By JONATHAN.
As a commercial term the word which heads this article stands for one of the marked tendencies of the times. Speculation is not a new thing. Words in the book of Proverbs suggest that the practice may have been rife twenty-five hundred years ago. “He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent,” said the wise king; and it was his testimony that, even then, there was “nothing new under the sun.” But it is safe to say that seldom in history has a spirit of speculation so potent and wide-spread appeared among a people as in our own land in recent years. We often advert to a period in France. It was when John Law deluded himself, was deluding the people with his gigantic financial schemes. The “Mississippi Bubble” arose before the eyes of men, a fascinating thing, and grew larger and larger. Then everybody seemed seized with the fever of speculation. In 1719 it reached its height. All France was in a ferment, and every one bent on getting speedily rich. From all parts of the kingdom, and from other countries, people crowded into Paris to speculate in the enterprises of Law, who was the idol of the populace, with more than regal power. The disastrous results to the French nation flowing from the popular mania of that day are a matter of history, whose lessons may be pondered. Our country has seen no epoch which could match that in France of over a century and a half ago. There has been here no equal national convulsion resulting from the same cause. But the spirit of speculation to-day is in the air all over the land. We have seen it grow and widen; we have seen communities agitated by it, and suffering from its work; we have seen operations of a speculative nature carried on by our bold and skillful men of affairs, whose magnitude would have astounded the fathers; and mischievous consequences of speculation we have seen which were felt in every part of our country. Bishop Butler’s idea that insanity is not only an affliction of individuals, but likewise at times of communities, has abundance of historical facts to stand upon. It is hardly exaggeration to say there have been times when certain of our communities were beside themselves with the mania of speculation. The time was, and not very long ago, when a millionaire in America was almost unknown; now men with a million of money are common enough, and those with their hundred millions are likely soon to be so. These great fortunes, we understand, were acquired for the most part by fortunate speculation. This new western world has presented such a field for speculation as was never known elsewhere, and of the multitudes who have entered it, some have had success.
The word speculation is a broad one, and covers an immense class of transactions. It may do, for a general definition, to say that it means the risking of money with the hope of gain. The element of contingency enters into all veritable speculation. The speculator assumes a risk; he makes a venture; he takes a chance. He may be entirely confident of gaining, but there is a possibility of his losing. The man who buys a piece of real estate, or any commodity, expecting that it will rise in value and he will make money by selling at a higher figure, speculates. The man who invests money in some undeveloped enterprise, believing it will prove a “bonanza,” speculates. The man who, in our stock and produce exchanges, deals in “futures,” and “options,” and “margins,” calculating upon a contingent rise or fall in the market to return him the amount of his venture increased, speculates. The man who risks his money in “pools” at the horse race or rowing match, hoping to double it, the man who tries his luck on the gaming table, hoping to win, speculates. In making this classification, however, the writer would not, of course, be understood as making these different transactions named in a moral point of view the same. Distinctions will presently be made which it is hoped to the reader’s mind will be clear.
