further. It makes regular slave-raids upon the nests of the small brown ants, and carries off the young in their pupa condition. By-and-by the brown ants hatch out in the strange nest, and, never having known any other life except that of slavery, accommodate themselves to it readily enough. The red ant, however, is still only an occasional slaveowner; if necessary, he can get along by himself, without the aid of his little brown servants. Indeed, there are free states and slave states of red ants side by side with one another, as of old in Maryland and Pennsylvania: in the first, the red ants do their work themselves, like mere vulgar Ohio farmers; in the second, they get their work done for them by their industrious little brown servants, like the aristocratic first families of Virginia before the earthquake of emancipation.

But there are other degraded ants, whose life-history may be humbly presented to the consideration of the Anti-Slavery Society, as speaking more eloquently than any other known fact for the demoralising effect of slaveowning upon the slaveholders themselves. The Swiss rufescent ant is a species so long habituated to rely entirely upon the services of slaves that it is no longer able to manage its own affairs when deprived by man of its hereditary bondsmen. It has lost entirely the art of constructing a nest; it can no longer tend its own young, whom it leaves entirely to the care of negro nurses; and its bodily structure even has changed, for the jaws have lost their teeth, and have been converted into mere nippers, useful only as weapons of war. The rufescent ant, in fact, is a purely military caste, which has devoted itself entirely to the pursuit of arms, leaving every other form of activity to its slaves and dependents. Officers of the old school will be glad to learn that this military insect is dressed, if not in scarlet, at any rate in very decent red, and that it refuses to be bothered in any way with questions of transport or commissariat. If the community changes its nest, the masters are carried on the backs of their slaves to the new position, and the black ants have to undertake the entire duty of foraging and bringing in stores of supply for their gentlemanly proprietors. Only when war is to be made upon neighboring nests does the thin red line form itself into long file for active service. Nothing could be more perfectly aristocratic than the views of life entertained and acted upon by these distinguished slaveholders.

On the other hand, the picture has its reverse side, exhibiting clearly the weak points of the slaveholding system. The rufescent ant has lost even the very power of feeding itself. So completely dependent is each upon his little black valet for daily bread, that he cannot so much as help himself to the food that is set before him. Hüber put a few slaveholders into a box with some of their own larvæ and pupæ, and a supply of honey, in order to see what they would do with them. Appalled at the novelty of the situation, the slaveholders seemed to come to the conclusion that something must be done; so they began carrying the larvæ about aimlessly in their mouths, and rushing up and down in search of the servants. After a while, however, they gave it up and came to the conclusion that life under such circumstances was clearly intolerable. They never touched the honey, but resigned themselves to their fate like officers and gentlemen. In less than two days, half of them had died of hunger, rather than taste a dinner which was not supplied to them by a properly constituted footman. Admiring their heroism or pitying their incapacity, Hüber, at last, gave them just one slave between them all. The plucky little negro, nothing daunted by the gravity of the situation, set to work at once, dug a small nest, gathered together the larvæ, helped several pupæ out of the cocoon, and saved the lives of the surviving slaveowners. Other naturalists have tried similar experiments, and always with the same result. The slaveowners will starve in the midst of plenty rather than feed themselves without attendance. Either they cannot or will not put the food into their own mouths with their own mandibles.

There are yet other ants, such as the workerless _Anergates_, in which the degradation of slaveholding has gone yet further. These wretched creatures are the formican representatives of those Oriental despots who are no longer even warlike, but are sunk in sloth and luxury, and pass their lives in eating bang or smoking opium. Once upon a time, Sir John Lubbock thinks, the ancestors of _Anergates_ were marauding slaveowners, who attacked and made serfs of other ants. But gradually they lost not only their arts but even their military prowess, and were reduced to making war by stealth instead of openly carrying off their slaves in fair battle. It seems probable that they now creep into a nest of the far more powerful slave ants, poison or assassinate the queen, and establish themselves by sheer usurpation in the queenless nest. “Gradually,” says Sir John Lubbock, “even their bodily force dwindled away under the enervating influence to which they had subjected themselves, until they sank to their present degraded condition—weak in body and mind, few in numbers, and apparently nearly extinct, the miserable representatives of far superior ancestors, maintaining a precarious existence as contemptible parasites of their former slaves.” One may observe in passing, that these wretched do-nothings cannot have been the ants which Solomon commended to the favorable consideration of the sluggard; though it is curious that the text was never pressed into the service of defence for the peculiar institution by the advocates of slavery in the South, who were always most anxious to prove the righteousness of their cause by most sure and certain warranty of Holy Scripture.—_Cornhill Magazine._

LITERARY NOTICES.

