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that here the modern world may indeed see the spot where, "after the crucifixion of our Lord at Jerusalem, the Blessed Virgin Mary, together with St. John, journeyed to Ephesus, and there spent the remaining year of her life."

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THE SHEEP-DOG TRIALS IN ENGLAND. delightful article by A. Radclyffe Dugmore in Everybody's for August, de scribing "The Sheep-Dog Trials at Troutbeck," in the north of England. In this little retired village the sheep-herders of the north gather together every year to witness the trials of their collies, conducted according to the most stringent rules and regulations. The display of intelligence and beautiful training on the part of the sheep-dogs is most fascinating. Mr. Dugmore is not only a real artist with the camera, but is, as well, a wonderful observer and student of nature. The accounts of these trials are illustrated with his beautiful photographs taken at the last sheepdog trials in August, 1901.

The task set each dog was to convey three sheep over rough ground from the starting pen for about three-quarters of a mile to the finishing pen. The route was fixed by flags, and the sheep had to be conveyed between these flags. The man whose dog was working stood on a knoll about 150 yards from the starting point, and not until his dog had gotten the sheep to the finishing point was he allowed to leave this knoll. From that distant point he had to guide his dog as best he could by signs and signals, shrill whistling, and sometimes calling.

Forty-two dogs were entered in the last trial, and Mr. Dugmòre gives a vivid description of the performance of the first starter, Laddie.

The dog seemed to realize that some special effort was called for to-day, and looked inquiringly first at his master and then toward the judges' tent. He seemed to be waiting eagerly to be released. The wave of a red flag was the signal for the simultaneous release of the three penned sheep and the anxious, eager dog. At once the latter made toward the three bewildered sheep, directed first by his master's call, for the bracken was high and hid the animals from the dog's view.

"But not long before he saw them, however. Without seemingly paying the slightest attention to his master's call, he hurried them along at a lively speed. Up the stone-covered hillside they scampered till they reached the first flag. Then Laddie stopped an instant for orders, -a simple whistle which he understood, and once more the three sheep are off, with the dog following close behind, guiding them carefully, and keep

ing all three closely bunched together as they pass the first of a series of flags.. Over the top of the hill and down the slope they went, faster and faster, until, still well bunched, the brook was passed, and they were going up hill toward the first pair of flags. Then one of the sheep made a bolt toward the lower part of the crag; but Laddie turned it back quick as a flash, thereby saving much time. Once more they made for the opening between the two flags that seemed to be planted so very close together. When quite near they hesitated, and had to be urged on. As soon as they started in the right direction, Laddie lay down and watched them as they walked slowly along, leaving the flags on either side.

"Looking toward his master for new directions, he quickly overtook his charges, who were slowly making their way for the hilltop, and, turning them in the direction of the next flag, now forced them into a gallop. Over the rocks they went, sure-footed as goats, frequently lost to view among the bracken, but each time reappearing with the gray dog close at their heels.

"Nearer and nearer they came, to within six feet of the flags, and seemed to be going well, when suddenly, without warning, they galloped off on the wrong side. The bracken was so high that the poor dog had not seen the second mark.

Coom t'me, lad! coom t'me!' shouted his master, and then the dog realized that a mistake had been made, and ran to a clear piece of ground, from which he could see his master and get his, signals. The sheep, fortunately, had stopped soon after passing the flag, and the dog understood that they must be driven back outside the mark (for such is the rule), then turned sharply round and brought between the two flags.

"How he understood it is difficult for us to realize, but that he did was proved by his actions; try as the sheep might to go the wrong way, Laddie,-now coaxing, now forcing them, soon had all three in position for starting again for the narrow way that led between the two fluttering flags.

،،، T'hame, Laddie! t'hame!' called his master; and Laddie turned those sheep sharply round and brought them between the two red and white flags at full gallop."

Finally Laddie gets them within a hundred yards of the pen, and his master leaves his knoll and runs to assist in the penning. The pen has an opening only big enough to admit one sheep, and so placed as to give the worst possible angle of entrance. Moreover, the driving has to be completed in a certain time, and only one minute and twenty seconds remains.

"J. R. stood on one side of the pen and beckoned Laddie to bring the three scared-looking sheep forward. Slowly they came until near the goal; then, before man or dog could stop them, all three bolted past, and fully half a minute was lost in bringing them back.