The great arena of operations in the line of speculation in our land is found in the Exchanges and Boards of Trade of the cities. These have become numerous, and of various kinds, and the growth of some of them has been prodigious. We now have stock exchanges and produce exchanges, cotton exchanges and oil exchanges and coffee exchanges. Thirty years ago the Chicago Board of Trade was just making a beginning, and feeble enough it was at the start. It is now by far the greatest exchange for produce in the world, and in the year 1882 not less than three billion dollars’ worth of business was here transacted. A seat in the New York Stock Exchange costs thirty thousand dollars; and it has been shown that the yearly transactions of this wonderful mart, represented in dollars and cents, are but little less than three times “the taxable valuation of all the personal property in the United States.” Our exchanges have become marts of speculation. The business now done in them, aside from that which falls properly into the speculative class, is inconsiderable. They are not, simply or chiefly, places to which producers bring their products for sale, and where men buy commodities, and sell at a fixed advance, which pays for the trouble of handling them. For the most part, those who trade here buy and sell calculating upon a rise or fall in the market which shall yield them a gain. Their gain is a contingent matter; they run the risk of a loss. This is speculation. It is a fact well understood that, in by far the greater part of the transactions in our exchanges, there is no veritable buying and selling of merchandise, the buyer paying the price demanded and receiving his purchase. The buyer neither pays for nor receives his purchase. His purchase is not a purchase. With a hundred or two dollars he buys merchandise to the value of thousands. The fact is, he pays, not for the commodity, but for a chance to make money from a rise in the price of the same; and his money goes to insure the one through whom he operates against loss from fluctuations in the market. On the other hand, the sale of the seller is not a sale. He sells what he has never seen and never bought. It is a chance he sells; and if fortune has favored him, he receives the difference between the price of the commodity at the time of buying and the time of selling. This is speculation, and something more. To one who had just come out of a Rip Van Winkle sleep and knew nothing of customs which in recent years have come into being in our land, there are things which would be decidedly puzzling. The present production of petroleum is estimated at about sixty thousand barrels a day; but in the different oil exchanges of the country nearly one hundred times this amount is daily bought and sold. Our farmers all together produce only one-fifth the number of bushels of grain per year as reported as changing hands in the Chicago Board of Trade; and the hogs of trade here are easily twice as many as the whole land affords. In the New York Stock Exchange stocks and bonds are daily bought and sold more by a million dollars’ worth than exist; and the statement has been made that “when the cotton plantations of the South yielded less than six million bales, the crop on the New York Cotton Exchange was more than thirty-two millions.” It was from expressions in the speeches of General Butler upon finance that we formed the phrase “fiat money;” and it would seem that fiat wheat, and fiat pork, and fiat cotton, and fiat stocks, and fiat oil abound in the exchanges of our cities.
It may be well, for the sake of the uninitiated, to attempt an explanation of certain terms in common use in connection with modern speculation. A man is “long on the market”—signifies that his buying has been in excess of his selling. He has oil, or grain, or whatever the article of merchandise may be, on hand—though perhaps not in fact; he has bought more than he has sold. A man “sells short”—means that he sells more than he has bought; he has an amount of merchandise to deliver in excess of what he has purchased. The trading in “options” has played an important part in the transactions of our exchanges. “Options” are of two kinds; buyers’ options and sellers’ options. In the case of the former, a man engages to take at a stipulated price merchandise to a certain amount, within a specified time; while the seller’s option binds one to deliver merchandise as aforesaid. The term “futures” in significance is not essentially different from “options.” “Puts” and “calls” are speculative terms which have become very familiar. A person thinks there is to be a decline in the market. He pays to another a sum agreed upon for the privilege of “putting” so much of an article in trade, or disposing of it to him at a price named, within a certain time—a privilege he may, or may not use, as he sees fit. Or, he believes the market will advance; and he pays for the privilege of “calling” or taking so much merchandise, as aforesaid. Buying and selling “on margins” is very common. In some exchanges the most of the business done is of this class. The method is easily understood. A man wishes to buy for speculation, a thousand barrels of oil. He pays into his broker’s hands a hundred dollars, more or less, and the broker buys the oil. The hundred dollars is a “margin.” The phrase of trade is “putting up margins.” The margin is the broker’s security. In case the market falls, and the oil remains on his hands, it secures him from loss. So much for the vocabulary and methods of speculation.
