powers which are described as the sim- the fact that stone, implements would' ple machines. Here it may be ob- have been incompetent to fashion a served that whereas some of the lower wheel. The earliest Chaldean monuanimals do possess a knowledge of in- ments bear sculptured representations dividual powers, yet, if those particular of rude wooden carts with two fixed. powers fail, they are incapable of car-wheels drawn by a single ox; but these rying out their desires by other means. very sculptures themselves prove that Monkeys, for instance, fetch them- metallic tools were in use at the time. selves cocoanuts and break them open at the same time by running up the palm-trunks and dropping the nuts to the ground. But if a nut should fall intact, the monkey would not have the cleverness to pick up a stone and break it; nor has it the aptitude to throw a stone upwards, and so bring the nut to the ground. Both these actions would imply the pre-requisite of an opposable thumb. Similarly, a beaver will drag a tree-trunk to the riverside, that it may be built into the beaver-dam; but if the trunk be too heavy, it will not have the power to put one trunk on another, and so roll the trunk along.

The lever must be quite as old as the roller. When several felled poles lay together helter-skelter, one of them would most likely have one of its ends. resting under another, and accidental depression of the free end would reveal the fact that heavy weights might be moved by pushing under them one end of a pole, and pushing under the pole another by way of fulcrum. The transport of heavy weights, therefore, might take place quite naturally amongst the men who preceded the metallic age by the use of poles as levers and rollers. At that stage nothing in the way of a crank or axle would have been known. The lever, like other powers, was of course known long before its properties had been investigated by the mathematician. It was, in fact, not until the time of Archimedes that the lever was explained.

It may be useful here to point out that in the pre-metallic age, before nails were possible, fastenings were effected by means of knots. The older stone implements are distinguished from those of the newer age by having been lashed to a wood-shaft with leather thongs; whereas, later on, men found out how much better it was to make a hole, either in the stone head or in the wooden handle. The fact that stone implements are found scattered singly here and there seems to suggest that they had slipped by accident out of the shafts through unskilful tying; and from this we may infer that the grannyre-knots and other unscientific methods of tying which children instinctively adopt are a relic of the Stone Age fastenings.

It is in this capacity for inventiveness that the divergence of human aptitude from that of auimals is to be found. Thus, there is no record of any brute creature ever deliberately and of set purpose transporting a weight from one point to another by rolling it down a hill. Yet the savage race does not exist which is incapable of this simple exercise of the inventive mind. Again, there is no record of a savage who would not be smart enough to drag one trunk over a smaller one, and so lessen the friction of transport. It may be taken for granted that the roller, in the form of a pole from which lateral branches had been lopped by cutting, breaking, or fire, was one of the earliest mechanical inventions. It would not be long before men perceived that by reducing the bulk of the trunk in the middle, the power of the roller was increased, because friction was duced, aud in this way the middle part of the roller would at length develop into the axle, and its two ends into wheels. There is no evidence that trollies or carts of this rough pattern existed amongst the men of the Stone Age, and the theory that they had not yet been invented is strengthened by

From the position in which their remains are found, it may be said that the Stone Age races of western Europe obtained their supplies of fresh water from running streams and lakes. They would therefore have no knowledge of

artificial wells, which seem to have been hit upon by Syrian nomads in very early times. At first, perhaps, vessels would be lowered by a thoug, and then pulled up again; but if a pole were placed across the well-mouth for purposes of safety, men would at once see the advantage of pulling the rope against the pole. Later on, they would acquire the means of fixing the pole in the holes of vertical boards, and so the pulley would arise. Even before this invention, it is probable that men hit upon the plan, when dragging a heavy weight by means of a leather thong, of passing the thong round a handy tree.

From The Athenæum.

LINES BY TOM SHERIDAN.

