our domestic animals dream, as is proved by their movements while asleep, and the same thing has also been observed in monkeys. The effect of the position of the body during sleep upon the character of our dreams is too well known to require comment, for probably every one of my readers has experienced the very disagreeable results of sleeping on the back.

Now, if the first glimmerings of another world came to early man through dreams, in which he saw his comrades, or enemies, long since dead, reappear just as in life, though mixed up with much that was incongruous and incomprehensible, it would

seem as if the period during which man first adopted the dorsal decubitus might have been an epoch-making time in his raw theology.

Devils and devil-worship might easily have originated from a nightmare; and since even dogmas have pedigrees and are subject to the laws of evolution, it is perhaps no very wild suggestion that some of the more sombre tenets of our gentle nineteenth-century creeds may owe their embryonic beginnings to the sleeping attitude of some paleolithic divine who had gorged himself in an unwise degree with wild boar flesh.-Nineteenth Century.

SOME years ago, a striking story was published in France describing a wonderful flesh-eating plant discovered by a great botanist. If we remember rightly, the story recounted how a certain collector discovered a plant of the fly-trap species of so gigantic a size that it could consume huge masses of raw meat. Just as the fly-catching plant snaps up a fly, and draws nutriment from the fly's dead body, so this one fed itself on the legs of mutton and sirloins of beef which were thrown into its ravening maw. The botanist in the story, for some reason, possibly fear of having his plant destroyed as dangerous to public safety, keeps the existence of the plant a secret, and preserves it in a locked-up conservatory. His wife, however, who is made miserable by his absorption of mind-he thinks of nothing but how to feed and improve his wonderful and fascinating plant-determines to follow him. This she does, accompanied by an old school-friend of the husband. When the pair reach the inner conservatory, they see, to their horror, the infatuated botanist tossing bleeding joints of raw meat into the huge jaws of a giant fly-trap. They are at first petrified with horror. At last, however, the wife throws herself into the arms of her husband, and implores him to give up dwelling upon the horrible carnivorous monstrosity which he has discovered and reared. Unfortunately, however, the wife in appealing to her husband goes too close to the plant. Its huge tentacles surround her and then proceed to drag her in, and the two stupe

fied men see the plant begin to devour its victim. Fortunately, however, the friend catches sight of an axe lying near, and seizing this he strikes at the roots of the plant. A few frenzied blows do the necessary work, and the flesh-eating plant tumbles to the ground and releases from its clutches the terrified woman. The botanist, however, cannot survive his most cherished discovery, and with the exclamation, "You have killed my plant!"

he falls back dead.

The story is good enough as a story, but if we are to believe an article said in the Review of Reviews to be taken from Lucifer-we say "said" advisedly, because we have looked in the October Lucifer and can find no such article, and therefore presume there must be some mistake-it is only another instance of fiction being prophetic, and anticipating scientific discovery. According to the article quoted by Mr. Stead, there has been discovered in Nicaragua a flesh-eating, or rather, man-eating plant, which for horror is quite the equal of the novelist's imagination. This plant is found, it is asserted, in Nicaragua, and is called by the natives "the devil's snare." In form it is a kind of vegetable octopus, or devil-fish, and is able to drain the blood of any living thing which comes within its clutches. We give the story with all reserve, but it must be admitted to be circumstantial enough in all its details to be possible. It appears that a Mr. Dunstan, a naturalist, has lately returned from Central America, where he spent two years in

the study of the plants and animals of those regions. In one of the swamps which surround the great Nicaragua Lake, he discovered the singular growth of which we are writing. "He was engaged in hunting for botanical and entomological specimens, when he heard his dog cry out, as if in agony, from a distance. Running to the spot whence the animal's cries came, Mr. Dunstan found him enveloped in a perfect network of perfect network of what seemed to be a fine, rope-like tissue of roots and fibres. The plant or vine seemed composed entirely of bare, interlacing stems, resembling, more than anything else, the branches of the weepingwillow denuded of its foliage, but of a dark, nearly black hue, and covered with a thick, viscid gum that exuded from the pores. Drawing his knife, Mr. Dunstan attempted to cut the poor beast free; but it was with the very greatest difficulty that he managed to sever the fleshy muscular fibres of the plant. When the dog was extricated from the coils of the plant, Mr. Dunstan saw, to his horror and amazement, that the dog's body was bloodstained, "while the skin appeared to have been actually sucked or puckered in spots," and the animal staggered as if from exhaustion. In cutting the vine, the twigs curled like living, sinuous fingers about Mr. Dunstan's hand, and it required no slight force to free the member from its clinging grasp, which left the flesh red and blistered. The gum exuding from the vine was of a grayish-dark tinge, remarkably adhesive, and of a disagreeable animal odor, powerful and nauseating to inhale." The natives, we are told, showed the greatest horror of the plant, which, as we have noted above, they called the "devil's snare," and they recounted to the naturalist many stories of its death-dealing powers. Mr. Dunstan, we are told, was able to discover very little about the nature of the plant, owing to the difficulty of handling it, for its grasp can only be shaken off with the loss of skin, and even of flesh. As near as he could ascertain, however, its power of suction is contained in a number of infinitesimal mouths or little suckers, which, ordinarily closed, open for the reception of food."" If the substance is animal, the blood is drawn off and the carcass or refuse then dropped. A lump of raw meat being thrown it, in the short space