But there is an aspect of this large question which must not be passed by. What is to be said of speculation regarded from a moral point of view? Unquestionably there is such a thing as legitimate speculation—speculation which is not to be condemned as morally wrong. The man who invests money in some commodity, paying for and receiving it, with the hope that he will be the gainer from its rise in value, it is right to call a speculator, but not right to call an immoral one. But there is another kind of speculation. A careful consideration of some of the practices set forth in this article should convince the candid that, though there are many good men engaged in them, they can hardly be justified in the light of the moral law. With regard to the character of gambling there is no controversy. Every one admits its immorality. And gambling is a broad genus; its species are many. This excellent definition has been given of it: “The art or practice of playing a game of hazard, or one depending partly on skill and partly on hazard, with a view, more or less exclusive, to a pecuniary gain.” The old Romans prohibited gambling, not on account of its immoral character and influence, but because its tendency was to render the people too effeminate; and for the same cause at first, laws against gambling were enacted in Great Britain. But in our own land the law forbids gambling of various forms because it is felt to be a vice, wrong and demoralizing. We have laws against lotteries and against betting. These, and other practices, are generally recognized as species of this vice. But our courts have decided that other things come under the same head, as to whose character there is not the same general consent. By judicial decision the person who takes a chance in a “grab-bag” at a church fair gambles; and in a most unequivocal manner, in the courts of different states, the opinion has been given that certain popular forms of speculation are gambling. Our judges have repeatedly said that those who speculate on “margins,” or trade in “options,” and have to do with “puts” and “calls,” gamble; and it is difficult to see how the decision can be gainsaid. Some people may be able easily to see that buying and selling “on margins” is not playing a game of chance for money; that taking an “option” is not like buying a ticket in a lottery; and that the method known as “puts and calls” is not very much the same as betting; but there are many thinking people who have not the ability.
Just an allusion may be made to a practice of modern speculation, of which some one has forcibly and truthfully spoken as “exaggerated gambling.” It is what is known as “cornering the market.” Speculators by forming a combination gain a control of the market, and force it up and down to serve their own interests. In this way immense fortunes have been made. The writer’s limits do not allow of his entering into a discussion of the methods employed. Heartless, cruel, wicked, are mild terms to apply to this “exaggerated gambling.” It is true that, by this cornering of the market, men are “squeezed” and fleeced and ruined who are not themselves scrupulous as to their methods; but the effects of the pernicious practice often do not stop with these men. Great corners in grain markets, by raising the price of bread-stuffs, have resulted in untold suffering among the poor, and affected in a most unhappy way the whole country. In 1879 there were two famous corners which will not soon be forgotten, a corner in wheat, and the “Armour pork corner.” As a result of these, the price of pork was more than doubled, flour advanced two dollars a barrel, and there was a general decided rise in value of the necessaries of life. Millions of money were made, but the loss to the country was immense, and the suffering occasioned incalculable. It was estimated, in a report made to a state legislature, that the syndicate which manipulated the wheat corner was the occasion of a loss to the public in different ways of not less than three hundred millions. As yet there is no punishment by the law of the enormity of which these cases are illustrations.
A final word can hardly be omitted with regard to the effects of speculation in general upon those engaged in it, and upon communities where the spirit is rife. Even those who are so hardened that they are unable to see that certain peculiar forms of it are immoral and wrong, as is claimed, will hardly deny that speculation is a pursuit which is to be censured on other grounds. The excitement of it is neither physically, mentally, nor morally healthful. It has a fascination which is dangerous; to break away from it comes to be like the Ethiopian’s changing his skin, or the leopard’s his spots. The cases are sadly frequent where it unfits one for the enjoyment of home, the pleasures of society, the duties of the citizen and the Christian. And in a multitude of cases it has brought those absorbed in it to the mad-house and to an untimely grave. The judgment of the candid and reflective must be that “making haste to be rich,” even by ways confessedly proper, is not best. Moreover, terms too strong can hardly be used in speaking of the harmful effects upon a community of a spirit of speculation filling the air. There is seen a feverish condition of things which is not well. Regular business is neglected; duties are passed by; the action of others is blindly and rashly followed. And it is always the case that, sooner or later, to by far the greater number who give way to the spirit and embark in the glittering speculative schemes, there comes disaster. Communities could easily be pointed out in whose condition of prosperity strikingly reversed one might read: “The demon of speculation hath done this.”
By BENJAMIN W. RICHARDSON, M.D.
What has science said and what is she saying in more modern times on the question of fact in relation to strong drink and its effect on the world of life? Let us take some of her more salient teachings first.
