Houssay might have drawn his parallel this order of acts, to which has been

between human and animal industries still closer, if he had referred to the curious partnership which modern observation has made possible between men and bees. By giving the bees a foundation of wax stamped with the shape of the cells, the bee-keeper saves the hive the time and trouble spent in this non-productive labor; and the purpose of the artificial aid so given is at once comprehended and turned to use by the otherwise stereotyped intelligence of the bee.

given the name of reflex actions. This tendency to reflex action may be transmitted by heredity to the descendants, and then becomes an instinct." In the case of the bee, assuming this hypothesis to be the true one, the determination of the hexagonal form for its cells, which is just that which calculation shows to demand the least quantity of wax for the storage of the greatest quantity of honey, must originally have been due to trial and reflection. No one can doubt that there is a mind If we are ever to discover the origin somewhere behind the astonishing and nature of instinct, it must be by finish and adaptation of bee-architecthe multiplication of facts and observa- ture and the social life of the hive. tions such as M. Houssay has endeav- But of the process of development ored to co-ordinate. At present it there exists no trace. We can only cannot be maintained that the last guess that it may have been so from word has been said as to the origin of the analogy of other cases of the forthose astonishing creative acts by which mation of an instinct which have come the bee and his kind rival the mathe- within reach of human experience. matician and mechanician, or of the But there are numbers of bees which means by which the carrier-pigeon, make round honey-cells, like pitchers, and even four-footed domestic animals, and which, though presumably equally find their way to their home across intelligent with the hive-bee, show no tracts of country absolutely new to tendency to make their work more pertheir experience. The wonderful facts fect mechanically. In the case of the as to animal journeys across the sea-moss-carding bee, the community may less and almost riverless continent of be supposed to be even more intelligent Australia, increase the difficulty of find- than the honey-bees; for the latter ing a suitable explanation of instinct, which must necessarily cover this wholly unexplained power of local divination. So far as a recognized theory of the origin of instinct may be said to exist, there is very little to be added to the form in which it is presented in M. Houssay's treatise. He considers that by a careful comparison and classification of observed facts, it is possible to find in animals all the intermediate stages between a deliberate, reflective action, and an act that has become instinctive, and so inveterate to the species that it has reacted on its body and produced new and special organs. "If an individual is led to reproduce the same series of actions, it contracts a habit; the repetition may be so frequent that the animal comes to accomplish it without knowing it; the brain no longer intervenes; the spinal cord or chain of nerves alone govern

It

always seek a ready-made home, while
the moss-carder builds one for itself.
If instinct is to be regarded, not as a
rudiment of intelligence, but the result
of a series of reasoned acts, which by
frequent repetition became habitual,
then reflex, and finally instinctive, the
part played by time in its production
becomes of the first importance.
does not matter whether the lives of
the creatures which at present perform
acts by instinct are long or short, if we
grant the power of hereditary transmis-
sion demanded by the theory. The
results of yearly experiments by suc-
cessive generations of bees or wasps,
most of which die at the end of twelve
months, may survive in the conscious-
ness of the race equally with the longer
experiences of man in his generations.
Looking at present facts that in the
case of the queen-wasp, for instance,
the sole survivor does transmit to her

between man and man in each class, and produce uniform types of workers, soldiers, and the like. But in such a case, what is instinct but a degradation of intelligence, producing perhaps a higher level of work but a lower type of mind.

From The Spectator.

HENRY G. WREFORD.

offspring the whole permanent instinct | human community in which the system of architecture and social polity of her of caste might become so stereotyped race - the power of heredity cannot be as to eliminate the initial difference denied, because the facts do not admit of any other explanation, except on the hypothesis of the existence of some additional sense which, owing to the limitation of our own, we could by no possible means comprehend. The growth of instinct, if the theory of its development given above is correct, should be a process of abnormal length, and it would almost follow that the antiquity of species could be estimated from the degree of perfection in which instinct is exhibited. The difference of structure and diversity of needs in different animals, in some so simple and in others so complex, need not weaken this conclusion, if we only compare those in which the order of daily life is somewhat similar. The life-history of the hive-bee would seem to demand a far longer period for its complex instinct to become stereotyped than the life-history of the solitary species; and man, with his few forms of instinctive action and reliance on individual intelligence, would be assigned a place among the latest developments of nature. Our knowledge of the facts of instinct is as yet too ill-assorted for the construction of more than a working hypothesis as to its origin; and until the question of the inheritance of acquired characteristics is more completely answered than it is at present, the whole structure hangs on a doubtful link. But there is one point on which the theory of instinct which M. Houssay reproduces is eminently satisfactory, though he does not claim it as an argument for its value. It accounts for the uniformity and subordination of individuals in the life of the social animals and social insects, which is almost inexplicable on any other hypothesis. That thousands of beings so intelligent as the bee can live together and exercise an intelligence which is used solely for the good of the community, and never for the personal advantage or aggrandizement of an individual, transcends reason, as we understand it. Yet it is just possible to conceive a

