If a man wish to make his way in the world, he must bestir himself and work his brains; if he wish to rise to honor and place, he must bend his back to the golden load. If he prefer to enjoy the delights of home, with children and grandchildren round his knees, let him follow an honest trade in peace.—Schiller.
By FOLLIOTT SANFORD PIERPOINT.
“Who can abide his cold?”
“Pray that your flight be not in the winter.”
At St. Helena, when Napoleon had time to remember his early youth, he said to Montholon:
“What recollections of childhood crowd upon my memory. I am carried back to my first impressions of the life of man. It seems to me always, in these moments of calm, that I should have been the happiest man in the world with an income of twenty-five hundred dollars a year, living as the father of a family with my wife and son, in our old home at Ajaccio.… I still remember with emotion the minute details of a journey in which I accompanied Paoli. More than five hundred of us, young persons of the first families in the island, formed his body-guard. I felt proud of walking by his side, and he appeared to take pleasure in pointing out to me the passes of our mountains which had been witnesses of the heroic struggle of our countrymen for independence. The impressions made upon me still vibrate in my heart.… Religion is the dominion of the soul. It is the hope of life, the anchor of safety, the deliverance from evil. What a service has Christianity rendered to humanity! What a power would it still have did its ministers comprehend their mission!”
Napoleon’s hand-writing was of a most unintelligible character. “Do you write orthographically?” he asked his amanuensis one day at St. Helena. “A man occupied with public business can not attend to orthography. His ideas must flow faster than his hand can trace. He has only time to place his points. He must compress words into letters, and phrases into words, and let the scribes make it out afterward.”
“The rapid succession of your victories,” said Las Cases to Napoleon, “must have been a source of great delight to you.” “By no means,” Napoleon replied; “those who think so know nothing of the peril of our situation. The victory of to-day was instantly forgotten in preparation for the battle which was to be fought on the morrow. The aspect of danger was continually before me. I enjoyed not one moment of repose.”
“Tents,” said Napoleon, “are unhealthy; it is much better for the soldier to bivouac in the open air, for then he can build a fire and sleep with warm feet. Tents are necessary only for the general officers, who are obliged to read and consult their maps.”
“My extreme youth when I took command of the army of Italy,” Napoleon remarked, “made it necessary for me to evince great reserve of manner, and the utmost severity of morals. This was indispensable to enable me to sustain authority over men so greatly superior in age and experience. I pursued a line of conduct in the highest degree irreproachable and exemplary. In spotless morality I was a Cato, and must have appeared such to all. I was a philosopher and a sage. My supremacy could be retained only by proving myself a better man than any other in the army. Had I yielded to human weaknesses I should have lost my power.”
Napoleon sent the celebrated picture of St. Jerome from the Duke of Parma’s gallery to the Museum at Paris. The duke, to save his work of art, offered Napoleon two hundred thousand dollars, which the conqueror refused to take, saying: “The sum which he offers will be soon spent; but the possession of such a masterpiece at Paris will adorn that capital for ages, and give birth to similar exertions of genius.”
“Different matters are arranged in my head,” said Napoleon, “as in drawers. I open one drawer and close another as I wish. I have never been kept awake by an involuntary pre-occupation of the mind. If I desire repose I shut up all the drawers, and sleep. I have always slept when I wanted rest, and almost always at will.”
While at Milan, Napoleon had just mounted his horse one morning, when a dragoon, bearing important dispatches, presented himself before him. Napoleon gave a verbal answer and ordered the courier to take it back with all speed.
“I have no horse,” the man answered. “I rode mine so hard that it fell dead at your palace gates.”
Napoleon alighted. “Take mine,” he said.
The man hesitated.
“You think him too magnificently caparisoned and too fine an animal,” said Napoleon. “Nothing is too good for a French soldier.”
“Pavia,” said Napoleon, “is the only place I ever gave up to pillage. I promised that the soldiers should have it at their mercy for twenty-four hours; but after three hours I could bear such scenes of outrage no longer, and put an end to them. Policy and morality are equally opposed to the system. Nothing is so certain to disorganize and completely ruin an army.”