In the year 1725 she spoke to the government of this country, stating that “the fatal effect of the frequent use of several sorts of distilled spirituous liquors upon great numbers of both sexes is to render them diseased, not fit for business, poor, a burthen to themselves and neighbors, and too often the cause of weak, feeble, and distempered children, who must be, instead of an advantage and strength, a charge to their country.” Twenty-nine years later, she spoke again through the mouth of one of her most approved servants, the first inventor of ventilators, Dr. Stephen Hales. Through this illustrious philosopher she explained that strong liquors, though called spirituous, are so far from refreshing and recruiting the spirits, that, on the contrary, they do, in reality, depress and sink them, and extinguish the natural warmth of the blood.
You will see from these evidences, which could be largely multiplied, that long ago science spoke strongly by her best speakers on matters of fact relating to the use of strong drinks. You will note, moreover, that her utterances in that respect are very urgent against strong drinks. At the same time you will with fairness reply, “All that is true; but the argument is so far against excessive use.” We all admit that argument; doctors admit that universally; statesmen admit it; statisticians prove that; clergymen who are not abstainers express that; nay, the very sellers of strong drinks, the gentlemen who sell wholesale, and the publicans who dispense for the gentlemen, they, too, admit the solemn, unanswerable truth, that strong drink kills. We therefore need no sphinx to inform us of what is universally admitted. This, however, we do want to know. We desire to be informed what is to be said by science on the moderate use of these agents. Let abuse of them go to the wall; let use stand forth alone, and let us hear what place this strong drink holds in relation to man and animals—what place it holds in nature—what good it is for man—what bad, when it is used in moderation. Let us have the for and against.
The request is justice itself. There can be no objection whatever to put the answer of science to the “for” as well as the “against.”
Let us begin by looking at the interpretations of science in her latest teachings as to the nature of strong drinks. On this point all are now agreed who speak scientifically. For many ages wine was looked upon as a distinct drink, as a something apart altogether from water. Strong wine will take fire; water will quench fire. Wine has a color and sparkles in the glass; water is colorless and clear as crystal. Wine has taste and flavor and odor; water is tasteless and odorless. Wine is the blood of the grape, and in some respects seems akin to the blood of man; water is of all things least like blood. Wine when drunken makes the face flush, the eyes sparkle, the heart leap, the pulses sharp, the veins full; water when drunken does none of these acts, and seems to do nothing but respond to the natural wish for drink. Wine makes the lips and tongue parched and dry, the drinker athirst; water keeps the lips and tongue and stomach moist, and quenches the thirst of the drinker. Wine when it is taken, sets all the passions aglow and dulls the reason; bids men enjoy and reason not; water creates no stir of passion, and leaves the reason free. Wine makes for itself a first and second and third and fourth claim on the drinker, so that the more of it he takes the more of it he desires; it is overwhelming in the warmth of its friendship; water sates the drinker after one draught; makes no further claim on him than is just consistent with its duty; leads him never to take more and more; and has no seeming warmth in its friendship. Wine multiplies itself into many forms, which appear to be distinct; it is new, it is old; it is sweet, it is sour; it is sharp, it is soft; it is sparkling, it is still; water is ever the same. Wine must be petted and cherished, stored up in special skins and special caves, styled by particular names, praised under special titles, and heartily liked or disliked, like a child of passion; water, pshaw! it is everywhere; it has one name, no more; it has one quality; it hurries away out of the earth by brooks and rivulets and rivers into the all-absorbing sea, where it is undrinkable; or it pours down from the clouds as if the gods were tired of it; it is no child of passion! Let the cattle, and the dogs, and the wild beasts alone drink water. Let the man have the overpowering drink, the blood of the grape—wine!
Alas! for this poetic dream. Science, poetic, too, in her way, but passionless, destroys in those crucibles of hers, which men call laboratories, this flimsy dream. There she tells that, when one or two disguises are removed, even blood is water; as to wine, that is mere dirty water—sixteen bottles or cups or any other equal measures of water, pure and simple, from the clouds and earth, to one poor bottle or cup of a burning, fiery fluid which has been called ardent spirit, or spirit of wine, or alcohol, with some little coloring matter, in certain cases a little acid, in other cases a little sugar, and in still other cases a little cinder stuff.
