6

floor, we could rake the premises, and run After this, and after various vicissi
no risk of shooting each other or the tudes, Euphemia and her husband settle
women of the family.' One night one of down in the country in a house which
the alarms goes off. The husband im- they call Rudder Grange, in affectionate
mediately takes his revolver out of the remembrance of their home in the canal.
drawer, and rushes to wake the boarder, boat. Here it is that Pomona rejoins.
who keeps his pistol under his pillow. them under somewhat singular circum-
"In an instant he was on his feet, his stances. They have purchased a watch-
hand grasped_my_throat, and the cold dog which growls at them in the most
muzzle of his Derringer pistol was at my savage and terrible manner, and of which
forehead. It was an awfully big muzzle, they stand in great and natural dread.
like the mouth of a bottle. I don't know He has been let loose to frighten a sup-
when I lived so long as during the first posed tramp, who turns out to be a re-
minute that he held me thus. Rascal,' spectable tradesman, and Euphemia, her
he said, 'do as much as breathe and I'll husband, and the maid have taken refuge
pull the trigger.' I didn't breathe." When on the top of a shed. To them enters
this mistake is cleared up the two men Pomona, who has not been seen for a
make their way cautiously and pistol in long time, and she walks up to them, tak-
hand to the spot where the alarm has ing no notice of the dog. The dog, upon
gone off. Then by the light of the moon this, gives up barking and growling, and
they see the burglar standing on a chair follows quietly at her heels.
"""Do you
'leaning out of the window evidently just know, ma'am,' said she to Euphemia,
ready to escape." They agree, instead that if I had come here yesterday, that
of shooting, to hoist the rascal into the dog would have had my life's blood?'
water. As they are barefooted their ap-And why don't he have it to-day?' said
proach is unheard. "We reached the Euphemia." What is the answer to this
chair. Each of us took hold of two of its question, and what other things befall the
legs. 'One two three!' said the young couple and Pomona, all readers
boarder, and together we gave a tremend- who care for a very bright, original, and
ous lift and shot the wretch out of the amusing story will like to find out for
window." Then they run up on deck to themselves.
see what the burglar is about. "Just then
our attention was attracted by a voice
from the shore. •
Will you please let
down the gang-plank?' We looked ashore
and there stood Pomona, dripping from
every pore. We spoke no words, but
lowered the gang-plank. She came aboard.
WE can trace a regular gradation
'Good-night!' said the boarder, and went through the deer kind, ancient and mod-
to bed. Pomona!' said I, what have ern - from deer with absolutely no antlers
you been doing?' 'I was a-lookin' at the of any sort, through those with mere tiny
moon, sir, when pop! the chair bounced, bosses or dags, to those with fully devel-
and out I went."" It is strangely charac-oped branched headgear like that of the
teristic of Pomona that two years or more moose and the Scotch red deer. The
later she refers to the incident in this earliest ancestors of the race had abso-
way: "I felt mad enough to take her by lutely no horns at all, and at least one
the feet an' pitch her out, as you an' the existing member of the true deer tribe
boarder,' said Pomona, turning to me, the Chinese water deer-still retains this
'h'isted me out of the canal-boat winder.' early peculiarity. The reason why one
This, by the way, was the first intimation such outlying species should never have
we had had that Pomona knew how she attained the stage of producing antlers
came to fall out of that window." This, is clear enough. It lives much in the
as has been said, takes place a consider marshes and pools, where the mode of
able time after the incident itself, shortly fighting by butting with the head is not
after which the young couple are com- likely to be very much practised, and it
pelled to leave their strange and pictur- has accordingly acquired long, sharp tusks
esque dwelling-place in consequence of instead of horns, which it uses in the
Pomona's smartness in cutting a little combats with its rivals for the possession
window in the side of the kitchen to throw of the does. The so-called musk deer,
things out. One night there is a high which is really more closely related to the
tide, the water gets in through this little antelopes, shows us the antelope type in a
window, the boat heels over and its occu- similar stage of arrested development,
pants escape from it only just in time. and is equally provided with long tusks.

From The County Gentleman. DEER ANTLERS.