“I have,” said Napoleon, “a taste for founding, not for possessing. My riches consist in glory and celebrity. The Simplon and the Louvre were, in the eyes of the people and of foreigners, more my property than any private domains could possibly have been.”
To General Clark, on the death of his nephew, at Arcola, Napoleon wrote: “Your nephew, Elliott, has been slain upon the battlefield. That young man has several times marched at the head of our columns. He has died gloriously, and in the face of the enemy. He did not have a moment’s suffering. Where is the reasonable man who would not envy such a death? Where is he who, in the vicissitudes of life would not give himself up to leave in this manner a world so often ungrateful?”
Napoleon had no tendencies to gallantry. Madame de Stäel once said to him: “It is reported that you are not very partial to the ladies.” “I am very fond of my wife, Madame,” was the laconic reply.
“The English,” said Napoleon, “appear to prefer the bottle to the society of their ladies; as is exemplified by dismissing the ladies from the table and remaining for hours to drink and intoxicate themselves. If I were in England I should decidedly leave the table with the ladies. If the object is to talk instead of to drink, why banish them. Surely conversation is never so lively nor so witty as when ladies take a part in it. Were I an Englishwoman I should feel very discontented at being turned out by the men to wait for two or three hours while they were drinking. In France, society is nothing unless ladies are present. They are the life of conversation.”
A lady of rank once said to him, “What is life worth if one cannot be General Bonaparte?” Napoleon answered her wisely: “Madame! one may be a dutiful wife and the good mother of a family.”
Traveling through Switzerland, Napoleon was greeted with such enthusiasm that Bourrienne said to him, “It must be delightful to be greeted with such demonstrations of enthusiastic admiration.” “Bah,” replied Napoleon; “this same unthinking crowd under a slight change of circumstances would follow me just as eagerly to the scaffold.”
Speaking of the Theophilanthropists, Napoleon said, “They can accomplish nothing; they are merely actors.” “What!” was the reply; “do you thus stigmatize those whose tenets inculcate universal benevolence and the moral virtues?” “All moral systems are fine,” rejoined Napoleon. “The Gospel alone has shown a full and complete assemblage of the principles of morality, stripped of all absurdity. It is not made up, like your creed, of a few commonplace sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to find out the really sublime? Repeat the Lord’s Prayer. Such enthusiasts are only to be met with the weapons of ridicule; all their efforts will prove ineffectual.”
By Prof. A. B. HYDE, D.D.
A man of letters, eminent in England, deserves, on visiting these shores, our brotherly attention. Nothing so holds us in fellowship with the people of “the little mother-land” as our reading their literature, and their reading ours, without translation. Their writers and speakers are thus our true kinsfolk, nearer to us than French or German can be. Mr. Arnold, known well rather than widely, has position among English thinkers of our day, such as demands for the readers of The Chautauquan a reasonable understanding of him and his work. His essays and addresses are published in seven volumes by MacMillan & Co. His poems, in two or three volumes, are had from the same house. He came to this country partly to visit and partly to deliver a few lectures. Mr. Arnold was born at Christmas of 1822, in Laleham, where his father was privately fitting students for the universities. His father, Thomas Arnold, eminent as clergyman and historian, is still more famed as teacher. At Rugby school his pupils loved and honored him. He understood the good and evil of English boys, and with wonderful skill he trained them in sound learning, and moulded them to pure and generous character. Gaining from him the tone of manly sentiment, many of his “Tom Browns” have been blessings to their generation.
Matthew was his eldest son. Another, Delafield Arnold, early worn out in the educational work of India, was buried on his homeward voyage, at Gibraltar, while his devoted wife went to a grave under the solemn shadow of the Himalayas.
