normal, but he is subject to fits during which he attacks human beings, bites his own body, and devours earth. Usually docile, he occasionally develops great strength, but is never able to distinguish between the two chief elements in his diet, grass and roots. At present he is locked behind bars, pending his transfer to an asylum.

Other instances of a similar nature have occurred frequently in India. The theory is that the wolves carry away a baby to devour, but, discovering that another member of the pack has captured a more palatable victim, accept the child as one of themselves. Sometimes, too, babies are carried off for their own sake when the she-wolf has lost her young. Certain skeptics, however, insist that wolf-children are a pure invention. A correspondent of the Daily Mail points out that the natives are in the habit of abandoning imbecile children in the forest, and later invent fantastic stories about them. This correspondent, who is Director of the Ceylon Pasteur Institute, holds that a child could not travel fast enough to keep up with wolves, and could not snatch enough food from them to keep alive.

The Observer, on the other hand, believes in wolf-children. Many seasoned Anglo-Indians during the nineteenth century checked up carefully on various cases, and were several times convinced that the stories they heard were substantially true. The only known case of a girl surviving adoption by wolves occurred recently, when two little members of the weaker sex, one aged two and the other aged eight, were rescued from the jungle. The younger child soon died, but the older one survived, and was patiently instructed in civilized ways. Her entire vocabulary now extends to no more than thirtyfive words, and she can speak no sentence containing more than three.

It has been said that the speechlessness of wolf-children affords the only prac tical proof we have that language is not an hereditary instinct.

Although wolves have no monopoly on jungle children, the other animals do not seem to offer much competition. In October 1920 a male child was discovered who was supposed to have been reared by a leopard; and three years before the war a girl was found who was said to have passed nine years among the monkeys. She could eat nothing but grass and dog biscuits, and behaved more like a monkey than anything else.

In the light of these disclosures Romulus and Remus may have to be moved out of mythology into history.

Germany's Faltering Christians

STATISTICS from Dr. J. Schneider's Church Year Book of Germany for 1926 show a steady falling off in many lines of Christian activity since the war. The Kirchenaustrittbewegung, as the movement away from churches is called, extends to the clergy as well as the laity. Whereas in Holland there is one Protestant preacher to every eight hundred and fifty laymen, in England one to every thousand, and in Sweden one to every seventeen hundred, in Germany the proportion is one to twenty-five hundred. That the young men are not preparing to fill the vacant pulpits is proved by the rapidly dwindling number of theological students. In 1914 there were 4263 prospective Protestant preachers enrolled throughout the country. By 1920 the number had dropped to 3590, and last year a bare 1900 young theologues had taken advantage of the favored position their calling enjoys, since no other type of student is entitled to so much financial assistance. In the face of unprecedented overcrowding and lack of

opportunity in all other professions, the young men of Germany seem to prefer almost anything to the pulpit.

Needless to say, this lack of interest among the students is merely a reflection of the state of mind of the nation at large. Between 1919 and 1924 over a million churchgoers turned their backs on their religion. In 1920 alone over three hundred thousand deserted the fold, though by 1923 the year's loss had sunk to 111,000, and by 1924 to 68,000. During the same six years only 90,854 new converts were enrolled. Church weddings are also going out of fashion. In 1910 slightly more than ten per cent of the weddings in Germany were civil ceremonies. By 1922 this figure had risen to sixteen and a half per cent, where it remained for the next three years.

Although there is said to be a great Roman Catholic revival throughout Europe, the figures from Germany certainly point in the opposite direction. Dr. Schneider shows that about ten thousand Catholics were converted to Protestantism in each of the years 1922, 1923, and 1924, whereas only seven thousand Protestants a year went over to Rome. And since there are more Protestants than Catholics in Germany, the Catholic Church has lost proportionately even more than the mere figures indicate.

Mendelian Butterflies

NEW light is being thrown upon some of the problems of heredity and evolution by the recent experiments on the effect of shock upon embryo butterflies. Reiterating the conclusions of Weismann, Professor E. B. Poulton declared, in an address before the Entomological Society of England, that inherited characters can be compared to ancient manuscripts that have been written upon many times, and that

these buried characters may emerge as a result of shock produced by abnormal stimuli.