Indeed, almost all kinds of deer in which cies faithfully reproduces from season to the antlers are small or little evolved tend season, in its own growth, the various to supplement them by fighting-teeth. On stages through which its ancestors have the other hand, it is the more usual habit passed; and we can place side by side a of all prairie or forest ruminants to fight perfect series of corresponding forms in one another by butting with the head, and the two modes of development, each year under such circumstances the possession of the red deer or wapiti being paralleled of any protuberance or knob upon the by a close similar adult animal of some forehead, of whatever sort, would be cer- other species. It is noteworthy, too, that tain to give the animals which happened the fossil order exactly answers to what to display it a great advantage over their we should expect it to be in this respect; rivals in the annual wager of battle. the earliest deer kind whose remains we Hence it happens that three diverse types know have very simple and rudimentary of headgear have been separately devel- antlers indeed, and they gradually in oped in three groups of ruminants. In crease in complexity from the first fossil the giraffes a distinct conical bone, cov- species till the extinct kinds of the period ered with skin and hair, buds out from immediately preceding our own. In April each side of the brow, and forms a dan: the stags exhibit the first beginnings of gerous weapon of offence capable of the new year's growth. A pair of knobs fracturing the skull of a rival, as hap show themselves about the scar left by pened once during a giraffe fight at the the burrs of last autumn's antlers, and Zoo. In the hollow-horned ruminants, the smooth dark velvet that covers them such as antelopes and cow-kind-that is gives hardly any sign of active life. With to say, all those sorts which have true the warmer weather, however, the knobs horns, as distinguished from antlers the have begun to bud more vigorously, and bony core forms a part of the skull itself, the pulses in the velvet show clearly and is coated by a horny covering, which that the arteries are busy at work buildis never shed during the animal's life. ing up a bony layer on the new pair of And in the deer tribe, which possess ant- dags. As long as the bone continues to lers instead of horn, the weapons of of grow, the skin inside the velvet remains fence are also bony, but without any warm and richly supplied with blood, for coating of horn, and in the final state at of course the work of depositing the least are quite naked. Each of these dense material of the antler is carried on three distinct types of butting apparatus by this vital covering, which acts to the must have been separately evolved from core much as the delicate skin of a bone a primitive hornless ancestor; and each does to the hard mineral mass beneath it. (except that of the now quite unique While the work of deposition goes on, giraffes) has undergone many subsequent the stags are very shy and retiring, keepchanges and modifications in adaptationing out of the way as much as possible, to special needs. Some isolated species for any injury to the velvet causes them of the deer, such as the American brock- to bleed profusely, and also prevents the ets, have hardly got at all beyond the very first stage in the production of antlers; they have only a pair of small knobs on the forehead, like the simple dags of those young red deer in their first year which the keepers know as brockets. So, again, a Chinese muntjac has little beams hardly an inch long, supplemented by a powerful pair of canine tusks. One stage above this early type in evolution comes the common muntjac of India, well known to sportsmen in the Deccan, with antlers about four inches long, and possessing a single rudimentary brow tine beside the beam. This second stage is reached and passed by the red deer in the second year. Thence we can trace a constant progress, through kinds which have triple branches, like the staggard, to the very much subdivided antlers of our own red deer, or the still more complex armor of the wapiti and the Barbary deer. Each higher spe

due growth of the subjacent antler. As soon as the horns have attained their full growth, however, the arteries in the velvet dry up and the skin becomes reduced to a mere papery covering, which the stag proceeds to rub off against the ground or on the trunks of trees. Once the core of bone alone remains, he begins to toss his head, to seek the hinds, and to do battle for them with his rival stags. On the Scotch hills much harm has been done to the development of antlers by the foolish and unscientific practice of killing off the finest heads, which leaves only the less developed to perpetuate the species, so that our British stags have seldom more than ten or twelve tines; but on the Con. tinent, where nature is allowed to have her own way to a greater extent, stags have been shot with between sixty and seventy branches to their lordly antlers.

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From The Quarterly Review.
LORD LAWRENCE.*

ON the 4th of July, 1857, amid the crash of the enemy's near artillery, and the incessant roll of musketry, the spare and shattered frame that had encased the ardent soul of Henry Lawrence was committed to earth, with hasty prayers, within the beleaguered lines of Lucknow Residency. Three weeks later, ignorant of the calamity, the Court of Directors, with the crown's approval, named the same Henry Lawrence as provisional successor of the governor general, Lord Canning.

that, at least in later years, something similar might have been said of John.

Eleven years ago the "Life of Sir Henry Lawrence was issued in two volumes from two very different pens. The first, by Sir Herbert Edwardes, was written as it were from within; full of broth. erly, almost filial, affection; the work of a friend and disciple; hearty to the uttermost, but failing perhaps at times in taste; and recalling to some long memories the "early decorated" style, which was well known in the local press of upper India, before Edwardes's courage and genius snatched those opportunities which made him famous in England at The second volume

was by the late Mr. Herman Merivale,
whose destiny it was, a singular destiny
for one so accomplished,
to finish up
the stories left half told by other men.
The volume was not by any means inap-

Twenty-two years later, almost to a day, on the 5th of July, 1879, Henry Lawrence's younger brother John, after hav- eight-and-twenty. ing filled for the usual term of years that great office to which Henry had been designated, was laid in the nave of Westminster with all the solemn glories of music and lofty ritual, and amid such a depth of emotion, and such a crowd of mourn-preciative of its subject, but it was writ ers, as no funeral for well-nigh forty years had evoked or assembled. No royal prince took part, unless by proxy, in the last tribute to the man who had done more than any other, dead or living, to preserve India to the crown of England; but statesmen and soldiers of renown, and old comrades who had borne by his side the burden and heat of the day, now supported his pall, and carried the symbols of his

honors.

ten critically and from without. Those who knew India, and loved Henry Lawrence, preferred Edwardes's contribution with all its faults. Many others, however, doubtless assigned the palm to Merivale's chaster style and better knowledge of the world, and to that calmer review, which sometimes jarred on the sympathies of the former class of readers, by its tone as of one regarding Sir Henry not merely from without, which was inevitable, but (as it seemed) also from a higher level, which was inexcusable.

Some months after the funeral at Westminster, when it became known that the widow of Lord Lawrence had committed the task of writing her husband's history to a Harrow master-to one who had never seen India — there were grievous

An old Arab traveller in India tells that, when a king in that country died, there were certain persons bound to him by special ties of devotion, who cast themselves upon his funeral pyre. These were styled the faithful lieges of the king, whose life was their life, whose death was their death. That is not the custom now, Indian or Anglo-Indian. But Lord Law-misgivings and great searchings of heart rence's biographer, in speaking of the elder brother's unique power of attracting and influencing men through the heart, says that he was a man for whom (as sober persons, knowing whereof they spoke, had repeatedly told him) not one only but a

among the Anglo-Indian legions. It is no purpose of this review to add an essay on Lord Lawrence to the many (some of them most able and worthy) which appeared four years ago; but we desire to show, so far as our space and ability permit, what the book is like. In three years Mr. Bosworth Smith has carried through a work representing an enormous amount of toil. In spite of an inevitable slip now and then - but rarely of moment — his