"At last, by coaxing ever so gently, they were taken to the pen, and two were passed through the narrow entrance and penned. The third, however, turned at the critical moment and bolted.

"Time was nearly up; but a few seconds remained. Could the animal be recovered before those seconds had passed?

"The spectators held their breath and watched intently; the time-keeper stood, watch in hand, ready to call the fatal word Time,' while the man and the dog were working with nervous energy. It was a race against the second-hand of a watch, and the odds were in favor of the second-hand. Fortunately the two sheep in the pen had remained there, so the undivided attention was given to bringing in the third, which had run about fifty yards before Laddie could turn it. Back they came, the driven and the driver, until once more they were close to the pen. Then the dog dropped down, with his head on his paws, watching the sheep as it stood near the narrow entrance.

"Nearer and nearer came the man, with arms outspread, while the dog crawled on his belly toward the staring, panting sheep. Once the sheep turned, as though to run, when, quick as a flash, Laddie stood up and took a step forward, ready to cut off the retreat; but the sheep, thinking better of it, turned toward the pen, and, after hesitating a moment, slowly entered, one second ahead of time."

Our friend Laddie, however, did not win the prize on this day. It went to an old dog named Jack, "who gave one of the finest exhibitions of the day, making some wonderful retrieves, keeping his sheep well in hand while he completed the course and the penning in seven minutes and thirty seconds."

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MOVEMENTS OF BRAINLESS ANIMALS.

HE purposefulness and control of the movements of animals from which the brain has been wholly or partially removed is the subject of a paper by Dr. L. Merzbacher, in the last number of the Archiv für die gesammte Physio. logie des Menschen und der Thiere.

What the physical basis of consciousness is, and how bodily activities are incited and controlled, are questions which have always both interested and eluded learned men. The Chinese held the belief that the stomach was the seat of the mind. In later times the doctrine of the

spirits prevailed among European nations, according to which thought and motion were caused by a fluid that passed out from the brain through a system of tubes in the body and back to the brain again. After that scientists took up the study of anatomy, and mere theorizing became unpopular. From anatomical studies it seemed that the brain was a great mass of nervous material that exerted a controlling influence over the body, responded to stimuli, and origi. nated impulses which were conducted through the body over nerves extending out from the brain. We are now turning away from this extreme view of the controlling influence of the brain, in the light of certain experiments made upon animals with mutilated brains, and with the present diversity of opinion the scientist may say with the poet that he has come "Wo er nichts Festes zu erfassen weiss."

For the studies described, a number of frogs were chloroformed, their skulls opened, and parts of the brain removed, after which the frogs were cared for until they recovered. Those frogs from which the cerebral hemispheres and optic thalami had been wholly removed were able to use their legs as well as before, making all customary movements, and coördinating the move. ments with each other. Operations upon both the brain and the posterior roots of the spinal nerves that extend into the legs produce a marked effect upon the movements, the hind legs doing as they will, sometimes acting in harmony with the fore legs, sometimes not, or each leg would move independently without regard either to the fore legs or to the corresponding member on the opposite side.

In a number of frogs the sensory roots of the nerves supplying the hind legs were cut through. When only one side is operated upon, the frog is usually ready to spring away immediately after the operation, the only difference being a slight tendency of the foot and lower part of the leg to cling to the thigh. If the legs do not assume the right position at once after the spring, they usually do in a short time. When both sides are operated upon, the effects are more pronounced and of a different nature, showing that the movements of one extremity are affected by the movements of its mate on the opposite side; that the sensibility and motility of one foot induces equally strong reactions in the opposite member.

This influence which the mobility and sensibility of one side exerts on the other has its parallel in human pathology, as shown in cases of one-sided paresis, when one limb can be moved only when similar motions are made at the same time by the other.

The writer finds three sources of control for every member. Parts of the brain, the sensibility of the extremity itself, and sympathetic influence exerted by the sensibility and motility of the corresponding organ opposite. The regulation through sensibility is relatively strongest.

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THE WHITE ELEPHANT.

HE Glory and Decadence of the White Elephant" is the title of an article by M. Henry de Varigny in the Bibliothèque Universelle, from which may be gleaned some curious details as to this favored one among his kind.

