From Les Annáles. MORALITY IN THIRTY HOURS. I was reading the other day in a recent number of the Revue Universelle a very interesting article by Mme. L. M. Camus on the organization of our girls' schools, and the education furnished there. Among the suggestions which Mme. Camus submits to our criticism there is one which I want to set before the great public of the Annales—I ask permission to quote the precise words of the author of the article: "Certain courses we must hope will be immediately altered and later entirely withdrawn, as, for example, the course in ethics given the third year. . . . It must be emphatically maintained that only family life can form the conscience. Practically this course, where, in thirty hours, the most serious problems of the human soul are treated, can have no other effect on pupils who take an interest in it than that of raising in their minds too many "whys" which disturb them and which our assertions seldom appease." I am delighted that this point has at last been reached. I know no more foolish and useless branch of instruction than this, for the excellent reason that rectitude is not to be dealt out in slices, but must permeate the soul day by day and drop by drop. Mme. Camus tells us that, when the examinations come on, the pupils, hurriedly reviewing the course and making ready for the coming questions, carry on dialogues of this description: "Do you know your ownership? I've got to duties to parents, and I can't get them into my head." You would think, the lady adds, that you were in a convent at the time of the general confession, wheu the lazier girls, distressed to see their note-books empty, beg in whispers of one another: "Lend me your sins!" "No." she says in conclusion, "I know no more false, disagreeable, unsensible impression than that produced by the Quiz on Morals during the final examinations. You feel a certain shame as the words "law" and "duty" come trippingly from the lips of these young girls, sacred words which should only be uttered with respect." It seems to me that these remarks are perfectly just. Ethics is not an isolated science, it is in a way the flower of all other instruction. There is no lesson on any conceivable subject which ought not or may not be at the same time a lesson in ethics because there is not one which may not serve to bring a surer balance to the mind, a better bias to the soul. Rectitude is the ultimate solution, present in every half-discerned truth, every fully realized beauty. The professor of science or of history, who is able to inspire by his example conscientiousness in research, exactitude in the description of events, extreme care in deduction and in the choice of the appropriate word, does more for the character itself than any dissertation. It is evident that after this training the judgment will be ready for no compromise with falsehood, slander, heedlessness or injustice whether of word or deed. I remember a book which is, to my thinking, one of the best educational treatises in the world. It is quite out of favor, now-a-days, in the university, and I am sorry for it. It was the "Selectæ." As its name indicates, it was a selection of the finest precepts of the philosophy of the ancients and the most instructive anecdotes of the life once lived in Greece and Rome. We were kept translating it from the sixth to the second grade; it was the book we kept under our pillow. All our professors saw in it, no doubt, was a means of giving us a better knowledge of Latin. For, made up as it was of fragments from the best writers of old Rome, its style was excellent. But it had a tremendous influence upon our youthful years. It was there that we learned by fits and starts as the days went by, though no definite lessons were set us. that we ought to be good, just, merciful, brave, even heroic, that we must love our parents, help our friends. give up all for our country, that we must keep our word, set no store by wealth, be cautious in our judgments, show respect to our superiors,—and the rest of it. There was a little of everything in that book, and it was really impossible for the professor, as we stumbled over a page with him, not to call our attention, by the way, to the honor or disgrace involved in a given anecdote. That was the way that ethics permeated our young souls, without any one's noticing it, without our even becoming conscious of it ourselves. And the impression must have been as lasting as it was gradual, for later, when I began to reflect, when I reached the age at which you begin to make your conscience, when you sort over the ideas you have acquired, and discard those you do not believe in, then I found within me certain prejudices which had their root-and very vigorous roots they were!