EPISODES OF MY SECOND LIFE. By Antonio Gallenga (Luigi Mariotti). English and American Experiences. Philadelphia: _J. B. Lippincott & Co._

The autobiographer in this case (for the last year has been singularly rich in interesting autobiography) is not in any degree, at least for Americans, an eminent and well-known personage. But, in spite of this, his record of experience and vicissitude is full of interest, and we may almost say fascinating. His threescore years and ten have been crowded with events which, if not in themselves strikingly dramatic, are at least striking in the telling, for he has all the art of an accomplished _raconteur_, simple, direct and vigorous in style, and knowing perfectly when to glide over with little stress, when to put on his color with a vigorous and lavish brush. Mr. Gallenga (this being his true name) was in the latter part of his life a leading correspondent of the London _Times_, having achieved a high reputation in this direction prior to the days of Dr. Russell and Archibald Forbes. His work and position brought him into confidential relations with many of the most important men and events of Europe from 1840 to 1875, and he describes these in a racy fashion which will command attention, we think.

Mr. Gallenga as a youth of twenty took part in the Italian struggle for liberty in 1831, under the name of Luigi Mariotti. It was one of those brief episodes of revolution with which Italy was convulsed so often before the great final dead-lock came, which drove the hated _Sedischi_ from her soil. The young patriot was for a short time in prison, but finally escaped, and lived for a while as a tutor in Tangiers. Thence he came to America, to carve a career for himself, and located himself in Boston in 1836. Here he speedily found employment as teacher, lecturer and writer, and was fortunate in securing the friendship and goodwill of the leading people of the city. Boston was then without dispute the only literary centre of the country, in spite of a few brilliant names in New York, and Sig. Gallenga seems to have found congenial employment and companionship from the outset. His reminiscences of such men as Edward Everett, Fields, Ticknor, Prescott and others are entertaining, and his sketch of the whole entourage of Boston society is given with a refreshing _naïveté_, as well as with graceful vivacity. Among the minor incidents which lend humor to the book is the author's experience with a young American beauty, with whom he was in love, and whom in his impulsive and passionate Italian way, he clasped in his arms and kissed. He professes himself highly astonished because the damsel was greatly enraged and ordered him from the house, ending the acquaintance then and there. After spending four years in America under unusually agreeable conditions, Mr. Gallenga, who was still known under his pseudonym of Mariotti, took ship for England, and bade a final farewell to the country of which he speaks in such cordial and even affectionate terms. Settling in London good luck still followed him. He secured introductions to prominent persons, was accorded recognition at once, and became acquainted with many of the people, both literary and otherwise, best worth knowing in England. A great interest in Italian affairs and literature was then the rage, and Mr. Gallenga, who was a scholar and an able writer, found ample opportunity and occupation in contributing to the magazines and reviews on subjects which he discussed _con amore_. A book which he published gave him repute beyond that of a mere fugitive writer, and he was fortunate in making literature lucrative as well as honorable. His gossip about prominent people and occurrences in London forty years ago, is very entertaining, and he shows as much skill in throwing light on the English life of that day as he had done in describing America. Twenty years of literary and professorial work, were frequently broken up by long residences in Italy, during which he sat for a time in the Italian Parliament, and helped to pave the way for that consolidation of Italian interests which at last led to Solferino and Magenta, and the grand result of Italian unity. He seems to have been accorded an important place in the councils and deliberations of his nation, and to have been an important agent in bringing about those relations which freed Italy from foreign domination. In 1859 our author became connected with the _Times_ as correspondent, and since that time has been employed on many of the most delicate and important commissions. He represented them in the Franco-Italian-Austrian War, and succeeded Dr. Russell at the time of our late civil conflict; was sent repeatedly to every part of Europe, and, for a good while had a roving commission to write whatever he saw worth reporting and discussing, particularly on the peoples and events of the Mediterranean seaboard countries, from the straits of Gibraltar to the Dardanelles. Mr. Gallenga tells his story (and he has much to tell) with the vivacity of an Italian and with the ability of a trained man-of-letters. A number of books, mostly on historical and political subjects, have given him a recognized literary place aside from mere journalism, and he reviews a long, diversified and interesting career with an interest and satisfaction which he fully communicates to his readers. We have rarely read a volume more packed with interesting matter, narrated with the skill which comes of long training.