In Matthew’s boyhood the family home was fixed at Fox How, near the abode of the poet Wordsworth. Here in his vacations the father studied, and Matthew could see Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, the “Lake Poets.” To Fox How, haunt of the muses, a crowd of distinguished visitors made streaming pilgrimage, and here the lad who early “seemed no vulgar boy,” could absorb the deep things of reason and the sweet things of song. He deeply revered these men under whose shadow he sat as a boyish listener. Of his father he says: “We rested till then in thy shade, as under the boughs of an oak. Toil and dejection have tried thy spirit, of that we say nothing. To us thou wast still cheerful and helpful and firm.”
After Wordsworth’s death he says of the dear and venerable man to whom his eyes in young weariness had often turned for refreshment:
In 1840, having prepared under his father, he was elected a scholar at Baliol College, Oxford, and four years later he gained a prize for an English poem. The next year he was made a Fellow of Oriel College. In 1846 he became private secretary of Lord Lansdowne, and so remained for several years. He also—after his marriage, in 1851, with Frances Wightman, daughter of an eminent jurist—served as Her Majesty’s Inspector of British schools. In 1857 he was with sharp competition chosen Professor of Poetry at Oxford. The term of office is ten years. Finding himself in later years growing alien from poetic composition (“these lips but rarely frame them now”), he allowed the place to pass to Principal Shairp, a man more distinguished as a critic than a producer of poetry. Mr. Arnold still gives an occasional poem, oftenest on simple themes, as the death of his terrier, “Geist,” or his canary, “Matthias.” His “Westminster Abbey,” on the death of Dean Stanley, is grand as an anthem. He is now heard chiefly in essays, critical and æsthetic, and educational or other addresses. He is of noble presence and kindly, earnest face, over which his rich, full hair, now sable-silvered, parts and clusters. He is no orator, speaking low and slowly, but the charm of his personal appearance, the beauty of his thought, the clear incisive force of his silvery rhetoric make him to cultivated audiences ever welcome. Take him for all in all, he is so felt to-day and sure to be so read and felt hereafter, that some study of him as thinker and poet may be both instructive and entertaining.
Of his lectures in this country the best was on Emerson, whom he prized as “the friend and aid of those who wished to live in the spirit.”
His first stir of thought was from Wordsworth, not young Wordsworth, the flush “high-priest of man and nature and of human life,” but from the venerable laureate, when his utterances began to have “the sweetness, the gravity, the beauty, the languor of death.” The lofty energy which Arnold inherited from his father was seriously impaired by the contemplative egotism of his father’s friend. At the time when impressions deep and lasting were easily made on his young mind, Goethe, critic and artist of many generations, went to his grave. “Knowest thou,” says Carlyle, “no prophet even in the vesture, environment and dialect of this age? I know him and name him Goethe. In him man’s life begins again to be divine.” Goethe had at first held the principles of Rousseau. Later he announced with the serenity of a Brahmin and the authority of a Delphic oracle, that the chief end of man is “to cultivate his own spirit.” This utterance fell like a gospel on Arnold’s ear. He began to expound and enforce it, striving to engraft it on literary society and to embody it in the English national life. To him we owe that sense of the word “culture” which is so hard to state, and other terms and phrases, as “perfection, sweetness and light,” “harmonious development,” and the like. A better English pleader for the new “development” could hardly have been found. Clear and graceful in statement, gentle under criticism, patient under reproof and witty in reply, his one defect is in not doing what both the sacred and the profane oracles enjoin as the first thing in culture—to understand himself. Let us trace his ideas and doctrines in politics, in education, in religion, and in poetry.
His view of the human race is that we are utterly separate, “enisled,” each forever by himself as in “the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.”
It follows from this isolation (which is in one sense true) that no man can be his brother’s keeper. A strong-lunged islander can call to his fellow, but nothing more. With this view of the “environment” the first duty ever to be taught and ever rehearsed is endurance. Patience under an order of things that “man did not make and can not mar,” is a teaching traceable through all his poetry and prose. Then comes in many a pleasing form the lesson of “self-centering.”