-in that early education. I admired with my whole heart Harmodius and Aristogeiton killing the tyrant, Brutus condemning his own sons to death, Cato committing suicide, and I went into ecstasies over Scipio's selfrestraint, though it was really but an act of common honesty. There were some lacuna in the old code of morals, we must admit. But what I want to make clear is that Ethics is not a matter for specialized instruction. It is the annex, or, if you dislike that word, the soul of literary education. What course on the passions could show more clearly fear, scorn and pity than "Andromaque," "Britannicus," and "Bérénice" when well read? What lesson on heroism is worth certain passages in the "Cid"? How better make understood the power of religious exaltation than by commenting on certain scenes in "Polyeucte"? I perfectly agree with Mme. Camus, when she advises the changing of the course in ethics, useless according to her, in its present dogmatic form, into a sort of discussion, supplemented by lectures, in connection with which there should be neither notes, theses nor prizes. Of course Mme. Camus, who is in that profession-of that shop as we say-sees a special practical advantage in the change, the gain of a certain number of hours which it would be easy to redistribute and employ to better advantage. I will not take up that side of the subject, but confine myself to this assertion, ethics cannot and ought not to form a topic of instruction. It is education itself. Translated for The Living Age from the French of Francisque Sarcey. From The Saturday Review. THE LATEST ELDORADO. Last winter a Dominion government surveyor reported the discovery of some very rich deposits on the Klondyke Creek. Being a man whose avocation enabled him to judge with accuracy while it compelled him to speak with caution, Mr. Ogilvie's statement attracted the respectful attention of his government. He entered into detailsspoke of from ten to sixty dollars as a common yield from a pan of dirt, and added that the prospects were so rapidly increasing in richness and extent that it was "now certain that millions would be taken out of the district in the next few years." The news that has been cabled over from America during the past fortnight fully confirms his statement of fact and bids fair to confirm also his prognostication for the future. The Yukon Valley has for several years past been the hunting ground of stray prospectors-who have steadily grown in numbers-from the Pacific slope, and the annual increase in the total output of the Yukon placers, as distinct from the other gold-mining districts of Alaska, proves that some at least of these men must have met with considerable success. Hitherto, however, work has for the most part been confined to a relatively small area in the vicinity of Circle City, a camp on the American side of the boundary, where the deposits, though profitable to operate, do not appear to be phenomenally productive. But the discovery of the Klondyke deposits appears to have been due to a number of enterprising miners from California and Oregon who were attracted north last year, and who spread themselves round and experimented on the unworked creeks. They were probably unaware of the source of origin of the placers, but experience had taught them that if gold occurred in one locality in such a favorable region as the Yukon Valley, it was likely to occur in others. A more recent and more scientific examination has convinced Dr. Dawson, of the Dominion Geological Survey, that gold-bearing gravels are to be found in the bed of every stream, and that the total area of the auriferous re gion in British territory alone is nearly two hundred and fifty thousand square miles. It might be well if those who will no doubt soon be asked to subscribe to companies having for their object the exploitation of gold properties in the district would wait for further developments before accepting these assertions too literally. But at least there is no doubt that gold occurs in the Yukon Valley in quantities considerable enough to appreciably increase the world's annual production; and it is a satisfaction to us to know that a fair proportion of it is found on British soil. Not the least gratifying feature is that the auriferous belt from which the placers of the river valleys have been derived has been located, and has been proved by recent geological survey expeditions to be very extensive. It runs through British and American territory for several hundred miles in a low range of mountains which are an extension of the Rockies; and the quartz gold is so plentiful on the upper slopes as to be visible in parts to the naked eye. The placers are the accumulated drift of ages, carried down by the streams which rise in this range and empty at various points into the Yukon. The placers will be worked first; and unless the experience of other gold-producing districts in other parts of the world be reversed, lode-mining along the Yukon will not be seriously attempted until the placers become thin. For the present, the latter are likely to tax all the energies brought to bear upon them. The great obstacles to the development of the Yukon goldfields are their remoteness from the nearest point of civilization and the extreme severity of the climate. The initial difficulty is to get there. Going northward to Fort Cudahy, the prospector may with luck strike the Yukon in six weeks. If he should lose his way there is no refuge from starvation in the dreary wilderness. Should he go by way of the Yukon River and reach the mouth early in the summer after escaping the icebergs that come drifting down at that time of the year from the Arctic Ocean, he may sail on a stern-wheel vessel for the whole distance to Circle City, eighteen hundred miles from the coast. Or, again, he can start from the