two

Euphemia." What is the answer to this question, and what other things befall the young couple and Pomona, all readers who care for a very bright, original, and amusing story will like to find out for themselves.

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 canaldrawer, 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 watchhand 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 reminute 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, takhand 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 chair. Each of us took hold of two of its legs. 'One three!' said the boarder, and together we gave a tremendous lift and shot the wretch out of the window." Then they run up on deck to 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. Good-night!'said the boarder, and went to bed. Pomona!' said I, what have you been doing?' 'I was a-lookin' at the moon, sir, when pop! the chair bounced, and out I went.'" It is strangely characteristic of Pomona that two years or more later she refers to the incident in this way: "I felt mad enough to take her by the feet an' pitch her out, as you an' the boarder,' said Pomona, turning to me, 'h'isted me out of the canal-boat winder.' This, by the way, was the first intimation we had had that Pomona knew how she came to fall out of that window." This, as has been said, takes place a considerable time after the incident itself, shortly after which the young couple are compelled to leave their strange and picturesque dwelling-place in consequence of Pomona's smartness in cutting a little window in the side of the kitchen to throw things out. One night there is a high tide, the water gets in through this little window, the boat heels over and its occupants escape from it only just in time.

66

From The County Gentleman. DEER ANTLERS.

WE can trace a regular gradation through the deer kind, ancient and mod ern from deer with absolutely no antlers of any sort, through those with mere tiny bosses or dags, to those with fully developed branched headgear like that of the moose and the Scotch red deer. The earliest ancestors of the race had absolutely no horns at all, and at least one existing member of the true deer tribe the Chinese water deer - still retains this early peculiarity. The reason why one such outlying species should never have attained the stage of producing antlers is clear enough. It lives much in the marshes and pools, where the mode of fighting by butting with the head is not likely to be very much practised, and it has accordingly acquired long, sharp tusks instead of horns, which it uses in the combats with its rivals for the possession of the does. The so-called musk deer, which is really more closely related to the antelopes, shows us the antelope type in a similar stage of arrested development, and is equally provided with long tusks.

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. Increase 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 adaptation ing 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 due growth of the subjacent antler. As first stage in the production of antlers; soon as the horns have attained their full they have only a pair of small knobs on growth, however, the arteries in the velvet the forehead, like the simple dags of dry up and the skin becomes reduced to a those young red deer in their first year mere papery covering, which the stag which the keepers know as brockets. So, proceeds to rub off against the ground or again, a Chinese muntjac has little beams on the trunks of trees. Once the core of hardly an inch long, supplemented by a bone alone remains, he begins to toss his powerful pair of canine tusks. One stage head, to seek the hinds, and to do battle above this early type in evolution comes for them with his rival stags. On the the common muntjac of India, well known Scotch hills much harm has been done to to sportsmen in the Deccan, with antlers the development of antlers by the foolish about four inches long, and possessing a and unscientific practice of killing off the single rudimentary brow tine beside the finest heads, which leaves only the less beam. This second stage is reached and developed to perpetuate the species, so passed by the red deer in the second year. that our British stags have seldom more Thence we can trace a constant progress, than ten or twelve tines; but on the Con through kinds which have triple branches, tinent, where nature is allowed to have like the staggard, to the very much sub- her own way to a greater extent, stags divided antlers of our own red deer, or have been shot with between sixty and the still more complex armor of the wapiti seventy branches to their lordly antlers. and the Barbary deer. Each higher spe-|

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From The Quarterly Review.
LORD LAWRENCE.*

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 vol. umes from two very different pens. The first, by Sir Herbert Edwardes, was writ ten as it were from within; full of brotherly, almost filial, affection; the work of

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 Resi- a friend and disciple; hearty to the utterdency. Three weeks later, ignorant of most, but failing perhaps at times in the calamity, the Court of Directors, with taste; and recalling to some long memothe crown's approval, named the same ries the "early decorated" style, which Henry Lawrence as provisional successor was well known in the local press of of the governor general, Lord Canning. upper India, before Edwardes's courage Twenty-two years later, almost to a day, and genius snatched those opportunities on the 5th of July, 1879, Henry Law- which made him famous in England at rence's younger brother John, after hav-eight-and-twenty. The second volume ing filled for the usual term of years that was by the late Mr. Herman Merivale, great office to which Henry had been des- whose destiny it was,- -a singular destiny ignated, was laid in the nave of West- for one so accomplished, to finish up minster with all the solemn glories of mu- the stories left half told by other men. sic and lofty ritual, and amid such a depth The volume was not by any means inapof emotion, and such a crowd of mourn-preciative of its subject, but it was writers, 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.

An old Arab traveller in India tells that, when a king in that country died, there were certain persons bound to him by Some months after the funeral at Westspecial ties of devotion, who cast them-minster, when it became known that the selves upon his funeral pyre. These were widow of Lord Lawrence had committed styled the faithful lieges of the king, the task of writing her husband's history whose life was their life, whose death was to a Harrow master- to one who had their death. That is not the custom now, never seen India-there were grievous 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 dozen men in the Punjab would have been prepared to die. And we believe

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