the artist as for the archæologist. To quote again from the prospectus issued by the Committee, the students of the School should be found in the archives of the Vatican, in the libraries of Venice and Milan, in the galleries and churches of Florence, no less than in the Forum or on the Palatine.

men.

It is surely reasonable to expect that the proposal to found a school on this wide basis will meet with cordial support. It has already secured the approval of a large number of eminent A thoroughly capable Director has been secured; and there are students ready and anxious to join him. Funds alone are needed to enable the Executive Committee to open the School in November next. The minimum amount required is a capital sum of 1,000l. and an annual income of 5007. But if the School is to be worthy of Great Britain, and is to take its proper place among the foreign schools in Rome, much more than this is wanted. We do not care to discuss here the question whether the money should come from private pockets, or in part at least from the public Treasury. Either source could easily supply it, if it would. What is of real importance is that the nation, as a whole, and the Government, as representing the nation, should realise the dignity of learning, the importance of history and art to national culture, and the educational value of what can seem only to the Philistine to be unprofitable research.

ART. X.-NEW CREATURES FOR OLD COUNTRIES.

1. Wild Oxen, Sheep, and Goats of All Lands, Living and Extinct. By R. Lydekker. London: Rowland Ward, 1898.

2. The Deer of All Lands. By R. Lydekker. London: Rowland Ward, 1898.

3. Bulletin de la Société Nationale d'Acclimatation de France: 1899-1900. Paris: au siège de la Société, 41 Rue de

Lille.

4. The Encyclopædia of Sport. Two vols. Edited by the late Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, Hedley Peek, and F. G. Aflalo. London Lawrence and Bullen, 1898.

5. Pheasants: their Natural History and Practical Management. By W. B. Tegetmeier. Third edition. London: Horace Cox, 1897.

6. Report of the Zoological Society of New York. New York, U.S.A.: 1899.

NIMAL acclimatisation in Europe is now mainly sentimental or is carried out in the interests of sport or the picturesque. The art of breeding domestic animals is so well understood that we can almost create new species in a few years, specialised to meet any particular want. It does not pay, and is not practical, to import and adapt foreign creatures, which rarely have the qualities we seek ready made, and need years of trouble and remaking afterwards to bring them into line with the requirements of the modern farmyard. We may possibly find a few more birds, like the guinea-fowl or peacock, which would at once take a place among our domestic poultry. But in the seventy years since the Royal Zoological Society was founded to promote the permanent domestication of foreign animals which might become of value to man,' practically only one wild species-the ostrich-has been reclaimed and acclimatised with commercial success. The ostrich is now bred in South Russia, New Zealand, California, and Australia, as well as in South Africa; and if it represents the single triumph of reclamation in our day, it must be admitted that, as the species is a truly and notably wild one, the success of the effort is singularly complete.

On the other hand, wild animals are eagerly sought for trial and establishment in this country, mainly for pleasure or for sport. All recent experiments of the kind, both here and in Germany and France, have had these for their principal objects, though much interesting and fresh knowledge has resulted from them. Recently they have been carried out on a scale never

before attempted, and with results so surprising that they have modified some of the accepted ideas as to what was believed to be natural law in the relations of animals to their environment. Habits have in some cases been rapidly modified. The typical jungle stag of tropical India, the spotted axis, or chital deer, has altered its time of breeding, and is now becoming a member of the park and forest fauna of France and England; and the black buck antelope of the Indian plains breeds regularly in Sussex, and produces two calves in the twelvemonth. Some twelve or fourteen species of foreign deer, wild antelopes, gazelles, kangaroos, wild sheep, Japanese apes, beavers, bison, zebras, brilliant pheasants from India and China, water-birds and Oriental partridges, American trout and char, and American rodents, such as the cavies and prairie dogs, are now living in France and England in a wild and natural state.

The pleasure of watching these unfamiliar forms amid the familiar scenery of Great Britain, and the intellectual satisfaction of anticipating their needs or providing substitutes for their old environment and watching their adaptation to the new one, appeal strongly to the inborn love of animals and nature among our countrymen. Each year sees some addition to the number of parks or estates into which foreign species are introduced. Each year, too, the number of salted' or properly acclimatised members of each species increases, and the colonists become more settled. The colonies also grow in

size and in the variety of their population. Twenty years ago Powerscourt and Colebrooke in Ireland, Knowsley, Vaynol (Mr. Assheton Smith's), Lilford Hall, and a few other estates in which two or three species of animal were kept, were the only centres in this country. In Italy Prince Demidoff created a 'paradise' for animals as early as 1850, at San Donato, near Florence; and the King of Italy formed one later at Mandria, near Turin, with such success that a herd of nilgai, ten in number, imported in 1862, increased in a few years to seventytwo, all living free and wild in the park. Italy was the earliest home of medieval acclimatisation in Europe. It still retains the breed of camels imported to Tuscany by Ferdinand de' Medici II, for the purpose of carrying wood and straw from the domain of Russora to Pisa and other towns, duties which the herd still performs; and the buffalo of India has been a native of Italian marshes, and a more or less willing servant of man, since the fifteenth century.