In the “hopeless tangle of our age,” to which he is keenly alive, and to explore which is a task of misery and distress, “alone, self-poised, henceforward man must labor.” “No man can save his brother’s soul, nor pay his brother’s debt.” As man is thus set apart from his fellow, “self-culture,” “self-perfecting” are his duty and his chief concern. By culture Mr. Arnold means the development of every capacity and power enfolded within us, and the adapting of ourselves perfectly to the island, larger or smaller, of our Crusoe life. This culture is gained not by unions, coöperations, or harangues “with tremendous cheers.” It is of one’s self and for one’s self, save as the wind may waft the odors of one “islet” to another. Culture must come by patient personal effort. Here Mr. Arnold looks back longingly to feudal times, and even beyond. The evil communications of the present corrupt good manners. He seems to say “any former times are better than these,” and to
Such a doctrine can never come well into politics. It is too remote—unsystematic, not to say fastidious. Pure as Arnold’s motives are known to be, he is too dainty to serve in a party, even that of Mr. Gladstone. He scouts “equality,” and prefers benevolence to democracy. As a result, the “sweetness and light” shed from his “islet” is little regarded by the masses, being about as effective as an aurora borealis.
Punch sums up Arnold’s discourses to the laboring classes—and all other classes:
In education Mr. Arnold’s efforts have been steady and sincere. To him, among others, is due the successful entrance of young women in England upon higher study, so that Cambridge and Oxford are now beset by troops of young ladies who must some day effect entrance. He inherits from his father an educational zeal. His pleadings for literature in courses of study as against the exclusive pursuit of physical science and the “practical” branches, has been earnest and eloquent. He holds that, to know ourselves and the world, we must know the best that has been thought and said in the world. The study of belles-letters may be so conducted as to yield only a smattering of benefit, but it may be made a very serious and critical search after truth. What has been done by civilized nations, and what manner of people they were, is as well worth knowing as chemistry or geology.
Examining a young man on the meaning of “Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?” he received as explanation, “Can you not wait upon the lunatic?” He asks whether to know the products of the combustion of wax is better than to understand Shakspere? He is sure that man’s need of beauty in truth, and of acquaintance with the general human mind demands the study of literature, and that for this study the best of all is the Greek.
Few will question, most teachers will accept, his educational doctrines.
Mr. Arnold explains that to attain perfect culture, we must be perfectly religious, and for this, we must properly understand the Bible. This brings us to look at his darkened side. He is an evolutionist in religion; that is, he holds that as the ages roll on, new religions unfold in newness of vigor and meaning, while the old decay and disappear. He tells us that to-day poetry is the true religion. In our time “every creed is shaken, every dogma questioned, every tradition dissolving.” “The strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry, for poetry attaches its emotion to the idea, and all else is illusion.” Poetry has the highest truth, and the highest seriousness.
“Be ye perfect,” said the Great Teacher, and this, says Mr. Arnold, is a harmonious development of all sides of our humanity; a thing not found in our broken world. Therefore he calls the orthodox belief a failure; the working classes will have nothing to say to it. He will fix it for them. He takes out of it all its facts and leaves only its tone and its ideas—its poetry. The scheme of Christianity has never been understood until now a select few have grasped it.
“There is an enduring power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness”—that is his cloudy piety. The “method” and “secret” of Jesus were commendable; the “method” was repentance, the “secret” was peace; but the Christian religion rests on the assumption of a Personal Ruler, “this cannot be verified.” Even the resurrection St. Paul poorly understood. It is in fact “rising to that harmonious conformity with the real and the eternal which is life and peace until it becomes glory.” Even the doctrine of the Trinity Mr. Arnold can speak of as “a fairy-tale of the three Lord Shaftburys,” a phrase that Ingersoll might quote. One can see—and it is a sad sight—how his religious views have been spoiled by a vain philosophy. How reassuring to know that Mr. Moody, preaching Jesus and the Resurrection at Oxford, in Arnold’s sight, found the working classes (and others) glad to hear. Where he had said,
Many are learning “Deny thyself” and in finding the Savior, losing their misery.