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of five minutes the blood will be thoroughly drunk off and the mass thrown aside. Its voracity is almost beyond belief."

"

The story is unquestionably a very cutious one, and we may rely upon it, that if the plant really does exist, we shall soon have a specimen at Kew. The digging of the Nicaragua Canal will bring plenty of Americans and Englishmen into the very country where the Vampire Vine" is said to exist, and the question whether the whole thing is or is not a hoax may very socn be tested. This fact makes, we readily admit, very much in favor of the truth of the story. Since the shores of the Nicaragua Lake are so soon to be explored, it would have been far safer for a botanical practical joker to have "seated" his plant in that natural home of unverifiable strange stories, the Upper Valley of the Amazon. The neighborhood inhabited by that Amazonian tribe who by the use of some secret process can reduce a human corpse to a tenth of its original size, and so produce a perfectly proportioned miniature mummy of the dead man, would have been a good locality in which to "place" the tale of the cannibal plant. Again, Nicaragua is within the Tropics, and plant-life there is therefore specially gross and vigorous. Besides, there is no inherent impossibility in the idea of a flesh-cating plant. It is merely a question as to whether evolution has or has not happened to develop the fly eating plant on a sufficiently large enough scale to do what is related of the Vampire Vine. No one who has seen the ugly snap which that tiny vegetable crab, Venus's fly-trap, gives when the hairs inside its mouth are ticked by the human finger in the way that a fly would tickle them by walking, can doubt for a moment that the development of a plant capable of eating or sucking the blood of a inan, is only a matter of degree. Even in England, there are plants which act on a small scale exactly the part asserted to be played by the Vampire Vine,-for example, Lathraa squamaria, the toothwort, a pale chlorophyl-less parasite found in British woods." The account of the plant given by Mr. G. A. Thomson in

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Chambers's Encyclopædia," is as follows:-"Excepting the flower stalk, the stalk is virtually underground; it bears suctorial roots and tooth-like leaves. The

latter are hollow, and are entered through a narrow aperture by many kinds of small animals. These seem to be entangled in protoplasmic exudations within the leafcavity, find exit impossible, die, decompose, and are absorbed." Even more remarkable is Mr. Thornson's account of the carnivorous proclivities of the butterwort. This plant secretes "a copious viscid acid secretion to entrap its victims." "This serves as insect lime; but, besides retaining the unwary midges, it finally digests them. Drops of rain may fall on the leaves, or pebbles may land there, but without noteworthy effect; a small insect, however, stimulates a copious flow of the fatal secretion. But there is also movement; for, when an insect is caught, the margin of the leaves slowly curl inward for an hour or two, thus surrounding the booty, or shifting it nearer the centre, in any case exposing it to more glands. After digestion, the results and the surplus exudation are absorbed, leaving finally the undigested skin of the insect on the more or less dry leaf surface." It will be noted that this, in miniature, is almost exactly the process adopted by the Nicaraguan carnivorous creeper. If the species of insect-eating plants were very few in number, and were very sparsely found, it might be possible to regard them as mere lusus naturæ. There are, however, known to be several hundred dicotyledons which, in some way or other, catch and live on animal food. From such a basis the erolution of a giant and man-eating dicotyledon is within the bounds of possibility. We cannot help hoping very much that

the story of the Vampire Vine will turn out to be true, for if it does, the botanists will be able to try some very curious experiments as to how these vegetables which are half animals, digest, and whether their movements can properly be regarded as muscular movements. It is true that Darwin administered extremely homeopathic doses (000095 of a milligramme) of nitrate of ammonia to a sundew, and found the plant responded to the drug exhibited; but it would be far easier to conduct experiments on a larger plant. Even as it is, we know that the insect-eating plants secrete not only an acid, but a peptonizing ferment" for the purposes of digestion. They also feed, like animals, on substances at a high chemical level." More than a hundred and fifty years ago, Linnæus noted that the Lapps

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used the butterwort for curdling milk, a property due to a rennet-like ferment which the plant has in addition to the digestive or peptic. Again, we are told that Dr. Burdon Sanderson has "detected electric currents similar to those observed in the neuro-muscular activity of animals." The borderland between animal and plant life occupied by the insect-eaters is, indeed, one of the most curious and interesting fields of biological study; and if a plant as large as the Vampire Vine could be obtained to experiment with, discoveries of enormous importance to science might very likely be made. The Vampire Vine would doubtless stand a grain of calomel after a heavy meat meal without damage or annoyance.-Spectator.