It is a pitiful fall, but it is such, and science not only declares it, but proves it so to be. A pitiful let-down, that men throughout all ages who have called themselves wine-drinkers have been water-drinkers after all; that men who have called themselves wine merchants have been water merchants; that men who have bought, and still buy, wines at fabulous prices have been buying, and still are buying, water. A dozen of champagne, bought at a cost of five pounds ten shillings, very choice—I am speaking by the book—consisted, when it was all measured out, of three hundred ounces, or fifteen pints of fluid, of which fluid thirteen pints and a half were pure water, the rest ardent spirit, with a little carbonic acid, some coloring matter like burnt sugar, a light flavoring ether in almost infinitesimal proportion, or a trace of cinder stuff. Science, looking on dispassionately, records merely the facts. If she thinks that five pounds ten shillings was a heavy sum to pay for thirteen pints and a half of water and one pint and a half of spirit, she says nothing; she leaves that to the men and women of sentiment and passionate feeling, buyers and sellers and drinkers all round.
By WALLACE BRUCE.
Twenty-eight years have passed since the battle of Bosworth, where the bitter struggle between the Houses of York and Lancaster ceased with the defeat and death of Richard the Third. We now come to the three best-known poems of Sir Walter, viz.: “Marmion,” “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” and the “Lady of the Lake,” all grouped together in their relation to history between the years 1513 and 1560.
It is beyond the scope and purpose of our plan to consider the beauties, defects or literary characteristics of these poems. We are constrained to consider them merely as links in the great historic chain. It may occur to the reader that they have less to do with actual history than the novels which we have considered; but, as the clear Scottish Lakes framed in rugged mountains, reflect every outline of rock, forest and shrub, so these poems framed and set in solid historic facts, reflect clearly the minutest features of the social feudal life in the reigns of James the Fourth and James the Fifth of Scotland. It is in fact the peculiar province of poetry, in all ages, to preserve the domestic habits and every-day happenings of the people. It would not be rash to assert that the real life of England and Scotland is better revealed in their ballads and poems than in their chronicles and histories.
“Marmion” opens about the commencement of August, and concludes with the battle of Flodden, the 9th of September, 1513. It will be remembered that Henry the Eighth, at this time, was on the English throne. He sailed to France in July with a gallant army, where he formed the siege of Terouenne. During his absence the Scottish King, James the Fourth, urged by the French Queen, gathered an army to invade the north of England. He was distinguished for his romantic chivalry, and when the beautiful Princess of France called him her knight, sent a ring from her own finger, and requested him “to ride three miles on English ground for her sake,” the gallant king thought that he could not in honor decline the request. His fantastical spirit led to his ruin. He met the English forces at Flodden under the Earl of Surrey, and the Scottish forces were defeated. It was one of the bravest and fiercest struggles recorded in Scottish or English history. The battle commenced about four o’clock in the afternoon and when night came it was still undecided. The Scottish center kept its ground, and the King fought hand to hand with a bravery and courage worthy of a better cause. The English lost five thousand, and the Scotch ten thousand of their bravest soldiers. During the night the Scottish army drew off in silent despair, when they knew that their King and bravest nobles lay dead upon the field. Or as Scott poetically expresses it:
In the description of this battle Scott is true to the minutest points of history, and throughout the entire poem we breathe the atmosphere of the feudal ages. His sketch of James the Fourth at Holyrood is a contribution to historical portraiture. His words seem like side-lights thrown upon the king’s character, until the chivalry and weakness of the man are presented in living embodiment.