A HISTORICAL REFERENCE BOOK, COMPRISING A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY, A CHRONOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY, A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY WITH GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS, TEACHERS AND READERS. By Louis Heilprin. New York: _D. Appleton & Co._

The plan adopted in this handy reference book of historical dates and events has been to deal separately with the events of different countries, and an excellent system has been followed with great thoroughness. The author is very well known as an industrious and painstaking scholar, the results of whose work can be depended on. About many historical dates there is much confusion, and the difficulties in coming to a conclusion are great. Mr. Heilprin very modestly states the obstacles in the way of perfect accuracy, and convinces the reader that, if blunders have been made, they are such as are absolutely unavoidable in the dire chaos which envelops many of even the most important facts of history so far as certainty of year is concerned. We may be sure that every caution and pains have been taken by the author. In many cases where it is impossible to reach an absolute statement, two dates are given, the preferable one stated first. Such a book as this is of the greatest convenience, and one that a well-informed or studious man can hardly afford to be without. A remarkable seeming omission, however, is the non-assignment of date to the Christian era, or any reference to the life and career that gave it significance. The studious avoidal seems significant, but we may explain it on the theory that the absolute date of Christ's birth cannot be absolutely fixed within several years. On the whole, indeed, with this one exception (perhaps an unavoidable one) the compilation appears to be all such a work should.

BERMUDA: AN IDYLL OF THE SUMMER ISLANDS. By Julia C. R. Dorr. New York: _Charles Scribner's Sons_.

The germ of this book was in an article called “Bermudan Days” published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for December, 1883, and we find the paper incorporated with the work. The volume is a brightly written account of a vacation of three months in the Bermudas, one of the most charming sanitariums of our western seas. So much has been written about the pleasant lotos-lands of the North and South Antilles, that no new facts can be now told about them. But the old background of cloudless skies, summer seas, and balmy ocean breezes, which make such places as the Bahamas and the Bermudas earthly paradises, never get tedious or dull when seen and felt through the medium of a fresh and lively nature. In winter time especially, when the bleak cold of the north starts the imagination travelling toward summer climates, and those condemned to stay in cold weather, sigh for the delights of the more fortunate voyager, such books as the one before us make very pleasant reading. The author describes the attractions of Bermudan life: its roses and sunshine, its novel sights and sounds, the picturesque aspects of a primitive, contented, lazy population, delightful sails over beautiful seas, and all the episodes of the sojourn with the keenest enjoyment, and a skilful literary touch. The very essence of an agreeable book of this kind is an utter lack of anything like fine writing. Mrs. Dorr certainly shows good taste in this matter, though one might fancy the temptation would be great to try what is so often called word-painting. She tells us what she has to say, and she has many good things to tell us, too, in a lively, racy, picturesque, but utterly unpretentious way. Of course we do not expect anyone to write a book about the Bermudas, without giving us something of the oft-repeated tale of its history and traditions; but Mrs. Dorr has spared us from overmuch, and does not weary the attention. The enjoyable portion of the work is the personal impressions and experiences of herself and her party. As every traveller or tourist with a literary taste, finds it essential, nowadays, to serve the sight-seeing up in book form, we can only wish that more of them had the good taste and lively nature of the present author.

ELEMENTS OF ZOOLOGY. (_Appleton's Science Text-Books._) By C. F. Holder, Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, etc., and T. B. Holder, A.M., Curator Zoology, American Museum of Natural History. New York: _D. Appleton & Co._

This new manual of one of the most interesting branches of science, is equally adapted for the school or for family reading. The object of the authors, which is to present in plain and concise language and in the light of the latest research and investigation, the life history of the various groups making up the animal kingdom has been well done. The best authorities have been followed. The authors, too, have introduced a great deal of matter of a descriptive and narrative matter, such as will thoroughly interest their young readers, such as the growth of the coral, nest-building fishes, luminous animals, animal electricians, hibernation, mimicry, etc., things which make certain phases of science almost like a fairy tale. The dry classification of science has but little attraction except to the professional scientist, and the authors have avoided this rock of dreariness as far as possible. The aim of the book seems to be largely to encourage the reader to become an original investigator, and to use his eyes and ears intelligently in observing the order of animated nature. The cuts are nicely and cleanly made, and the volume is very neat, though gotten up for service and not for ornament.