SHERIDAN'S elder son Tom said many clever things, but he did not strive to make his mark in literature. Some letters from him are preserved among the Sheridan papers at Frampton Court, Dorsetshire, and several verses, which may be read with special interest now, are appended to one of them. They were written towards the end of 1811 or at the beginning of 1812. The subject was the total wreck of a man-of-war, about which the following particulars appeared in the "Annual Register" for 1811:

W. Pakenham, brother to the Earl of Longford, sailed from Cork on the 19th of November, to relieve his Majesty's ship Endymion off Lough Swilly. Having reached the harbor, she again sailed on the 30th, with the intention of proceeding to the westward. On the evening of the 4th of December it blew the most dreadful hurricane. At about ten o'clock at night, through the darkness and the storm, a light was seen from the signal-towers, supposed to be on board the Saldanha, passing rapidly up the harbor. When the daylight appeared the ship was discovered to be a complete wreck in Ballyna Stokes-bay. Every one of the three hundred souls on board had perished, and all the circumstances of her calamitous loss had thus perished with her, The bodies of Capt.

The precise manner in which the Rathmilton, December 6th: his Majwedge was invented cannot be shown. esty's ship Saldanha, one of our finest Perhaps some archaic workman, ham-frigates, commanded by Captain the Hon. mering away at a block of wood with a flint knife, found the knife enter the wood and become fixed. In the effort to wrench it out, the block would split. While the engineer of to-day is a being of a very different stamp from the engineer of the long-ago, the difference is one of degree rather than kind. Modern mechanical activity has shown itself not in the invention of new machines so much as in the application of new prime movers. The tendency of the time is to replace the prime movers of the early ages by others involving less human waste. The classic trireme was to all intents and purposes a ship propelled by a compound engine, whose cranks were human elbows, and whose pistons were human arms. A rower would not miss his stroke more frequently than the needle of a sewing

machine misses a stitch. But the comparative costliness of men as prime movers has been amply demonstrated by the calculation that, to do the same

number of units of work as that

pro

duced by the motor of a Cunarder no fewer than a quarter of a million rowers would be required.

But enough has been said to show that, before the age of iron, men had made considerable progress in mechanical invention, and it needed only the introduction of that metal to enable them to carry out the principles already known to gigantic issues.

Pakenham and about two hundred of the and were interred in a neighboring burying crew are said to have been washed ashore, ground.

The late Mr. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the son of Tom and the squire of Frampton, has written concerning the letter which accompanied the lines, that "it was addressed to Mrs. Mary Moucrieff, of Pitcathley House, Bridge of Earn, when he was in delicate health, and wintering with Lord Ponsonby, at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, about the year 1812." letter runs thus :

The

Ventnor, New Inn, Thursday. MY DEAR MADAM,—I have taken the liberty of sending you a few stanzas I wrote

For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

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Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

A SONG OF SUNLIGHT.

TO PEGGY ON THE LAWN.
SHE is dressed, like the early Springs,
In the daintiest pink and white;
From her mischievous hand she flings
Pink-petaled lawn-daisies, the spright !

LIFE and death, and the power of love, and The daisies are spells, and after

the strength of laughter;

Music of battle, and ships that sail away

to the west;

All that hath gone before and all that fol

loweth after;

She's cast them and knows that I'm

bound,

The ring of her delicate laughter
Breaks into bright ripples of sound.

The mad, blind struggle for gold, and the So now I'm her poor captive knight, restless seeking for rest,

Unable to cope with her art;

The brain reels round with them all, and Henceforth, with her baby-feet light,

weariness is their name;

Come to the long, low moorland and hear, ere the winter win it,

Where the broom like a sunlit beacon flashes in golden flame,

The music of wind and water, of the bee

and the mountain liņnet.

She will walk rough-shod o'er my heart.
Spectator.
E. M. R.

IN THE VALLEY.

MYRIAD birds in the thicket sing,

Blue is the sky overhead and purple the Glancing and flitting on eager wing;

heather about us,

Leaves are green on the branches still,

Far on the dim horizon the white sails But the autumn airs breathe chill.