The night of revelry in Edinburgh, preceding the direful battle, may have suggested to Byron the grand poetic description of the “beauty and chivalry” convened in Belgium’s capital the night before the battle of Waterloo. The tradition to which Scott alludes of the ghastly midnight proclamation at the market cross of Edinburgh, summoning the king by name, and many of his nobles and principal leaders, to appear before the tribunal of Pluto within the space of forty days, found indeed sad realization. The description of “Edinburgh after Flodden,” a poem by Robert Aytoun, completes the picture, and, in lyrical power, is not an unworthy postscript to the vigorous canto which finds its culmination in the last words of the English knight:
“The Lay of the Last Minstrel” is related in time to the middle of the sixteenth century; and the scene is laid in the border country of England and Scotland. It is sometimes claimed that poetry is not so much the outgrowth of monastic and studious seclusion as of stirring circumstances which inflame the imagination. Whether this is true or not, the principle finds proof in the border country of Scotland—a land of turmoil, poetry and song. On the English side of the border were strong and stately castles; on the Scottish side they were constructed for the most part on a limited scale. A few fortresses, like those of Jedburgh and Roxburgh, rivaled the Southron defences; but, after the usurpation of Edward the First, the Scots no longer attempted to defend their borders by strong places; they relied upon their own courage, and acted upon the familiar words of Douglas, that “they preferred to hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak.” In fact many of the strongest fortresses were torn down, and utterly demolished, that the enemy might not obtain a footing in the country. The south of Scotland was reduced to a waste desert. Even as late as the invasion of Cromwell the borders were left in this desolate condition. The Hall of Cessford, or of Branksome, was on the largest scale of the border fortresses in Scotland, but could not be compared with the baronial castles of the northern families of England.
The poem opens with a description of the customs of Branksome Hall, how nine and twenty knights, with as many attendant squires with belted sword and spur on heel,
That verse is worth a volume of history in emphasizing the irregular life of the time and place where every man’s charter was his sword. In the description of William of Deloraine and the holy monk digging up the grave of the wizard, Michael, Scott reveals the superstition of the times:
The adventure with the strange knight on his return, the gathering of the clans by the beacon light, the English forces drawn up before the castle, and the decision of the battle by the conflict of single champions, are all true to the spirit of the times. Everything is so weird and wild that even the dwarf, the book and magic charms do not seem entirely out of place in the story. We must remember that it is a land of tradition—a land aglow with the deeds of the Douglas and the Percy; and those interested in the Border History will be well repaid by reading carefully the notes accompanying the poem. It was a labor of love to the author, for it relates intimately to the valley of the Tweed. Here and there throughout the poem his enthusiasm breaks out for “the land of brown heath and shaggy wood—land of the mountain and the flood.” It would seem like sacrilege not to quote the familiar lines:
It is no wonder that Scott struck the chords of the national heart in this production, for it embodies so much of that unwritten history which had an oracle at every fireside.
As “Marmion” furnished us with a picture of James the Fourth, so the “Lady of the Lake” gives us a portrait of his son James the Fifth. He is said to have been handsome in person, and devoted to military exercises. He inherited his father’s love for justice, “was well educated, and like his ancestor, James the First, was a poet and musician.” His first care on taking the government was to restore the border country, of which we have just spoken, to something like order. He seized the principal chieftains and imprisoned them. He executed Adam Scott, known as king of the border, and John Armstrong, a free-booting chief, to whom the whole border country paid tribute. He thoroughly subdued these warlike chiefs, and it passed into a proverb, that “he made the rush bush keep the cow;” or, in other words, that cattle might remain safely in the fields without a guard.
He proceeded in the same manner against the Highland chiefs, and reduced the mountain country to a degree of quiet unknown for generations. Some of his acts are pronounced cruel by historians, but, in those bitter times, he was compelled to consider the welfare of the whole nation, and was compelled to be cruel in order to be kind.