A PHILANTHROPIST'S DREAM.

FREELAND. A Social Anticipation. By Dr. Theodor Hertzka, Translated by Arthur Rawson. New York: D. Appleton & Co. This curious and suggestive book, the first German edition of which appeared in 1890 and was rapidly followed by others, was evidently suggested by Mr. Edward Bellamy's tour de force, which was one of the great successes of the time. Like Mr. Bellamy, Herr Hertzka is a prophet of a new social order, wherein by a careful prevision and systematic state-building all the evils of the present social order may be obviated, and life be trans

formed into a veritable earthly paradise. Mr. Hertzka, no less than his American predecessor, has worked out all the details of the new order of things with great care, and presents a beautiful picture which makes the poor wretches who toil and suffer under present conditions shiver with envy. Indeed the translator informs us in his preface that the publication of this book called forth in Austria and Germany an enthusiastic practical response; that numerous emigration societies were formed and incorporated into an international bund; and that a suitable tract of land in British East Africa, between Mount

Kenia and the coast, had been placed at the disposal of the "Freeland Society" for the formation of a colony. It is quite within reason to suppose that the British East African Company would be more than willing to endow an intelligent and industrious European colony with any required amount of land, for there is a surplus of it to give away. It is also quite intelligible that the glowing prospects of such a scheme would induce hundreds, perhaps thousands of people to cast in their lot with it.

Mount Kenia and the table-lands in its vicinity, indeed, are the scene where our prophet locates the working out of his socialistic dream, though its socialism is free from the absurd vagaries which vitiate the opin ions and claims of most of those known as Socialists. The principle of individualism is not ignored in the organization of Freeland; and the author has a keen sense of the utter fatuity of most of the hopes which depend on paternalism carried out in its fullest degree and reduced to a science. A political economist of some note and the author of several books of recognized ability, he has followed in the track which, since the time of Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" and Lord Bacon's "New Atlantis," has inspired not a few men to embody their political and economical theories in the form of the novel. Herr Hertzka has written a book interesting enough except in its closing chapters, which, it must be conced. ed, are very stupid and heavy reading, thought tramping with soles of lead. The narrative of the origin of the colony of Freeland, its organization, its growth, its difficulties and the means by which it overcame them, and of its final triumphant and brilliant success as a great and powerful State is told in a natural and entertaining way, though we recognize all the characteristics of a fairy story in it from the beginning. The enterprise, enormously complicated as it is in its involution of the most contradictory and difficult qualities of human nature, goes on without a hitch; or, if a difficulty arises, it disappears like magic, so perfect a panacea is the atmosphere of the new African State against those perverse diseases of the human mind and temper which afflict the ordinary man. This indeed-that is to say, the failure to make sufficient allowance for the inevitable aberration of human nature is the fallible spot in all socialistic plans. If men and women were all perfect, socialism would be an easy matter to achieve, for everything would work like well-oiled ma

chinery. But in this case socialism would be unnecessary, for with such material to work with the present order would speedily purge itself of all its essential evils.

Freeland, in our author's story, within a sin. gle generation becomes a State of millions in population, with an almost incredible public income, and with cities of such splendor that the proudest nations of Europe, with a civilization of a thousand years to their backs, must needs hide their diminished heads and sneak off with their tails between their legs. This Aladdin's palace business of accomplishing more in a quarter of a century than history accomplishes in a millennium of years is the absurd feature in all such speculations. The facts of progress never did march with sevenleague boots, but make haste slowly, with many painful halts and retrogressions; and no art of the economical fiction writer and fiction thinker can change this truth. Dr. Hertzka, in the narrative part of his book, mixes with his economical philosophy a good deal of the author of "The Swiss Family Robinson" and of Rider Haggard, though, thank Heaven! he lacks the latter's insane passion for human gore. But he has all of the imag. ination for the nearly impossible which both these writers possess in such effervescence. There are some things, however, which, if not specially novel, show at least sanity of mind and heart in his lucubrations. His ideal, though embodied in a very exaggerated form, is made up of certain essential features with which many if not most thinking men, at least in America, fully sympathize. He exploits the desirability of a nation where land and the sources of production, which have been gradually accumulated by the whole community, shall be public property (in Freeland no man can own or transfer real estate--that is to say, the ground); where incapacity to work carries with it an honorable right to maintenance under liberal provisions which do not insult the self-respect of the recipient; where every man has untrammelled right to do his own will, so far as his will does not make war on the chartered or personal rights of others; and where the system of government is purely democratic, carried on by recurring elections under such guards as would probably avoid some of the wretched blundering and practical rascality which disfigure our elaborate American system. One can easily fancy himself as soon getting very sick of the stagnant and unruffled perfection of life in Freeland, with all its millennial virtues, and

