The Unity of Nature. By the Duke of Argyll.-II. Man's Place in the Unity of On the Sources of History, and How they can best be Utilized. By James Gairdner 521 533 544 The Unity of Nature. By the Duke of Argyll.-III. Animal Instinct in its Relation How to Nationalize the Land: A Radical Solution of the Irish Land Problem. By The Relation of Christian Belief to National Life. By the Rev. J. Baldwin Brown Party Politics in the United States. By an American Statesman The Procedure of Deliberative Bodies. By Alexander Bain, LL.D. Home Rule in Ireland: Its Strength as shown by the last two General Elections. 699 716 737 761 773 786 791 805 827 The Prospects of Landowners. By Professor Steadman Aldis . The Future of the Canadian Dominion. By William Clarke Old and New Japan; or, A Decade of Japanese Progress. By Sir Rutherford Alcock, Young Bengal at Home. By W. Knighton, LL.D.. Professor Green as a Critic. By Richard Hodgson, jun. Nihilism in Russia. By the Rev. Moritz Kaufmann. Village Life in New England. By A Non-resident American The Land League and its Work. By T. P. O'Connor, M.P. 981 1000 1025 A FEW weeks spent upon the Continent may give one much to sec, and much to think about, without leaving for a mile the beaten tracks, and without dwelling for a moment on a single fact or a single scene mentioned in Murray or in Baedeker. If we pass from England to the South of Europe any time about the end of February, we shall always meet a great army of travellers whose faces are set the other way. We must meet them, and yet we may never see them-for, of this army, it may be said that, like the Kingdom of Heaven, "it cometh not with observation." Not only arcits advanced guards few and far between, but no part of it ever moves in masses. Yet its movements are as regular as the seasons, and as inevitable as the movement of any conquering host. Its path is in the air, and its way is often over the great deep. Its battalions are marshalled without beat of drum. No orders are ever heard directing its line of march. And yet that line is never left, because the points on which its columns arc to converge are points known to every soldier in its ranks. It is the Army of the Birds. They travel in the night, sometimes when it is dark and cloudy, sometimes in the splendours of the moon. During the day, for the most part, they rest and feed-not forgetting some gentle preludings of that "melodious burst of song" with which they descend at last upon their Promised Lands. Of this great company, on our own journey to the South, whom shall we encounter first? It is a pleasant occupation to wait for the answer to this question-to keep one's eyes open even in a railway train-to peer among the hedgerows-to search the flying coppice-and to watch. the passing clouds. And then there is always another great company -another Army of the Birds-who are already in possession of the ground-whose faces, too, will soon be set on a similar journey to the farther North, but who have not yet left their winter quarters. It is always interesting to observe how long these remain, and how far the two great tides of movement overlap each other, so that the birds which have left us for the south in winter, return before the departure of those who leave us for the north in summer. Then there are the local movements of those who never wholly leave us either in summer or in winter, but who shift their quarters to different parts of Europe. It is worth noticing too how long they keep congregated in flocks and how soon they separate into pairs and scatter for the breeding season. And then, also, in such a journey, there are the fishes to be observed-the distribution of them in different parts of Europe—a thing to be seen, more or less, at every table d'hôte and in every market-place. And, lastly, there are the "everlasting hills" with their rocky structure, so much better seen than in our own island, because of the comparative bareness of vegetation. With so many questions to be answered, and so many things to be observed, the dullest journey at the dullest season of the year may be full of interest and amusement. I left London last February in one of those miserable days when there is no actual fog, and when yet there is nothing to be seen on the earth or in the sky but a cold damp indistinguishable haze. It was little better in the Channel. The sea was almost as muddy as the atmosphere, which continued to be as dismal all the way to Paris. The quantity of Grey Crows which frequent the sandy and marshy flats on the coast of France, near Boulogne, were the only creatures to attract attention. This bird is becoming rare in England from the persecution to which it is exposed at the hands of gamekeepers. I am afraid I cannot defend its reputation. It is unquestionably fond of other birds' eggs, and both adroit and audacious in the robbing of nests. But it is one of the handsomest of the Corvida or crows; and its curious habit of lifting shell-fish to a considerable height in the air, and then letting them fall upon the stones in order to break the shell, is one of the many cases in which animal instinct comes close up to the borders of deliberative reason. It is still common in the Western Highlands of Scotland, and in some of the Hebrides. Where it can breed in such numbers near the coast of France I do not know; for it is a shy bird, and generally builds in some dark fir-tree in the middle of large unfrequented woods. Was It Next day I fear I had a spiteful pleasure in finding that the whole way from Paris to Strasbourg, the climate of France could be as foggy and as dismal as the climate of England. La belle France! there ever such a misnomer for the greater part of that country? requires a brilliant sun to make it even tolerable—dull, naked uplands, or valleys perfectly flat and often very swampy-low featureless hills, rendered hideous by the ugliest of all the modes of cultivating the vine. And then those everlasting Poplars, generally pollarded, and when not pollarded, then pruned of all side branches, stuck like so many broomsticks over the dreary landscape. The