This gifted disbeliever has longings that he cannot quite conceal. He does not believe Jesus divine, yet he seems to yearn for faith in him, such as his father had, and such as was easy when
He himself would gladly have been caught in the tide
Turning sadly away he says:
At last we seem to find this scholar and poet, Christian born and Christian bred, sinking into the pantheism of heathenism, such as our missionaries confront in India.
Through all Mr. Arnold’s utterances there seems a certain air of condescension. To the masses, “the un-Hellenic public,” he seems to look from his own “islet” and say, “Cultivate your own spirit;” “Cherish light and sweetness,” and to add, “Look at me and aspire to your own best self.” This looks like a delicate self-worship, such as was in Goethe, and thither “self-culture” easily leads.
In Mr. Arnold as poet one finds enough to admire and enjoy. His first volume of poems was given anonymously to the world in 1849. It made some stir. We thought another of the immortals was among us, and so it proved. He followed in song the same who were his masters in culture, striving, “Wordsworth’s sweet calm, and Goethe’s wide and luminous view to gain.” He took up poetry seriously, for he thought that “poetry is the impassioned expression in the countenance of all science,” “the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.” To him poetry is no idle warbling, but an intense criticism of life in which he works from sense of duty. In all his poems one finds dignity and grace of spirit, something of Goethe’s spiritual unrest, and of Wordsworth’s healing balm found in communion with nature.
Thus, after Rustum in desperate fight has unknowingly slain his son Sohrab, (who has disclosed himself in his last moments) with how quiet dignity does the Oxus move on, leaving on its bank Sohrab in his gore, and Rustum in his hot agony and blinding tears!
He comes to nature, not to bring anything, but to seek rest and refreshment. Byron pours out upon nature, as in Childe Harold, the “sparkling gloom” of his own spirit. Coleridge, as in the Hymn at Chamouni, fills nature with his own lofty rapture. Arnold’s poems all show how he asks of nature, not pleasure or exaltation—only relief. By the lake he says:
In his Summer Night,
He turns to the
In Kensington Gardens he says:
Nowhere in all his pictures of nature, given in the most musical of English and in style flowing, bright and tender, do we find the deep gladness of Wordsworth, or the organ-toned joy of Milton. To each, as his heart is, nature gives. Arnold, sad, unbelieving, self-absorbed, looking at his own shadow, sees the beautiful and sings it, as he finds it, but, “life is wanting there.” As our human race appears in his poems, the men of to-day are of small account. “There has passed away a glory from the earth.” He has little to say of hope, so much in his eye is the past better than any possible future. Even his favorite metres are of Greek pattern. Admitting that the Pagan world, worn and weary, was revived by Christianity, he thinks this is in its turn “outworn,” and men are waning now. Therefore he goes to olden time for heroes, for Prometheus and Pericle, Tristam and Rustum. His only poem truly dramatic, a complete work of art, is The Sick King in Bokhara. The elements of the story bring out his genius, and he puts forth the best effort of his mind and art. Here are that dignified self-poise, that unrest akin to remorse that frames so strangely with the calm of helplessness, that lip-curling criticism and that transparent simplicity of which we have been speaking. All is brilliant in setting and rich in color. All his poems we might read (and we should then all the more watch for new ones) but in none shall find the whole of Mr. Arnold as we find it in this.
How beautiful is this from Tristam. It is Iseult after the death of her husband and rival, living with her children, as in a fading, misty, moon-lit dream:
Mr. Arnold does not attain to the first rank of either men or poets, but there is a charm about him and his poetry. Too bad it is that he has not the joy and nerve that come of Christian faith “which worketh by love.” He would diffuse sweetness and light indeed. But is his poetry, as poetry, the worse for his lack of faith? Its plaintive utterance of the sadness of a soul whose wants are proudly shut from their true satisfaction, will long be read by those who strive to still the heart with supplies from the intellect and to make genius serve for Living Bread. No English poet has made the soul-hunger so attractive, or given airy negatives in forms and colors so fascinating.