town of Juneau, and go by way of the Chilkoot Pass and the long succession of lakes which ultimately flow into the Yukon not far from Forty-Mile Creek. All three routes are attended with danger. The more usual is the last, which, though certainly the most dangerous, is the shortest. You fit out at Juneau, go north by boat to Dyea, a hamlet at the head of the Chilkoot Sound, cross the Pass to Lake Linderman, where you purchase or build boats for the purpose of carrying you along the lakes and rivers that take you, after a journey of seven hundred and fifty miles or thereabouts, right into Forty-Mile, which is a day's sail by canoe from Klondyke. But the difficulties are not over with safe arrival at the mining grounds. The district is a bleak one: such warm season as there is endures for only three months; it is necessary to construct a hut, because no man could sleep in the open and survive; and, to crown all, provisions are reported to be at famine prices-meat, four dollars a pound; potatoes, twenty dollars a sack at the beginning and thirty-five to forty dollars at the end of the season; and so on. A notion of the extreme severity of the cold which prevails for something like nine months out of the twelve may be gathered when we say the ground is frozen so hard that a pick will not penetrate it any more easily than if it were block marble. Though in the brief summer it is partially thawed out, it is seldom possible without artificial means to work more than a foot or two of earth. Explosives were tried, but proved inefficacious; and down to 1895, ninety days' work at the sluices was an exceptionally good season. In that year two men on the Birch Creek diggings hit upon a simple expedient which rendered it unnecessary to loaf around the saloons of Forty-Mile and Circle City for three-fourths of the year. They kept fires burning constantly on their pay gravel. They lit a fire at night and in the morning there were a few inches of gravel soft enough to be worked. This was carried into their cabin and the fire lighted the next night. In this way they contrived to accumulate many tons of stuff which in the following spring they worked. It had frozen again, but the particles had been separated, and the sun sufficed to thaw it out. This is the general practice to-day on all the Yukon diggings. It is a primitive plan, no doubt, and we have apparatus here that would render it quite unnnecessary; but to have it here is not the same thing as having it at Klondyke, and it may be admitted that the device is the best that could be adopted with the limited resources at the disposal of the miners. When communications are improved, what is now a drawback will no doubt be laughed at. But those who are wise-supposing wisdom to be not altogether inconsistent with a gold rush-will wait until the road is rendered easier, and until there is a reasonable certainty of an adequate food supply, before trying their luck. It is almost too late, any way, for a prospecting party to reach the gold-fields this year, and if there is plenty of the metal there, it can well wait until next spring. Long before that time we shall have learned something definite as to this year's yield. From The Spectator. ANIMALS IN FAMINE. The recent rains in India will bring relief to the famine-struck animals before they lighten the sufferings of their owners. The green-stuff will spring up and give food for the cattle long before the grain can ripen and provide a meal for the peasant. But the animals will have time to recover their strength and be ready to do their work in preparing the ground for the next crop, and the actual loss of life among the beasts of the field will be arrested. This is said to have been less than in many Indian famines affecting much smaller areas. The total failure of the grain crops was due to absence of rain at a definite point of time when it was necessary to its germination. But there has not been such a protracted and general drought as to bring on the whole animal population a famine in the form which causes most suffering to them. In their wild state most animals live under the incubus of two sources of terror,-death by violence from their natural foe or foes, and death by famine. The greater number are never far removed from the latter possibility; it is the inevitable sequence of disablement, weakness, or old age, and if not cut off by pestilence, violence, or fatal accident, they have all to face this grim spectre in the closing scene. Yet in most cases dread of the latter is not present to their consciousness in the form of apprehension,-only as shadowed out by actual reminder caused by scarcity of food at a particular time, or a total failure, which drives them to wander. But the fear of the "natural enemy" is always vivid and oppressive, and alters the whole course of their everyday life. The deer on certain of the Highland mountains, exposed in any hard winter to almost inevitable famine, do not profit by experience of famine. Experience of danger from man makes them the most wary of animals; they sleep with waking senses, feed by night, are constantly under the influence of their besetting terror, and take every measure which experience suggests to guard against the enemy. Experience of famine leaves them no wiser than before. They