But of all the early efforts of our great proprietors to import and establish a new and superior wild animal, that made by Lord Powerscourt was the only undoubted success. He

established the Japanese deer, and has made it a permanent and valuable addition to the animals of our parks. In the mountain valley, rimmed with walls of rock five hundred feet high, which forms his park, he placed the first Japanese deer in 1850. Here they steadily increased and multiplied, and from Powerscourt they were gradually drafted off to other parks belonging to friends of the owner. The Powerscourt Japanese deer are still among the strongest and best obtainable. They are thoroughly acclimatised, and are said to be unequalled by any later herds for south-country use.

Since this beginning was made, three great homes for new races of quadrupeds have been established in this country, with an evergrowing number of offshoots and imitators. They are all comparatively recent, but are all of sufficient standing to have achieved proved and practical success. These three chief 'paradises' are in the North, Midlands, and South of England respectively. The first of them is that at Haggerstone Castle, near Beale, which belongs to Mr. Christopher Leyland. In the South, at Leonardslee, in Sussex, is a park stocked with wild animals living in perfectly natural conditions, collected by Sir E. G. Loder. Lastly, and on the largest scale, is the vast collection of animals for experiment in acclimatisation made by the Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey. This is far the largest existing collection maintained for such a purpose; but the ability of the management and diversity of success obtained at Leonardslee and Haggerstone are such that the interest attaching to all these paradises is one and the same in kind, though the number of species on trial at Woburn exceeds greatly those in all the other paradises or parks combined. Across the Channel, at La Pataudière, in the department of the Indre et Loire, a similar and parallel series of experiments, of the most successful kind, has for many years been conducted by M. G. Pays Mellier.

In Paris the Société d'Acclimatation has never relaxed its interest in the subject. Its members have been at least as enterprising as our landed proprietors, and have gradually succeeded in creating a 'salted' stock of many species of Oriental deer which are now inhabitants of the State forests of France. The existence of this society is of great use to any Frenchman who may wish to make a trial of new creatures on his estate. It is a bureau of information; its interests are specialised; and its records are easy of access. In England, if a private owner has a fancy to surround himself with new forms of life, he has to rely on the advice and help either of the dealers, who, with every wish to be of use, do not make this

part of their business, or of other private owners, on whose time and cooperation he may have no claim. The reports of their experiments are as a rule rather short and condensed, and are buried in back numbers of zoological papers. In France the Society will not only give all information possible, but will often supply the animals for experiments.

Dr. Trouessart, President of the Department of Mammals, recently summed up the later history of French experiments, in an address to the Society. The chief difficulty has been the difference of season at which the new creatures produce their young. Those of Europe breed in spring and early summer. Those of the hot countries, where the winter is replaced by the rainy season, produce their young at a different period. Thus the axis deer and other Indian and Indo-Chinese species usually drop their young after the rainy season, in October, about the worst possible time for a fawn to make its appearance in England or France. Yet it often happens that at the end of one or two years the influence of the new environment works a change even in the phenomena of reproductive times and energy. Many of the females-not all, for the effect is different in individuals seem able to postpone the birth of their young, and to adjust the time of reproduction to the seasons of their new country. It is known that roe deer do this habitually; but observations in the French forests have shown the gradual and real acclimatisation of Indian deer, marked by this adjustment of breeding time to climate. In a herd of axis deer the hinds will begin by dropping their calves at all seasons. Then, at the end of two or three years, the period of gestation becomes adjusted and regular, and all the females calve in early summer, like our own deer. Several other species, such as the Japanese sika, Chinese swamp deer, and hybrids, live wild in the French State forests, where M. le Président can gratify his friends by adding one or two to the bag when the forests are shot. The acquisition of the axis deer, which has been practically part of the French park and forest fauna for fifteen years, is an achievement for which the French acclimatisers justly claim credit.

At La Pataudière, M. Pays Mellier keeps his park as a 'paradise.' There he has introduced a great variety of species, by no means confining himself to the kinds commonly recommended as ornamental or easy to keep. Llamas and Barbary sheep, kangaroos and wallabies, all find his estate suited to their wants. The marsupials which breed most successfully there are the large red kangaroo, which Sir E. G. Loder also keeps; and Bennett's wallaby, which also flourishes