It is often found that those feelings which are best, noblest, and most self-denying, are exactly those which lead to a disastrous issue. It is as if, by the command of a higher and wiser power, man’s fate were intentionally brought into variance with his inner feelings, in order that the latter might acquire a higher value, shine with greater purity, and thus become more precious by the very privations and sufferings to him who cherishes such feelings. However benevolent may be the intentions of Providence, they do not always advance the happiness of the individual. Providence has always higher ends in view, and works in a preëminent degree on the inner feelings and disposition.—Humboldt.
By the Rev. J. G. WOOD, M.A.
I have already mentioned that the peculiar condition which we term hibernation is one which can be produced by heat as well as by cold, and that the bat passes into that state daily throughout summer. The name, therefore, is not sufficiently definite. The German naturalists more properly use two distinct terms, and employ the words “winterschlaf,” i. e., winter sleep, and “sommerschlaf,” or summer sleep.
In order to maintain the same construction in the terms, I will call the summer sleep by the name of Estivation. This word is scientifically more correct than summer sleep, because, as I have already mentioned, the condition in question is not real sleep, but a kind of trance.
As Estivation is produced in consequence of the withdrawal of food by heat, we must naturally look for it within the tropics. Many of the lower vertebrates are subjected to Estivation, but, as far as is known, no mammal estivates. It has been said that the Taurde, or Madagascar hedgehog, does so, but it is evidently a mistake. It is really one of the hibernators, like our own hedgehog; and though it assumes the trance condition in June, that month is the beginning of winter in Madagascar, and not in the middle of summer, as in England.
I will only take two examples of true Estivation, one from Africa and the other from America. The first is the well known Lepidosiren, or mud-fish, a creature which has long been an enigma to zoölogists, as no one could say definitely whether it were a fish or a reptile. Professor Owen, however, states that the structure of its organs of smell proves that it is a true, though rather anomalous, fish. It is found in many parts of Africa, and inhabits the banks of muddy rivers, being plentiful in the Nile.
Nowadays, the systematic naturalists have changed its name and called it Protopterus, giving the old and equally appropriate name of Lepidosiren to an allied species which is found in the Amazon river and its tributaries. I have, however, retained the original name, and see no sufficient ground for altering it.
It is brownish grey in color, and eel-like in shape, but has four curious rudimentary limbs, apparently useless for locomotion, though they are seldom without movement. They are, in fact, soft single rays of the pectoral and ventral fins, which represent the limbs of beings more highly organized. Each ray carries a narrow strip of membrane along nearly the whole of its length.
Along part of the back there is a very soft fin, extending over the tip of the tail, and returning on the under surface of the body as far as the base of the hind limbs. The body is always covered with viscous slime, insoluble in water, and the creature seems to be able to secrete it as it is wanted.
Essentially predacious, it does not possess rank after rank of teeth, such as we see in the pike, and the wolf-fish, and the like, but is endowed with a most remarkable dental apparatus.
Instead of separate teeth, there is in each jaw what may be called a tooth-ribbon. Suppose that we imagine the dental matter, instead of being made into separate teeth, to be rolled out into a continuous ribbon, then “pleated” into folds like those of a ruff, and so set in the jaws. Then let us imagine the projecting edge of each tooth-ribbon to be as sharp as that of a chisel, and we can realize the formidable apparatus with which the mouth is armed.
These details are here briefly given, because without them the history of its estivation could not be understood.
That the Lepidosiren was carnivorous had long been known, but no idea was formed of its voracity until some living specimens were successfully reared in the Crystal Palace. One of them was placed in the large water basin which then adorned the center of the tropical department at the north end of the Palace, but which may now be seen in the open air between the Palace and the water tower.
Though confined in a tank, it contrived to escape into the basin, and straightway began to make havoc among the gold-fish. It swam gently under them, rose with open jaws, caught the fish just behind the pectoral fins, bit out a piece, its ribbon-like teeth cutting through scale, bone, and flesh, as if they had been shears, and sank out of sight with its prey. It never bit the same fish twice, and as long as it could find fish, declined to eat anything else.