The white elephant, as is not perhaps universally known, is not white at all, - only of lighter hue than his fellows, his hide being light or reddish gray. A perfect specimen should have pink eyes with yellow iris, hide of a light brownish red, and the interior of his ears and trunk, as well as his nails, should be white, and his hair red. But Europeans are unjust in attributing the epithet "white" to Oriental exaggeration, as the error is that of translators having an imperfect knowledge of the fine points of Eastern vernaculars. "The truth is," says Pyana, in a recent article in the Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, "that the term of white elephant does not exactly translate the Siamese or Burmese word which indicates the color of the animal. In Burmese, for instance, they say sin pyu, sin meaning elephant. But pyu, although meaning white, has also other acceptations, such as gray, light, less dark. It is used to characterize the lighter complexion of a native woman less dusky than her countrywomen without being even remotely to be confounded with a Caucasian. Besides, the Burmese often use the expression sin nee, meaning red elephant. In Siamese the animal is called chang pueuk, chang being equivalent to elephant. Pucuk, which formerly meant white or light, is now only used in the sense of albino. Thus we see that the native expressions are erroneously translated by white elephant; the correct term would be light elephant."

THE WHITE ELEPHANT IN MYTHOLOGY.

According to the Buddhist legend, before assuming the human form of Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, Buddha lived in the form of a white elephant; so, in all probability the prestige of the white elephant dated much further back than Buddhism, else he would not have been chosen as the precursor of Gautama. Indeed, the ele phant had his place in the Indian pantheon since the most remote periods. Indra was always represented as mounted on an elephant, who shared

in his divinity; and in the ancient worship of the sun, the white elephant and the white horse were considered emblems of the sun himself. Inspired, doubtless, by reminiscences of the solar myth, there is a Vedic tradition that at certain long-separated periods in the existence of the world, a universal monarch makes his appearance on earth. He is of celestial origin, and the initiated recognize him by varied and numerous signs. For the feet alone there are thirty-two signs. Besides physical signs, this miraculous personage possesses seven particularly precious accessories, and the chief of these is a white elephant. Without the white elephant, all claims lack authenticity. Hence it is easily understood why the different kings of the Indo-Chinese region and of the Buddhist countries, each deeming himself the only authentic descendant of the ancient Vedic kings, all cherishing the hope of becoming the legendary universal monarch, consider the white elephant an indispensable possession, and have done and do all in their power to procure him, by hook or by crook, -by crook preferably, because it is the surer way.

But the true country of the white elephant is Indo-China. There his prestige has been longest maintained. There the proudest orders of knighthood bear his image on their regalia; there he still majestically represents the national antiquity and glory on the royal banner. The travelers who visited Siam and the neighboring regions in the sixteenth century bear witness to this veneration in many passages. When the Trojans were fighting because of a woman, many Orientals waged war to gain a white elephant, and even about 1650 there was continual strife between the Siamese and the king of Pegu because of seven white elephants the latter coveted.

HONORED IN HIS OWN COUNTRY.

Only twenty-five years ago the lot of the white elephant in Siam was an extremely enviable one. A party of hunters discovered a very good specimen. The news spread, and the whole country went wild with delight. The king immediately dispatched an escort of great personages, whose duty it was to mount guard around the animal, which was tied by silken ropes in the forest where he was found. For, like his ordinary brethren, the white elephant has to undergo a course of taming and domestication before he is brought to the capital. Professionals instructed him in etiquette, and the great personages served as guard of honor. Meanwhile, people flocked from all directions to see him, bringing presents and invoking for him the divine protection. He was then conducted in royal pomp to Ayuthia, special roads having been built from the place of his discovery to the nearest highway, and a sort of floating house of rare wood, drawn by pontoons, lined with silk, adorned with banners, and surrounded by a flotilla of gilded barks, was furnished to convey him across the river. The king, with the court, met the cavalcade here, and kneeling before the elephant made appropriate offerings. The priests then read a very long address of welcome, ending thus: "It is due to your own merit that you have at last come to see this beautiful city, to enjoy its riches and to become the favored guest of His Most Serene Majesty the King." Then the Brahmins baptized him with holy water, and bestowed on him the highest title the king could confer.