longing again for that kind of campaigning existence where he has to give and take hard knocks. But there are times when such a dream as that of Herr Hertzka presents a very fascinating side to battered pilgrims, even those a good many pegs higher up in the social scale than the unfortunates who woo oak mattresses in our city parks at night. More than one hundred pages of the latter part of this book are devoted to a report of the supposed discussion at the World's Congress, held at Eden Vale, the capital of Freeland. Here we have all the theories of Herr Hertzka fully elucidated. In trying to wade through this ponderous section one is irresistibly reminded that it is not easy to present abstruse questions with the captivating brilliancy of a Henry George. It is not given to many to bend the bow of Ulysses. Herr Hertzka has done himself more justice, we fancy, in the essay style in some of his other books, unless these woefully belie his reputation.

A NEW CANDIDATE FOR POETICAL FAME. POEMS. By Emily Dickenson. Edited by two of her Friends, J. W. Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd. Second Series. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

One hardly knows how to approach these strangely defective poems, if so we must call them when measured by any art standard, without feeling the opposite forces of alienism and fascination pulling hard at his judgment. The attitude of estimation properly shuns any criterion which does not seek to gauge the inner life of a thing born of blood and tears and heart-ache. One cannot lay it on a dissecting table and use the scalpel as if it were dead flesh. None the less, it must be said the reader is continually jarred by what is not so much carelessness as absolute insensibility to the rich suavity and music of words-a deliberate scorn, one might say, of the delights of rhythm and rhyme. Yet there are times when there is a certain subtile melody in the thought which compels the word to its own sweetness, the rhythm of an inner pulse which, if of no very lusty vigor, tells the story of a great and reticent heart as well as if it had the Tennysonian beat and swing. Miss Dickenson, whose careless fragments of thought in so many cases fail to conceal their own lustre, never published anything in her lifetime. Her friends have disinterred these scraps from ancient portfolios and have given them to the world, not dead leaves fallen from a dead tree, but things with a curious

flutter of vitality in them in spite of all their elusiveness and fragility. The exact thought often escapes, yet some sense of a ghostly beauty in the fugitive haunts the imagination. This vagueness is sometimes cruelly provoking, and one is specially irritated at what he fancies he may have missed, when at another time the past shows a trenchant power of cleaving to the inmost core and heart of a thing with some simple, all-illuminating word or phrase. Miss Dickenson frequently seems to grope for esoteric meanings, which she would hide from hoi polloi and reveal only to the few chosen souls of the elect. Again, we find exceeding awkwardness of phrase, poverty-stricken, like that of a child, as if the first ill-fitting word were flung in to fill a gaping hole. With the poetic instinct which many of these poems exhale like a delicate scent, with the passionate hunger for expression that evidently made this soul suffer, with a subtility of thought which can cut as close to the bone as a Damascus cimeter, one cannot reconcile the thinness and penury of written style in this strange part with anything but a sense on her part of something which no form or output could match, and a disdain of any attempt thereat. It seems deplorable that the spiritual significance and beauty of so much of this woman's work should take wing on broken and halting pinions, but it may be that this insufficiency is not without its value as a note of individuality. We give two examples of Miss Dickenson's quaint and orig. inal muse, which will sufficiently illustrate what we have said:

THE JOURNEY.
"Our journey had advanced;
Our feet were almost come
To that odd fork in Being's road,
Eternity by term.

"Our pace took sudden awe,
Our feet reluctant led.
Before were cities, but between
The forest of the dead.

"Retreat was out of hope

Behind a sealed route, Eternity's white flag before, And God at every gate."

And again, what could be more beautiful and delicate in its suggestion that this to the "Fringed Gentian :"

"God made a little gentian,

It tried to be a rose,

And failed, and all the summer laughed. But just before the snows