As this mode of feeding involved a gold-fish for each mouthful, Mr. F. W. Wilson, who was then in charge of the Natural History Department of the Crystal Palace, had the tank emptied, and fenced off a portion with wire grating, so that the Lepidosiren could not get at the fish. The creature was then fed with frogs, which I have seen it eat; and by reason of the perpetual supply of food, it grew so fast that it attained a length of thirty inches and weighed six pounds and a quarter, a very giant of Lepidosirens, which seldom exceed eighteen inches in length.
It lived for more than three years, and might have grown to a much larger size, but for the neglect of an attendant who forgot on one winter night to keep up the fire which warmed the water, and in consequence this interesting creature was found dead next morning.
Here then we have a carnivorous being of more than ordinary voracity, and requiring a constant supply of fish. But, during the rainless summer, the water is rapidly evaporated under the sun’s rays, the fish die, and the muddy bed of the river becomes as dry and nearly as hard as brick. What then is the Lepidosiren to do?
By Divine Providence, the heat which withdraws its food acts upon it as cold acts upon hibernating animals in this country. As soon as the drying-up process has begun, the Lepidosiren wriggles itself into the mud while it is still soft, and by dint of turning round and round, makes a sort of chamber, the sides of which are preserved from collapsing by the slime which it pours from its body.
It then doubles itself up sideways in a most curious fashion, wrapping the membranous tail over its head so as to cover it entirely. The body is not coiled in a circle, as might be imagined, but the two inner sides (mostly the left) are pressed closely against each other, so that the animal occupies a wonderfully small space. The dimensions of the chamber are soon contracted by the weight of the superincumbent mud, until at last there is scarcely the eighth of an inch of free space round the body.
In this curious refuge the Lepidosiren passes into a state of Estivation. The mud is gradually dried, and then baked under the fierce rays of a tropical sun. But the Lepidosiren lies motionless and unconscious until the next rainy season refills the river, dissolves the hardened mud, and sets the creature free to resume its predatory life.
Were it not for the Lepidosiren, the inhabitants of these countries would often be hardly pressed for food. But they search the dry bed of the river, dig up the buried estivators and live on them. So here we have Estivation as well as hibernation, indirectly beneficial to man. I may mention that most of the Lepidosirens which have been kept alive in this country were brought while still buried in their mud cells.
There is little difficulty in finding the hidden Lepidosirens, as the aperture through which they entered the mud seems almost invariably to remain open, its smooth and slime-polished sides leaving no doubt as to its identity.
I have possessed for more than four years a large lump of dry Nile mud, a hole in one of its sides showing that a Lepidosiren ought to be inside it. This morning I carefully cut it open, and there found the inhabitant, doubled up, with its tail over its head just as when it gave itself up to slumber more than twenty years ago. I expected to have seen a nearly spherical chamber, but found that the cell is cylindrical, and only just large enough to hold the creature.
The slime with which the cell is lined has been hardened into a papery consistence, and is, in fact, about as thick as the paper on which this account is printed. When a piece is torn off and held in the flame of a spirit lamp, it takes fire and it gives out a very nauseous odor, like that of a beetle’s wing case when similarly burned. This thick coating of slime is only to be found in the cell itself, and surrounding the body of the animal. I imagine that the Lepidosiren must deposit many successive coats of slime after it has taken up its position. These cells are technically named “cocoons.”
As some time elapses between the falling of the rain, when the creature awakes, and the dissolving of the cocoon, there must be some peculiar structure of the respiratory organs. Otherwise, the Lepidosiren, being a fish, and breathing by gills, must die before it can reënter the water.