Directly in line with this statement is the startling evidence uncovered by Dr. V. van Someren of Nairobi. Taking an embryo in the soft and unset pupal stage, he gives it a sharp rap with a mallet and discovers that the characters of the opposite sex appear on the side most affected by the shock. One of these gynandromorphs, as these curious forms are called, exhibited an almost perfect half-and-half example. It is suspected that the results obtained by shock are due to reversion toward an ancestral condition, not necessarily remote or, to return to the analogy of Professor Poulton, the shock erased some of the layers of writing upon the ancient manuscript and revealed characters hitherto submerged.

It is well known that the male parent transmits female characteristics as fully as the female herself, and vice versa, but it now appears that in their secondary sexual characters these parents themselves belong potentially as much to one sex as to the other. Professor Poulton infers that the pupal factors which determine the secondary characters of sex are in a condition similar to those of a Mendelian individual possessing mixed factors. The male characters are dominant in the normal male, and the female characters are dominant in the normal female, but a well-timed shock reveals the underlying characters in as plentiful numbers as the overlying ones.

Wagner Prefers Jazz

SIEGFRIED WAGNER, son of the great Richard and grandson of Liszt, has come out on a mildly jazz platform. During his recent visit to London, the first in sixteen years, he conducted a radio concert with his left hand and de

livered a few opinions to the press. For modern composers he has no use at all. 'I have never heard any of Elgar or Holst,' he stated, 'nor any of the modern French or German composers. At Bayreuth I give only the classical composers - Beethoven, Liszt, Bach, and my father. In my leisure I like to hear jazz music and see a good play.'

Herr Wagner frankly confesses that he cannot move with the times, and has therefore made no effort to find out how some of the new music is being influenced by jazz rhythms. His enthusiasm for the tunes that the rabble of Europe and America constantly hum is but lukewarm. Unable, like the rest of us, to avoid the wailings of the saxophone, he listens to it with a composure bordering on pleasure.

The Čapeks' New Play

THOSE two imaginative Čapek boys, Josef and Karel, have turned out another specimen of Czech drama in the form of Adam the Creator. Interviewed before the show began, Karel, the brighter of the two, sketched out his bold idea in these words:

'In my new play Adam annihilates the world through the spirit of negation. But God commands him to create another world in lieu of the old one. Adam creates a new world according to his ideas, but the new world is not thankful to its creator. Finally he is denied by his own creations, and becomes an outcast of the new human race. In the last act Adam comes into Hell, but finds no place even there, for his creations are just erecting a cathedral of creation in inferno, and he is expelled from this underworld.'

One of the leading characters in this fast-moving piece is Adam's Alter Ego, who is as unsuccessful in endlessly producing cloth-capped workers as Adam himself is in laying down a plan of life

in which the world is apparently regi mented into something rather like the Republic of Czechoslovakia. In theory Adam is a nihilist, but when he perceives that he is nothing but a largescale Mencken - one of those destructive critics who have nothing to offer in place of all that they tear down - he acknowledges his error and realizes that the existing world is better than the one he has constructed. The climax is reached when the voice of God releases the two Adams from their task of creation.

The reviewers of Prague seem to agree that the play is more philosophical than dramatic, and that the stage designing is modern and effective to a degree. Its tone is didactic, its wit brilliant, benevolent, and, we are sorry to say, pessimistic. The moral punch that it carries is that all destruction results only in greater chaos.

American Boxing and English

Nor content with ring-side seats at championship prize fights, sports writers representing England and America have stepped into a journalistic squared circle to defend boxing as it is practised in their respective countries. Mr. E. B. Osborn defends England with "The Sweet Science,' while Mr. W. O. McGeehan, writing on the 'manly art of modified murder,' has come to the assistance of our made-inAmerica world championship reputations.

Although the criticisms of Mr. McGeehan are characterized by his opponent as 'haymakers,' or wild swings which miss their mark, some of the American's observations apparently roused the ire of the British defender. The only necessary qualifications of an American boxing expert, we learn from Mr. Osborn's article, are 'an Irish name, a knowledge of Yiddish,

and a flask of synthetic Scotch.' All this may have been occasioned by the fact that Mr. McGeehan had previously fouled Mr. Osborn by misspelling his name, giving him wrong initials, and identifying him with the wrong

newspaper.

Mr. Osborn draws a line between the business of professional boxing as it is practised in the States and the sport as it is conducted in the English ring. He tells us that some of our champions would have been disqualified in 'the first or second round-if they had escaped lynching by the crowd! The tactics of foul play are carefully studied over there, and the invader must acquire all this unsweet science Kid Lewis did if he is to have a chance of winning a world's championship in an American ring.' And again, 'Firpo would have received the decision if the fight had taken place anywhere in Great Britain.'

as

To which we say, like the neutral referee, 'Make it clean and fast, boys.'