only redeeming feature visible is the cheerful Magpie-everywhere apparently protected in France, and having its nests conspicuous in every direction. Why is it that, alone of all the Corvidæ, the Magpie builds a domed or covered nest? It is a hardy bird, and it is difficult to suppose that the hen requires more shelter than the Rook or the Jay when she is sitting. It is curious to observe that the nests of the Magpie vary very much as to the completeness of this shelter. In some cases it is so complete that the nest is almost as perfectly domed as that of the common Wren. In other cases it is much more open; and I observed instances, not a few, in which the cover overhead was almost disconnected from the more solid structure beneath, and seemed to be little more than a sort of parasol of scattered sticks. The situations, too, chosen for the nest are curiously different. Sometimes they are built in the tops of the tallest Poplars, sometimes in low bushes close to the railway, easily accessible to any passing boy. In France, where all other birds are liable to unceasing persecution, the Magpie appears to be held sacred, and has acquired a proportionate degree of confidence and familiarity. Throughout the great extent of country between Paris and the Rhine, I saw no birds at all except a few Chaffinches and several specimens of the common Buzzard (Buteo vulgaris). One of these fine hawks sat upon a tree so close to the railway train that I could have touched him with a good salmon-rod, and yet he never moved. It is very curious how soon even the wildest birds become accustomed to the rush and rattle of a railway train. The directness and undeviatingness of its course soon reassures them as to its perfect indifference to them. The sluggish and sedentary aspect of the Buzzard, when it is perched, is in strange contrast to its beautiful motions on the wing. When flying also, it seems fond of repose-for "even in its very motion there is rest," as Wilson has said of the evening cloud. But the motion is at least ceaseless, and one which can only be sustained by the most sustained exertion. How often have I watched the wheeling circles of this apparently sluggish bird in the upper regions of the air over a mountain side! There is no more graceful motion even among the feathered tribes, none which exhibits in greater perfection the wonders and the mystery of flight. The clammy vapours of the Thames pursued us even to the Rhine, and as we left the great fortress of Strasbourg, which the folly and wickedness of the Third Napoleon has transferred from France to Germany, we saw in the misty morning extensive preparations to strengthen its already strong defences. The dull flats on the eastern bank of the great German river at that portion of its course were not relieved by a single glimpse of the hills of the Black Forest. Soon, however, they appeared-looming out of the obscurity, and grizzled with recent snowshowers. A few companies of soldiers, busy with that ceaseless drill which seems now the chief occupation of the Teutonic race, were the only objects which relieved the monotony of the line, till we dashed in among the hills at Carlsruhe. It was a relief to see trees that were not pollarded, hills that were not denuded for terraces of vine, and all the pleasant varieties of ground that are generally so wanting in north-eastern France. At last, between Carlsruhe and Stuttgard, the vapours began to disperse; a sky-cloudy indeed, but still a sky and not a fog-became visible, and the rolling uplands of Wurtemberg, with their villages and spires, afforded fine and distant landscapes. Suddenly from among the clouds I saw something flashing alternately black and snowy white. A Stork (Ciconia Alba) the very symbol of all I was watching for. Since the days of Jeremiah, and probably long before, this grand bird has been the type of returning spring, and of the wonderful instincts which are embodied in the migration of the feathered tribes. "Yea, the Stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the Turtle and the Crane and the Swallow observe the time of their coming."* Probably from some distant point of the far interior of Africa, from the Great Lakes which have only of late been revealed to us, across the Atlas,-across the Mediterranean,—and across the Alps, those snowy wings, with their black and powerful quills, had held their steady flight, and were now soon to be folded in rest at last on some old roof upon the Elbe, or the Weser, or the Rhine. Under the modes of applying the Theory of Evolution which have become commonplace, it is very easy to account for everything. The method has become a trick. We have only to assume some condition opposite to that which now exists, and then to explain the change by showing that the existing conditions are useful and adapted to existing needs. Do we wish, for example, to explain why the female Pheasant is dull coloured? We have only to assume that once she was gaily coloured, and became dull by the gaudier hens being killed off when sitting on eggs and by the duller hens being saved? Do we wish, on the contrary, to explain the brilliant colouring of the male Pheasant? We have only to make the reverse assumption-that once they were all dull coloured, and that accidental dandies were preserved by the admiration and the consequent selection of the ladies. In like manner, the migration of birds is explained by assuming that once upon a time there were no migratory birds, although there must always have been the same changing seasons. Then, a few birds came to travel a little way, and then a little farther, and so at last they came to go a great way, and finally the habit," organized in the race," became the migratory instinct. It is curious that in this and all similar explanations of what are admitted to be now pure instincts, the theory demands that the earliest beginnings were more rational than the last developments-the commencements were more in the nature of intelligent perception than the final results, which have become the mere mechanical effect of hereditary habits. * Jer. viii. 7. |