MR. HENRY G. WREFORD, for fifty years the Times correspondent in southern Italy, deserves something more than a passing word of comment. He was one of the few genuine heroes of the pen, the men who reflect lustre on the most ephemeral and least honored of all serious professions. There have been and are among special correspondents plenty of brave men, who have behaved like volunteers in a forlorn hope, and have faced death in the performance of duty with a daring uninspired by the hope of honors or by that feeling of fidelity to a flag which, with so many otherwise commonplace natures, has operated like a religion; but Mr. Wreford had a courage which was in some respects beyond them all. He had contracted, early in his service with the Times, a deep pity for the people of Naples, who repaid him at first with incessant insult, and a deep horror of the foul Bourbon court, that "negation of God erected into a system," as Mr. Gladstone described it, which at that time tyrannized over their destinies. Most Englishmen, Mr. Gladstone perhaps excepted, have forgotten it; but there has never existed elsewhere in Europe anything like this government, which defended itself with Swiss mercenaries, used as instruments the wretched lazzaroni of the capital, and ruled the respectable classes like a pasha in Algiers or Tunis, punishing the slightest opposition by imprisonment, often lifelong, in dungeons which were, without aid from rhetoric, describable as mere wells. Unless an

ambassador, no man's life or liberty | Wreford been a Neapolitan, he would was safe if he were denounced by one have died in torture. The king, howof a myriad spies; and for years even ever, who was by far the best-informed the pleasure-lovers of Europe avoided man in his dominions, understood perthe delicious kingdom like a lazar- fectly well that the kingdom of the house. Mr. Wreford set himself to Two Sicilies alone among European bring European opinion to bear on this kingdoms lay at the mercy of the Britden of horrors, and for seventeen years ish fleet; that two men-of-war would he persevered unflinchingly in his cut him off from Sicily, and one call work. He was recognized after a little Naples into insurrection; that he was while as one of the most "dangerous" coldly disliked by the very powers of opponents, as a man who was turn- which protected him; and that, if ing all Europe against the king's gov- Switzerland recalled her children, he ernment; and the devotees of that would be left face to face with subjects horrible court swore to have their re- who might adulate but could not devenge. He was shadowed perpetually fend him. He wanted no duel to the by spies; men suspected of sending death with either the Times or the information to him were treated like British Parliament, and as he was a criminals; he was menaced with ruin dreaded master, Mr. Wreford just esby expulsion; and the populace were caped. During the whole of this period, excited against him till it was unsafe half an ordinary generation, Mr. Wrefor him to enter Naples. Darker ford, though by no means a man of the threats, too, were levelled against him soldier type, but rather a retiring and by the zealots of the court party. He sensitive civilian, with a habit of dehimself showed the writer one proof pression - he had been, we rather positive that men who could not have think, at one time a Nonconformist been punished had proposed his assas-minister-held unswervingly on his sination; that two plans at least for way, never concealing any truth he kidnapping him had been matured; knew, and striking sometimes fearful and that on one occasion a plot for blows at a system which latterly he drowning him had been within an ace of success. During one gloomy six months he held his life, as he believed, only from hour to hour, and owed it, as he thought, mainly to the protection of the British minister, and one or two persons in a foreign embassy. In reality he owed it, as after hearing his narrative the writer could not but recognize, to King Ferdinand, who was not the vulgar tyrant Englishmen believed, but a cool, shrewd cynic, who despised his subjects and most of his own agents, who was full of courage. a quality in him which Mr. Gladstone once recognized publicly after his death and who was so completely king of the old Bourbon type, that he would not stoop to crime against a poor devil of a foreign correspondent who owed him no allegiance. Had Mr.

came to hate almost beyond reason. His courage may have been of the passive type, but he faced death, or worse, unfalteringly through years of feeble health, for the sake of men who gave him nothing back, not even their applause. He behaved, in fact, for years as one of the bravest of mankind, and when at last the evil despotism fell in a night as if struck down by the God it had despised, the ease of its fall was in great part due to the horror of it which he had patiently spread through Europe, and which had at last reacted on the monarchy itself. He was a plain man, though a cultivated one, simple in thought and in the expression of his thought, with perhaps a faint vanity in his own skill in gathering information; but he did a knight's service for Italy and for the world.

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

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

LONDON SNOW.

WHEN men were all asleep the snow came

flying,

So in our world of doubt, and death, and change,

The vision of eternity is sweet,

In large white flakes falling on the city The vision of eternity is strange !

brown,

Stealthily and perpetually settling and

loosely lying,

Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy

town;

Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;

Lazily and incessantly floating down and down;

Silently sifting and veiling road, roof, and railing;

Hiding difference, making unevenness even,

Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.

All night it fell, and when full inches

seven

It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,

Its clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;

And all awoke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness

Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare :

The eye marvelled-marvelled at the daz

zling whiteness;

I

MRS. JAMES DARMESTETER.

Content to leave, if you would have it so,

Your presence and continue, as before, His singing to the air -nor ask to know The fate of one poor word, till death's sweet shore

The ear hearkened to the stillness of the The truth or falseness of the song shall

solemn air;

SOMETIMES When I sit musing all alone
The sick diversity of human things
Into my soul, I know not how, there
springs

The vision of a world unlike our own.

O stable Zion, perfect, endless, one,

By trial, soared unto the heights and viewed

The azure light that fell from Paradise.

Why hauntest thou a soul that hath no For, lo! Italia, risen from the Hell

wings?

I look on thee as men on mirage-springs, Knowing the desert bears but sand and

stone.

Yet, as a passing mirror in the street

Of heathen gods and temples, dead and bare,

Awoke and mounted to the ardent air; By Roman virtue purged and taught to dwell

Aloof from earth, she read with chastened
eye

Flashes a glimpse of gardens out of range
Through some poor sick-room open to the A holier religion in her sky.

heat;

Academy.