do not abandon the spots in which they suffered in previous years until they actually feel the pinch of hunger, and they return to the same inhospitable ground when the scarcity has passed. Yet when confronted by the two terrors-hunger and man-they are simply insensible to the fear of the latter usually so dominant. Starvation looms larger than any terror from living foes, and they invade the rickyards, and almost enter the dwellings of their only hereditary enemy. The recent accounts of the behavior of four thousand starving elk in the northern territory of the United States correspond exactly with those of the Highland deer in the hard winter of 1893. They approach the buildings for food, and can hardly be driven from the stacks of hay. Yet only one herbivorous animal out of all the multitude of species has ever thought of making a store of hay against a time of famine, and this is one of the most insignificant of all, the pika, or calling hare of the Russian steppes. There would be nothing very extraordinary in the fact if social animals, such as deer, cattle, or antelopes, did gather quantities of long herbage, like the tall grasses of Central Africa or of the Indian swamps, and accumulate it for the benefit of the herd, and combine to protect it from other herds, or if they reserved certain portions of the longer herbage for food in winter. The latter would perhaps demand a greater range of concepts than the former. But the brain-power of the improvident deer must be equal to that of the squirrel or field-mouse, which seldom forget to lay aside a "famine fund." In temperate climates, prolonged frost or snow is the only frequent cause of famine among either beasts or birds. This cause is not constant, season by season, but it occurs often enough in the lifetime of most individuals of the different species to impress their memory by suffering. In the plains of India, and even more regularly in the plains of Africa, the summer heats cause partial famine to all herbivorous animals, and this condition is recurring and constant. Brehm has described the cumulative suffering of the animal world, of the "African steppe," mainly from famine, at the close of this regular period of summer drought. We cannot supose that in this case the terror of starvation is wholly forgotten in the brief time of plenty. The neglect to form any store, or to reserve pastures in climates sufficiently temperate to spare them from being burnt up with summer heat, suggests the question whether these "hand-to-mouth" herbivorous animals rely on any natural reserves of food not obvious to us. This is a natural device, just as the Kaffir, when his mealies fail, lives on roots and grubs, or the insect and vegetable eating rook becomes carnivorous in a drought. To some extent both deer and cattle do rely on such reserves. When the grass is burnt up, trees are still luxuriant, and it is to the woods that the ruminant animals look as a reserve in famine. The fact was recognized during the siege of Paris, when all the trees of the boulevards and the parks were felled late in September that the tens of thousands of cattle might browse on the this young shoots and leaves. It is habit of hungry cattle which makes the space under all trees in parks of the same height,-that to which cattle can lift their heads to bite the branches. When the wood or forest has been enclosed previously, the whole of this stock of food, reaching down to the ground, instead of to the "cattle line," is at their service. In a paragraph quoted in the Globe of June 28th, from some remarks of Sir Dietrich Brandis, lately chief of the Forest Department of the Indian empire, special mention is made of the part played by this "reserve" in the economy of animal famines in India. During the years of drought and famine in 1867 and 1868, the cattle (of all the inhabitants) were allowed to graze in the Rajah's preserves at Rupnagar. The branches of the trees were cut for fodder. The same was done in Kishangarh, and a large proportion of the cattle of these two places were preserved during those terrible years. But there are regions, like the African steppe, where the summer famines among animals are more frequent than in India, and where there is little forest available as a reserve store of food. Certain animals "trek" for great distances to escape from the famine area. Birds leave it entirely. But the greater number of the quadrupeds stay and take their chance, the stronger of hunger, the weak of famine and death. If we examine the stores made by most of the vegetable-eating animals which do lay by a "famine fund," we find a rather curious similarity in the food commonly used by them. They nearly all live on vegetable substances in a concentrated form-natural foodlozenges, which are very easily stored away. There is a great difference, for example, between the bulk of nutriment eaten in the form of grass by a rabbit, and the same amount of sustenance in the "special preparation" in the kernel of a nut, or the stone of a peach, or the bulb of a crocus, off which a squirrel makes a meal. Nearly all the storing animals eat "concentrated food," whether it be beans and grain, hoarded by the hamster, or nuts and hard fruits, by the squirrel, nuthatch, and possibly some of the jays. But there is one vege |