THE REALITY OF RELIGION. By Henry J. Van Dyke, Jr., D.D. New York: _Charles Scribner's Sons_.

In this day of scepticism without, and dry-rot within, it well becomes the champions of the Christian faith to enter the lists with the keenest weapons furnished for the fight. Dr. Van Dyke argues, not from the standpoint of the dialectician, or from that of the defender of historical Christianity. It is the personal argument drawn from needs of human nature which he has here elaborated. He says: “We do not sneer at the dogmas of theology. They are certainly as important as the dogmas of science. We do not despise the questions of ritual. They are at least of equal consequence with the questions of social order. But religion is infinitely beyond all these. It is more vital and more profound. It does not appeal to the intellect alone. It is not satisfied with the conclusions of logic. Nor does it rest at ease upon the æsthetic sense. It reaches down into the very depths of the living, throbbing, human heart, and stirs a longing which nothing outward and formal can ever fill—_the longing for personal fellowship with God_.” It is this need of religion in the soul as essential to satisfy its truest and deepest longing which furnishes the keynote of the argument. He insists that religion is as absolute a reality, which we can feel and know in our spiritual life, as is the bread we eat to sustain our physical life. Dr. Van Dyke considers the subject under the heads of “A Real Religion Necessary;” “The Living God;” “The Living Soul” “The Living Word;” “The Living Sacrifice;” and “The Living Christ.” In the last, of course, we find the key-stone and cap, as well, of the logic of his thesis. The work will give comfort and satisfaction to many Christian souls, and is not unworthy of Dr. Van Dyke as an accomplished stylist. Chastened, yet glowing, subdued, yet strong, the book is one which should have a large number of readers among those devoted to the interests of the Church of Christ.

THE ENCHIRIDION OF WIT: THE BEST SPECIMENS OF ENGLISH CONVERSATIONAL WIT. Philadelphia: _J. B. Lippincott & Co._

This collection has aimed to avoid both the characteristics of the jest-book or of table-talk. Its place is between the two, being compiled from the annals of conversation, and comprising at the same time only those jests and stories which possess the stamp of wit as distinguished from humor or drollery. That the collection is good, one needs only to read the pleasant prefatory essay, which is very gracefully and brightly written, to feel sure that the taste and knowledge of the writer or editor have been well displayed in his work of selection. It goes without saying that many of the anecdotes are old and familiar. Many of the very best things ever said in the world, of course, are what we term “Joe Millers.” That they should be otherwise, would argue but bad taste on the part of our predecessors. But our present author has gleaned in many an outlying field as well as in the well travelled road, and gives us very satisfactory showing for his literary excursus in new directions. Some of the stories in the book we do not remember to have seen before in any similar work.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

THE monument to Virgil at Pietole (which is supposed to be the Andes of the Romans), near Mantua, was unveiled lately.

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THE death of a popular Russian novelist, B. M. Markievich, on the 30th of last month, is reported from St. Petersburg.

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THE original autographs of the love-letters addressed by John Keats to Miss Fanny Brawne in the years 1819-20 will be sold by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge the first week in March, together with six unpublished autograph letters of Charles Lamb.

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A PAMPHLET by Madame E. Coulombe is announced for immediate publication by Mr. Elliot Stock. This lady was associated with Madame Blavatsky for some years, and in this _brochure_ tells what she heard and saw of Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists with whom she came in contact in India and elsewhere.

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TRINITY COLLEGE, Dublin, is about to start a new paper with the title _The Dublin University Review_. The first number will appear on February 1st, and the issue will be bi-monthly, except during the long vacation. The paper will contain literary articles as well as university news of every description, and will be owned by a limited liability company.

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THE Incorporated Society of Authors propose to send a deputation to the Prime Minister to urge the codification of the Copyright Acts, which are fourteen in number. Several of the chief publishers, not of books only, but also of prints and music, will be asked to join.

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A CONFERENCE of elementary teachers, international in its character, has been summoned to meet at Havre. This is the first conference of the kind which has been organized in France, and it is expected that the Government will make a grant in aid of the expenses.

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THE article on Polish history and literature in the next volume of the “Encyclopædia Britannica” will be from the pen of Mr. Morfill, who will also contribute the articles on the Emperor Paul, and on Peter the Great.

