hare of the Russian steppes. There would be nothing very extraordinary in the fact if social animals, such as deer, cattle, or antelopes, did gather quantities of long herbage, like the tall grasses of Central Africa or of the Indian swamps, and accumulate it for the benefit of the herd, and combine to protect it from other herds, or if they reserved certain portions of the longer herbage for food in winter. The latter would perhaps demand a greater range of concepts than the former. But the brain-power of the improvident deer must be equal to that of the squirrel or field-mouse, which seldom forget to lay aside a "famine fund." In temperate climates, prolonged frost or snow is the only frequent cause of famine among either beasts or birds. This cause is not constant, season by season, but it occurs often enough in the lifetime of most individuals of the different species to impress their memory by suffering. In the plains of India, and even more regularly in the plains of Africa, the summer heats cause partial famine to all her bivorous animals, and this condition is recurring and constant. Brehm has described the cumulative suffering of the animal world, of the "African steppe," mainly from famine, at the close of this regular period of summer drought. We cannot supose that in this case the terror of starvation is wholly forgotten in the brief time of plenty. The neglect to form any store, or to reserve pastures in climates sufficiently temperate to spare them from being burnt up with summer heat, suggests the question whether these "hand-to-mouth" herbivorous animals rely on any natural reserves of food not obvious to us. This is a natural device, just as the Kaffir, when his mealies fail, lives on roots and grubs, or the insect and vegetable eating rook becomes carnivorous in a drought. To some extent both deer and cattle do rely on such reserves. When the grass is burnt up, trees are still luxuriant, and it is to the woods that the ruminant animals look as a reserve in famine. The fact was recognized during the siege of Paris, when all the trees of the boulevards and the parks were felled late in September that the tens of thousands of cattle might browse on the

young shoots and leaves. It is this habit of hungry cattle which makes the space under all trees in parks of the same height,—that to which cattle can lift their heads to bite the branches. When the wood or forest has been enclosed previously, the whole of this stock of food, reaching down to the ground, instead of to the "cattle line," is at their service. In a paragraph quoted in the Globe of June 28th, from some remarks of Sir Dietrich Brandis, lately chief of the Forest Department of the Indian empire, special mention is made of the part played by this "reserve" in the economy of animal famines in India. During the years of drought and famine in 1867 and 1868, the cattle (of all the inhabitants) were allowed to graze in the Rajah's preserves at Rupnagar. The branches of the trees were cut for fodder. The same was done in Kishangarh, and a large proportion of the cattle of these two places were preserved during those terrible years.

But there are regions, like the African steppe, where the summer famines among animals are more frequent than in India, and where there is little forest available as a reserve store of food. Certain animals "trek" for great distances to escape from the famine area. Birds leave it entirely. But the greater number of the quadrupeds stay and take their chance, the stronger of hunger, the weak of famine and death.

If we examine the stores made by most of the vegetable-eating animals which do lay by a "famine fund," we find a rather curious similarity in the food commonly used by them. They nearly all live on vegetable substances in a concentrated form-natural foodlozenges, which are very easily stored away. There is a great difference, for example, between the bulk of nutriment eaten in the form of grass by a rabbit, and the same amount of sustenance in the “special preparation" in the kernel of a nut, or the stone of a peach, or the bulb of a crocus, off which a squirrel makes a meal. Nearly all the storing animals eat "concentrated food," whether it be beans and grain, hoarded by the hamster, or nuts and hard fruits, by the squirrel, nuthatch, and possibly some of the jays. But there is one vege

is

table-eating animal whose food neither concentrated nor easy to move. On the contrary, it is obtained with great labor in the first instance, and stored with no less toil after it is procured. The beaver lives during the winter on the bark of trees. As it is not safe, and often impossible, for the animal to leave the water when the ice has formed, it stores these branches under water, cutting them into lengths, dragging them below the surface, and fixing them down to the bottom with stones and mud. This is more difficult work than gathering hay.

Birds, in spite of their powers of locomotion, suffer greatly from famine. Many species which could leave the famine area seem either deficient in the instinct to move, or unwilling to do so. Rooks, for instance, which are now known to migrate across the Channel and the North Sea, will hang about the same parish in bad droughts and suffer acutely, though they might easily move to places where water, if not food, is abundant. The frost famines mainly affect the insect-eating birds; and as these live on animal food, which would not keep, they could not be expected to make a store. But there is no such difference of possible food between birds which do make stores and birds which do not. Why, for instance, should the nuthatch and the Mexican woodpecker lay by for hard times while the rook does not?