This title was written on a piece of sugar cane, together with a number of phrases enumerating the qualities, virtues, and perfections of the new lord, and the sugar cane was extended to His Highness, who swallowed it on the spot, thus indicating that he accepted the honors granted him. Then the procession advanced to Bangkok, all illuminated and decorated in honor of the event. Here awaited him a palace second in splendor only to the king's; an elaborate wardrobe, velvet and silk coverings embroidered in gold and jewels, ornaments and marvelous trappings, with a gold plaque to be suspended on his fore head (on which was inscribed his patent of nobility); a prime minister, a retinue of slaves, a choir of priests, an orchestra of musicians, anoa corps de ballet! To maintain this establishment a whole district was granted him, all the revenues of which were paid into his treasury. Thus amply provided for, His Elephantine Highness led a life so indolent that he soon succumbed to the too great kindness lavished upon him. Then a royal funeral was given him, and the search for a successor was begun.

DEATH IN FOLK-LORE.

NE of the most interesting articles in the Revue de Paris is that by M. Le Braz, dealing with what may be called the folk-lore view of death. From time immemorial, he points out, the Celtic race have believed in a future life, and *have made themselves familiar with the thought of death. In southern Europe the inevitable approach of the great Destroyer has ever been regarded with intense horror and fear. The Romans, who were, of course, southern, - were amazed at the calmness with which the northern races conquered by them regarded death. The Gauls had among their divinities one who was styled the God of Death, and many of them be lieved that from him all mankind was descended. The Celtic ancients believed that the country of

the dead lay beyond the seas, and was in fact a real country or tract of land.

Occasionally, in the oldest folk-lore of Brittany, historians come across traces of this idea, for it not unfrequently happened that a bereaved widow would set sail on the sea in the firm hope that she would reach the "other side." Of ghosts, or returning spirits (those that come back, as they are styled in France), the Celtic people seem to have had no thought at all till about the tenth century; but during the last thousand years spirits have played a considerable rôle in Celtic literarature, and both in Ireland and in Brittany is constant reference made to the banshee, who foretells disaster by her pres

ence.

Brittany has remained curiously mediæval, and in nothing more so than in her somewhat morbid interest in death. Even now in many a Breton village the parish church is not known as the House of God, but as the "House of the Dead;" and till quite recently there was a place put apart for the reception of the bones of the departed. Not unfrequently, in addition to the ordinary village fane, a second chapel, entirely given up to the cult of the dead, claimed each Sunday the suffrages of the villagers. Many of these remain, and are extremely beautiful, notably the Campo Santo of St. Pol de Leon. Inscriptions, some curious, some pathetic, some strangely pagan, - are to be found running round these mortuary chapels. Many are in Latin, others in French, and even more in Celtic. A favorite motto is that addressed to the still living passer-by: "Oh! sinner, repent while there is still time, for one day you will also be here." Yet another favorite dictum is a Celtic verse of which the sense, roughly speaking, may be rendered: "Death, judgment and hell; when mankind thinks on these things it should tremble. He who does not think of death is surely lacking in mind." Once a year, on the eve of All Saints' Day, processions take place all over Brittany, each wending its way to one of these mortuary chapels.

Of late years there has been an attempt made on the part of the municipal authorities to build these mortuary chapels at some distance from the villages. This appears like profanation to the pious Bretons, whose ideal mortuary would always be placed in the very middle of the village, with the houses grouped round. It is thought to be unlucky if an infant on its way to be christened does not go through a burial ground, and the cemetery is the chosen meeting-place for lovers. There is something profoundly touching about a Breton churchyard; the graves are beautifully kept and covered with quaint offerings.

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THE PERIODICALS REVIEWED.

THE CENTURY MAGAZINE.

HE opening article of the August Century is "The New New York," Mr. Randall Blackshaw's account of what is being done to make a great city on Manhattan Island. The original purchase price of Manhattan Island was about $24. To-day building sites have brought more than $240 a square foot, and the assessed valuation of real estate in Greater New York is to-day about $3,250,000,000. Mr. Blackshaw thinks that of all great works now in course of construction on Manhattan, the most significant are the projected railway tunnels, with the East River bridges taking second place. Next to these comes the erection of such magnificent buildings as the Episcopal cathedral, the public library, the proposed post office and the custom house, the chamber of commerce and the stock exchange. Mr. Blackshaw thinks that the proposed tri-centennial celebration of the discovery of the Hudson River will find us in 1909 with a city three centuries old that we can be proud of.