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MR. LOWE, correspondent of the _Times_ at Berlin, is engaged in writing a biography of Prince Bismarck, which will appear next spring.

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M. SCHLUMBERGER, the well known numismatist, and M. Benoist have lately been elected members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.

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AN exhibition is to be held in the Imperial Library at Constantinople of Turkish writing, bookbinding, and illumination, for which prizes are to be given.

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ONE of the most important scholastic reforms now in progress in Turkey is that relating to the study of the Arabic language. As now conducted, this study absorbs years in a desultory way which might be applied to the acquisition of other branches of knowledge. With the view to abridge the course of study without impairing its quality, the Sultan has determined on founding a special medresseh for teaching Arabic on a scientific basis, and for this purpose has purchased from the funds of the civil list the property of the Guedik Pasha Theatre at Constantinople.

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THE long lost and often found commentary on the “Atharva-veda” seems at last on its way to publication. The whole of the commentary has not yet been found, but two-thirds of it are now in the hands of the pandits of Poona, who will prepare a critical publication of both text and commentary. The text of the “Atharva-veda” was published in the early days of Vedic scholarship by Roth and Whitney, and the latter scholar has lately published a very useful index.

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WE are enabled to state, says the _Athenæum_, that a popular edition of Her Majesty's recent work, “More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands,” is in the press, and will be ready for publication in the course of a few weeks. The new edition will contain all the woodcut illustrations which appeared in the original edition, together with wood-engravings of the portraits, and will be uniform with the popular edition of the Queen's previous work, “Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands.”

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MR. ALEXANDER DEL MAR, according to the _Academy_, formerly Director of the Bureau of Statistics of the United States, whose _History of the Precious Metals_ was published in 1880, has in the press a work on _The History of Money from the Earliest Times to the Middle Ages_, upon which he has been occupied for many years past. It will shortly be published by Messrs. Bell & Sons.

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FROM the _Academy_ we quote the following amusing paragraph:

“The _Magazin für die Literatur des In- und Auslandes_ continues to be unfortunate when it meddles with the English language. Many of our readers will be acquainted with Victor Scheffel's charming German song—referring, we believe, to Heinrich von Ofterdingen—which has the refrain, 'Der Heini von Steier ist wieder im Land.' The _Magazin_ of January 10 publishes an 'English' translation of this poem, by Johanna Baltz, from which we quote the following specimen:—

“'To finches and swallows tells sweet nightingale:
“The song of a violin fills woodland and vale!
Ye twitt'ners, ye singers, now silence your cant—
Hark, Heini von Steier returned to his land!”

“'Shoemaker is waving his furcap in glee:
“The merciful heaven forgets neven me!
Now shoes will be costly, soleleather gets scant—
Hark, Heini von Steier returned to his land.“'”

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THE eighty-ninth birthday of Dr. Ranke (December 21st) has excited interest throughout Germany, and elicited many expressions of the respect universally felt for him. The strength of the venerable historian defies the increase of years, and he works daily at his home in Berlin on the history which he hopes to complete.

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MR. C. E. PASCOE has issued a prospectus on the publication of English books in America. He says in effect that, though the lack of international copyright is one reason why English authors derive but little profit from the sale of their works in America, another and graver reason is, that as a class, they are in ignorance of the means for getting the best out of existing conditions. The usual method of procedure is for the English publisher to make proposals to an American publisher, or for the representative of an American firm in London to submit proposals to his principals in the United States. Mr. Pascoe points to the danger of losing a lucrative sale that this method entails. His prospectus, which is accompanied by letters from American publishers and some well-known English authors, is worth attention. Mr. Pascoe's address is 6 Southfields Road, West Hill, Wandsworth, S. W.

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AN early and hitherto unknown Arabic work has lately been added to the Museum Library. It is entitled “Kitāb al-Mohabbir”, and contains various historical notices and traditions relating to the ancient Arabs and to the time of Mohammed and his immediate successors. The author, Abu Sa'id al-Hasan al-Sukkari, lived in the third century of the Hijrah, and is well known as one of the earliest editors and commentators of the old poets, but the present work appears somehow to have escaped notice; it is neither mentioned in the Fihrist, nor by Ibn Khallikan or Soyuti. The two last-named authors state that Al-Sukkari died A.H. 275; but according to Ibn Kāni' (Leyden Catalogue, vol. ii. p. 8) he lived on to A.H. 290. The present work would show that the former date is decidedly wrong; for it contains a brief sketch of the Abbasides brought down by Al-Sukkari himself to the accession of Al-Mo'tadid, _i.e._, A.H. 279.