This structure is of a most unexpected character. The creature has rows of gills on either side of its head, and with these it breathes while it is in the water. The swimming-bladder, however, is modified so as to act as a substitute for a lung. A branch of the artery which supplies the gills is diverted to the swimming-bladder, and as there is a communication between the interior of the swimming-bladder and the external air, the creature is able to aerate its blood sufficiently to sustain life until it can assume its normal fish life.
I may here mention that these African and American Lepidosirens, together with the Australian Ceratodus are especially interesting as being one only living survivor of a vast family which in bygone ages were extremely numerous.
The Ceratodus is a comparatively new discovery, and came on naturalists by surprise. Until lately the only known examples of this fish were to be found in the earlier secondary rocks, and when it was announced that living specimens had been found, the discovery could hardly be believed. However, there the Ceratodus is. It looks like a resuscitated fossil, and is to our known fishes what the tree-fern is to our present vegetation.
There is another interesting point about this object, showing how Estivation is connected with Scripture.
The mud of which the cocoon is made is the same as that which the Israelites, while in captivity, were forced to make into bricks. It is so tenacious, that although merely dried by the Egyptian sun, it is so hard that I was obliged to employ mallet, chisel, saw, and butcher’s knife, while making the necessary sections.
Occasionally the difficulty was increased by vegetable fibers which had become mixed with it, and which bound it together just as the cow-hairs bind builder’s plaster when honestly made. The Egyptians mixed straw with the clay of which their bricks were made, so as to strengthen it, and in order to secure a supply of such straw they did not reap their corn near the ground as we do, but cut off the ears close to the stem, leaving the stubble to be cut separately. The reader will remember that one of the grievances of the captives was, that instead of being supplied with straw, as formerly, they had to cut and fetch the stubble for themselves, and yet were forced to deliver the same number of bricks daily.
So here is my lump of Nile mud acting as a link representing nearly four thousand years between the Christian world of the present day, and the long-perished Egyptian dynasty of the Pharaohs.
Now we will pass to the opposite side of the world.
In tropical America, as in tropical Africa, the rivers are dried up in the summer, and the mud which forms their banks and bed is baked as hard as that of the Nile and other African rivers. Many of these rivers are inhabited by a fish (Callicthys) popularly called the Hassar, or Hardback. The latter name is given to it in consequence of two rows of hard, narrow scales on each side of the body. There are four long, flexible tentacles on the upper lip. It is not nearly so large as the Lepidosiren, seldom exceeding eight inches in length. Its color is greenish brown.
Unlike the Lepidosiren, which can not travel on dry ground, the Hassar is as good a walker as the Climbing Perch, a fish which not only leaves the water and traverses dry land, but can ascend the trunk of trees. All rivers have some portions deeper than others, “holes” as we call them in our rivers at home. So, when the process of drying up is nearly completed, the river is converted into a ravine along which “holes” or pools are seen at irregular distances.
As long as the holes are capable of containing water, the Hassar makes its way to them over the dry ground. But, in process of time, even the pools are dried up, and just before this happens, the Hassar works its way into the mud, and acts after the manner of the Lepidosiren. The analogy between the two fishes is made still more remarkable, inasmuch as they both furnish food to man during the time of Estivation.
The Hassar has a further interest in being one of the few fishes which make nests and watch over their young. Our sticklebacks do this, but whereas with the stickleback the double task of making the nest and guarding the young is relegated to the male, with the Hassar the latter duty is shared by the female. It begins the task of nest-making almost as soon as it escapes from its cocoon, so as to insure plenty of time for nest-making, egg-hatching, and rearing the young.
The American Alligator, which, like the Hassar, is deprived of food when the rivers and swamps have been dried, allows itself to be buried in the mud, and there awaits the return of rain.
A curious instance of this habit occurred some years ago. A party of travelers had halted on a piece of hard, level ground, lighted a fire and began to cook their dinner. But that dinner was spoiled, for before the cooking was completed the ground began to heave and swell, and out burst the head of an alligator. The unfortunate reptile was estivating exactly under the spot where the fire had been placed, and where it would have remained asleep until the next rainy season, had it not been disturbed.—London Sunday Magazine.