A British Gantry

OUR modern miracle-workers and evangelists have recently been overshadowed by Pastor George Jeffreys of the Elim Foursquare Gospel Demonstration, who according to some accounts is healing people by wholesale at the Albert Hall, London. His vast audience of six thousand is thrown into a religious ecstasy which some observers have characterized as mesmerism, and which perhaps resembles some of our own frenzied religious revivals.

Mr. Jeffreys evidently holds his congregation with all the power of an experienced evangelist. When he asks, 'Do you believe in miracles?' the entire audience, six thousand strong, roars back, 'Amen.' Then, with a voice that reverberates throughout the hall, he shouts, 'How many people here to-day

have been cured?' Immediately several hundred hands are thrown upward, while the pastor and choir murmur ecstatically, "Thank God. Amen.' After the sermon long lines of unfortunates pass before Pastor Jeffreys so that he may lay his hands upon them and cure them. The believers seem unperturbed when no cures are performed, when the lame man still uses the crutch after he has received the Jeffreys touch, when the blind man is still blind after the ceremony. 'It will come,' say the faithful, revealing a trust, an optimism, which is one of the most striking aspects of this exhibition of religious fervor.

We in America are familiar with this sort of group hypnotism, but it is rather surprising to see such evidences of it in an England which, according to her reviews of Elmer Gantry, is not troubled with religious chills and fevers.

Suicide: Cause and Cure

JUST as we are recovering from our suicide epidemic, we learn that Japan has not only found an explanation for the prevalence of self-murder in some of her cities, but also an effective cure. Perhaps the fashion for silk stockings and clothes lies at the bottom of the entire matter - - not because the victims are girls who futilely seek these luxuries, but because they work in the mills, where immorality is said to run rampant. At Okaya, Nagano, forty working girls plunge into Lake Suwa each year because of despondency over the conditions under which they toil. There is an old saying in the town that the bottom of the lake has been appreciably raised by the number of working girls who have thrown themselves into it.

Because of tradition, or out of courtesy toward her predecessors, each of these suicides jumps into the lake

from the very same spot. A remedy has been sought, and easily found. It consists of a marker which reads: 'Wait a minute - if you are overburdened with perplexities, come to your mother's home. Mme. Takeyo Takahama.' The sign was erected by a social service worker. A similar sign reading simply 'Wait a Minute' has been placed on a spot at Suwa, Kobe, where thousands are said to take their life annually; and, according to present plans, another marker will be put up at a railroad crossing that has been a popular trysting place for working girls in their appointments with Charon.

Wells's Next

H. G. WELLS has turned his prolific pen to the British coal dispute in Meanwhile, a new novel to be published early in September. In it he tries to do for the present upheaval of labor in England what he did for the war in Mr. Britiing. Much adverse criticism is anticipated by the publishers, Ernest Benn, Ltd., who have advanced information on the general nature of the book. It is characterized as an 'absolutely ruthless criticism of the Conservative Government, and particularly of Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Churchill, for their conduct of the coal dispute.'

The story is woven around a wealthy young mine owner who spends most of his time in Italy, where he has an intriguing love affair that ends in a reconciliation with his wife, after which he is drawn back to England by the impending coal strike. "The upheaval is seen through the eyes of Philip, who

is drawn as ignorant and idealistic, but active-minded and honest, and Mr. Wells pictures him as appalled at finding out where his money comes from and how his colleagues have behaved,' the publishers tell us. The novel is brightened with witty conversation and lively political pictures, but its fundamental thesis, it is believed, will create a greater controversy than that aroused by William Clissold last autumn.

A 'Merry Widow' Hoax

MODERN advertising methods have been introduced by a live-wire theatrical press-agent in the ancient city of Venice. When The Merry Widow was playing there lately, the astute manager of the Teatro Rossini decided to vary his publicity by putting the following announcement in the local papers:

'A very rich young widow, attractive and smart, desires to marry a distinguished young man. His financial position is immaterial so long as his habits are irreproachable, and if possible he should be a diplomat, high up in the service. Write to Anna Glavari, San Luca, n. 3998.'

The returns indicated that Mussolini's levy on bachelors must be working splendidly, for applications arrived from all over the surrounding countryside. Lawyers, barbers, beggars, and army officers aspired to her hand, and even one diplomat was heard from. The best letter of all invited the Signora Glavari to present herself and explain how heavy an income tax rich young widows had to pay.