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AMONG other recent additions to the Arabic collection, the following are especially deserving of the attention of scholars: the earliest extant history of the Moslem conquest of Egypt, Africa, and Spain, by Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, who died A.H. 257, a twelfth century copy; “Zubdat al-Tawarikh,” a history of the Seljuk-dynasty, written shortly after its extinction, about A.H. 620, by Sadr al-Din Abul Hasan Ali Ibn Abul Fawaris Nasir Husaini, a fine and apparently unique copy of the thirteenth century; “Kitab al-Osul,” an extensive and hitherto unknown work on Arabic grammar by one of the earliest writers on the subject, Ibn al-Sarraj, who died A.H. 316, handsomely written, with all vowels, A.H. 651; a fine and valuable copy of the “Makamat al-Hariri,” written by a grandson of the author, A.H. 557 (_i.e._, forty years after Hariri's death), and consequently earlier than any copy of that standard work known to exist in European libraries.

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THE numbers of ladies attending the King's College classes at Observatory Avenue have been very high during the term that has just ended. The entries were nearly 600, which is a larger number than has been reached since the first year, 1878, when the classes started, and the present house hardly affords room for such numbers.

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IT is not generally known that the _Times_ attains its hundredth year on the 1st of January, 1885. The prevailing notion is that the year in which it was founded was 1788, the truth being that the 940th number of the journal appeared on the first day in that year. The mistake is due to confounding a change in the title with the foundation of the journal. The actual facts are set forth in an article which Mr. Fraser Rae contributes to the January number of the _Nineteenth Century_. Amongst other things which will attract notice in that article is a verbatim copy of the inscription on the tablets affixed in honor of the conduct of the _Times_ in the case of Bogle _v._ Lawson in 1841, by a committee of bankers and merchants of the City, in the Royal Exchange, and over the entrance to the _Times_ printing office. As these tablets are placed where the inscriptions on them cannot easily be read, and as copies of these inscriptions are not given in the works dealing with the City, the copy in the _Nineteenth Century_ is a piece of historical information which will be novel to most readers.

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THE last number of _Shakspeariana_ contains the somewhat surprising statement that Prof. Kuno Fischer is a convert to the Bacon-Shakspere theory, and will lecture upon it at Heidelberg this winter. From the same periodical we copy the following curious paragraph:—

“A very remarkable discovery has been placed on record by the Hon. Ignatius Donnelly, who claims to have proof positive that Bacon was the author of Shakspere's plays. This is accomplished by means of a cipher which Bacon twice describes, whereby one writing could be infolded and hidden in another. The words of the hidden story have a definite relation to the acts and scenes of the plays, which is determined by counting. Attracted by 'I. Henry IV.'; II., i., ii., iv., and IV., ii., in which he found the words 'Francis,' 'Bacon' (twice), 'Nicholas' (twice), 'Bacon's,' 'son,' 'master,' 'Kings,' 'exchequer,' 'St. Albans'—the name of Bacon's place of residence—and, in IV., ii., 'Francis' repeated twenty times on one page, Mr. Donnelly applied his key to it, with the following result:—Elizabeth during the Essex troubles became, as is known, incensed at the use made of the play of 'Richard II.,' in which is represented the deposition and killing of the King; and she made it one of the points of prosecution which cost Essex his head, that he had hired the company of players to which Shakspere belonged to represent it more than forty times in open streets and in tavern yards, in order to prepare the public mind for her own deposition and murder. History tells us that she caused the arrest of Haywarde, who wrote a prose narrative of the deposition of Richard II. and dedicated it to Essex, and he narrowly escaped a State prosecution. Mr. Donnelly shows that at the same time Shakspere was arrested as the author of the plays; he was threatened with the torture, and disclosed to the officers of the Crown the fact that Bacon was the real author of the plays. Bacon threw himself on the protection of his uncle, Lord Burleigh, the great Lord Treasurer, who saved him from exposure and prosecution, but revealed the truth to Elizabeth; and this is the explanation of the fact, that, as long as Elizabeth lived, she kept Bacon out of office and in poverty.”

MISCELLANY.