Domestic animals in this country are very properly guaranteed by recent leg

islation against being left to starve by their owners. It is not often that the owner of any domesticated animal is so careless of his own interests as to do so when the creature is capable of work, or so inhuman if it is not. But instances do occur to the contrary. The law does recognize an implied right on the part of the animal to this exemption from the great curse of animal existence, if man has exacted from it a previous tribute in the form of work. But there is a borderland of animal domestication in which this implicit duty of man to beast is seriously neglected, partly because the work done by the animal is less obvious, though the animal is kept for the profit of man. There are great areas of new country in Argentina, the United States, and Australia where the raising of stock, whether sheep, cattle, or horses, is carried on without much regard to the limits set by famine in years of frost or drought. The creatures are multiplied without regard to famine periods, and no reserve of food is kept to meet these. Natural laws are left to work in bad times, and this "natural law" is death by famine. Consequently, at the present time we hear of multitudes of starving horses on the ranches of Oregon, and in Australia during a drought, or in Argentina after protracted drought or cold, sheep and cattle die by tens of thousands by the most lingering of deaths. There is something amiss here in the relations between man and beast which cannot be justified even on "business" grounds.

Letters Delayed by Bees.-An unusual sight was witnessed at Cranbrook, in Kent, the other afternoon. A swarm of bees settled on a pillar-box at Frizley, and soon afterwards a second swarm lo. cated themselves inside the box, the whole colony following the queen through the aperture provided for letters. Every preparation was made for the capture of the swarm upon the ar

rival of the rural postman to clear the letters; but, owing to the awkward position of the winged visitors, it was found impossible to hive the bees until night, when they were smoked and safely housed. Owing to this unusual incident, the letters posted before the bees took possession of the pillar-box were delayed for several hours.-St. James's Gazette.

IN NATURE'S WAGGISH MOOD.1

BY PAUL HEYSE.

beard and the strange figure might easily have been taken for one of those fabled elfs who grope their way through

Lieber Cohen. PART I.

It was a wild autumn night. A cruel fog seemed blowing from all four points of the compass at once. The streets were cleared of all pedestrians who had no urgent reason for being out-of-doors; sentinels had crept into their sentryboxes, policemen had found shelter in warm bar-rooms-their duties as custodians of the peace always taking then away from their posts when such weather was abroad,--and yet in one of the suburbs of the provincial town there might have been seen, on this night in question, a tiny little figure walking as leisurely over the damp, oozy pave. ments as though the most cloudless of summer skies had lured him forth by its beauty. The distant observer would probably have taken the little piece of humanity for a child of three or four who had strayed from home and now, frightened and perhaps fearing punish ment, was wandering aimlessly in the dark and fog. Closer approach, however, aided by the flickering light from the corner street-lamp, would have shown that this was not the figure of a child. True, a pair of clear grey eyes looked out from under the broad

brimmed black felt hat, and a round, rosy-cheeked face emerged from the turned-up collar of a heavy brown overcoat, but the chin had a straggling growth of light brown beard, while crow's feet about the eyes and lines around the mouth, as well as the bold and resolute expression on the finely chiselled features, gave unmistakable evidence that the small personage had long since reached man's estate and that his stunted stature must have been caused by human mischance, or by nature with malice prepense.

In his right hand the little man carried a stick whose ferrule end sounded a regular tick-tack on the plaster pave ment; the left bore a closed dark lantern, which strikingly enhanced his gnome-like appearance. A long gray 1 Copyright by The Living Age Company.

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curely hide their mysterious treasures from the eyes of men. The dark lantern, however, served a much more modrambles as often as the little night-bird est purpose; for, during his nocturnal would meet a creature of ordinary size, -who naturally at once fell to wondering what the child was doing out in the street at such an hour,-he would press his finger on the round door of the lantern and hold the light aloft so that it would fall full on his own face; then at a glance from those clear grey eyes, that looked as though they knew quite well what they were about, the inquisitive observer would pass on, reserving his pity for a more needy object. With the guards and policemen he seemed to be on familiar terms, and they would call out cheerily in passing: "Good evening, Mr. Hinze," whereupon Mr. Hinze would as cheerily return the salutation in a thin, high-pitched voice that was very earnest and resolute withal. Then he would proceed leisurely on his contemplative way, from time to time swinging his stick in the air and giving an occasional lunge with it as though he were a young student practising the tierce and carte with no one near to criticise.

had wandered for an hour in and out of This inhospitable night, however, he street and side street, meeting no other living creature except a masterless dog, who, wet and shivering, had brushed up close to him for some human comfort. The emptiness of the street did not seem would stand in revery before some halfto oppress him; on the contrary he built house, or gaze long and intently at one of the gaudy, pretentious villas with balcony and terrace; then he would fall into a murmured soliloquy, give a low shrill whistle, that might have come from the lungs of a mouse, and move quietly on his way.

It struck twelve from a neighboring church-tower as the noctambulist turned into one of the broader thoroughfares where the street-lamps made a more imposing display-the streaming sidewalks absorbing and reflecting their