THE KING OF AMERICAN SHOWMEN.

There is an excellent sketch of the late "P. T. Barnum, Showman and Humorist," by Joel Benton. Mr. Benton writes of Barnum as the gigantic dispenser of amusement. Mr. Barnum's home was at Bridgeport, Conn., and he was fond of putting something in the buildings and fields that suggested a show. On one occasion he had an clephant engaged in plowing on a sloping hill where it could plainly be seen by passengers of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. This sight was so widely described and discussed that the showman received letters from farmers all over the United States, asking him how much hay an elephant ate, and if it were more profitable to plough with an elephant than with horses or oxen. Mr. Barnum invariably answered: "If you have a large museura in New York, and a great railway sends trains full of passengers within eyeshot of the performance, it will pay, and pay well; but if you have no such institution, then horses or oxen will prove more economical." At Mr. Barnum's house the governor of Connecticut could be often seen, unbending himself; Horace Greeley was a not infrequent visitor, "Mark Twain" and Elias Howe often dropped in; and Matthew Arnold, when he came to America, was the guest of the showman.

THE WEST INDIAN VOLCANIC DI ASTERS.

Prof. James F. Kemp, of Columbia University, writes on "Earthquakes and Volcanoes." There is a graphic record of the Martinique disaster in a letter written by the vicar-general of the island in the form of a journal from May 2 to May 21, and the life in the doomed city is shown by translations from the leading newspaper of St. Pierre, Les Colonies, in its editions of May 1 to 7, the week previous to the disaster. The Century pays attention, too, to St. Vincent's catastrophe, by printing the observations and narratives of two eye-witnesses, Captain Calder, chief of police of St. Vincent, and T. McG. McDonald, owner of the Richmond Vale estate on the island.

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HARPER'S MAGAZINE.

HE August Harper's contains an article on "The Lineage of the Classics," by Dr. F. G. Kenyon, who tells how the works of the great authors of the ancient world, of Homer and Thucydides, of Virgil and Livy, have been preserved, and illustrates his explanation by reproductions from manuscripts in the British Museum. Of the classics proper we have no original autographs, nor any copies nearly contemporaneous with them. The plays of Æschylus were written between 485 and 450 B.C., for instance, and the earliest extant manuscript of them, a few unimportant scraps excepted, was written in the eleventh century, an interval of some 1,500 years. For Sophocles, for Thucydides, for Herodotus, the interval is substantially the same, and for Pindar and Euripides it extends to 1,600 years. Thus the destruction of manuscripts of the classics has been enormous owing to the fragility of the papyrus on which the original matter was written. Then the rolls of manuscript might be thirty feet long, which rendered them unwieldy and more liable to destruction. Many great authors have totally perished, and some of the great works of the classics we do know have been finally lost.

Prof. Robert K. Duncan writes on "Radio-Activity, A New Property of Matter." The cathode rays and the X-rays arise from a Crookes tube, a mechanism which is the complicated result of centuries of thought; they are a property of condition. The Becquerel rays, discov. ered by Henri Becquerel, a member of the French Institute, come from radium, a substance dug from the ground, which emits them, apparently, forever and forever, as it has emitted them through the countless centuries of the past, without any extrinsic influence. It is their natural intrinsic property-a new property of matter-radio-activity. The radium rays possess the X-ray properties of penetrating matter generally considered opaque. Aluminum is transparent to the rays, whose power is influenced only by the density of the substance interposed. Lead is comparatively opaque. The physiological effect of Becquerel rays is curious. A pinch of radium salt contained in a sealed glass tube was placed in a cardboard box, which was then tied to the sleeve of a professor for an hour and a half. An intense inflammation resulted, followed by a suppurating sore which took more than three months to heal. Mr. Duncan says that considering, then, the cost of the pitch-blende from which it is extracted, the value of radium would be at least $10,000 a gramme. As a matter of fact, less than a gramme exists to-day.

Mr. Charles Hallock writes on "The Primeval North American" and the civilization which flourished in North America about ten thousand years ago. The Korean immigration of the year 544, which led to the founding of the Mexican empire in 1325, was but an incidental contribution to the growing population of North America. Mr. Henry W. Oldys contributes a very suggèstive essay on "Parallel Growth of Bird and Human Music," and there is a plentiful supply of imaginative material embellished with pictures in colors.

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