James the Fifth also resembled his father in wandering, now and then, about Scotland in the dress of a private person. Many pleasing incidents are related of these royal visits in disguise, and the king in this way readily discovered the actual sentiments and feeling of the common people. Scott presents him in the “Lady of the Lake” in this character, after a long chase through the Highlands, which leaves him alone in the deep wilds of the Trosachs. His adventure in the disguise of Snowdoun’s knight, or James-Fitz-James, is doubly interesting as it presents a trait of the monarch’s character. The world likes true stories. It never outgrows the question of the child: Did it really happen? This is one of the marked features of these poems and romances. When we rise from the reading of Scott’s works we have in our minds something more than a mere story. We have not only the human qualities of love and friendship, but also the characteristics and features of the times, or the presentation of some well-known personage. The sketch of James-Fitz-James, from the time when he meets Helen Douglas near the margin of the Lake to the eventful day, when Snowdoun’s knight is revealed to her at Stirling Castle as Scotland’s King, is the faithful delineation of a real personage. He is not lifted into a realm of mere fancy, but everything is real and substantial about him. He is conducted to the island home which shelters the outlawed Douglas; around the walls hang trophies of the war and chase; spears, broadswords and battle-axes garnish with rude tapestry the sylvan hall; he sleeps upon the mountain heather, in the room
There is another character in the poem drawn true to life; that of the bold mountain chieftain Roderick Dhu, an outlawed, desperate man, representative of the Gaelic leaders driven back into their mountain fastnesses. In the harsh treatment which they received alike from kings and nobles, they found ready excuse for depredation. Scott puts this idea with great force in the lines of the Gaelic warrior:
The poem also reveals the old Highland custom of gathering the clans by the cross of fire, and there is nothing more dramatic in descriptive verse than the journey of that flaming cross, as it passes from hand to hand, calling the mourner from the house of death, and stopping midway the joyous marriage procession:
The personal bravery of the Gael and Saxon is well presented in the mountain march, and we venture a long quotation, which finds apology not only in its strength and beauty, but also in the fact that it reveals the character of the King and the Highland chief. The Saxon says:
The entire poem is so true to fact and scenery that it forms to-day a poetic guide-book to the country about Loch Katrine. The description of sunset upon the lake, the deep recesses, the lone mountain passes, the dashing cataracts, impart life, vigor and reality; and every line reveals the spirit and bravery of highland life.
We have been tempted to give an analysis of the plot of the poem, and to quote some of the noble passages which Scott speaks through the honest lips of Helen Douglas and her faithful Malcolm; but it would have taken us aside from the main purpose of our historic relation. The events of these poems, as related to the world’s history, are trifling and insignificant, when compared with the far-reaching policy of Louis the Eleventh, which formed the frame work of our last paper; and are in no way prophetic of the great events that follow in the reign of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, depicted in “The Monastery,” “The Abbott” and “Kenilworth;” but the rude life of these warlike days has passed into the world’s poetry, and the reader will trace, through the three poems which we have considered, the devoted faith of manhood and the abiding love of womanhood; ay more, perhaps discover a wholesome moral, which ought not to be unheeded in these days of broadening civilization.
By Prof. J. H. MONTGOMERY.
On the terms Annual and Biennial.—There is certainly much ambiguity between the terms annual and biennial. Those plants which germinate in the spring and die in the autumn are not very different from those which vegetate in the summer or autumn and flower and die in the succeeding spring or summer; nor indeed can I see much between them and plants like Agave, which live in a barren state for many years, and then flower once and die. It seems to be only a question of time required to concentrate the requisite energy to produce flowers and fruit. True annual plants may be divided into winter annuals and summer annuals. The former usually store up nutritive matter in the autumn to supply the flowering state in the spring; differing in this from summer annuals. But this is not constantly the case. The Agave is many years doing this. Although this plant flowers only once, we of course ought to have a term to distinguish it from the annuals. There are also the plants which produce stoles rooting at the end, such as the sympodes of Fragaria; in that case the plants are truly perennial. But see such plants as Epilobium, where the buds at the end of stoles alone remain alive during the winter, and produce the plants of the succeeding year; what are we to call these? We usually denominate them perennial. Then how separate them from those which are not aërial, but go through the same course? Then come such plants as Orchis, where a new tuber is formed by the side of the old one each year, usually at a very short distance from it, but sometimes at some considerable distance, as in Herminium; and the tuber which has flowered dies. The tuber is therefore a winter annual. Of course all these ought not to be confounded with the true perennials, where the same root lives and flowers at least several years in succession. DeCandolle’s terms, mono- and poly-carpic will not do; for they convey another idea. Mono- and poly-tocus, as suggested by A. Gray, are better, but here we do not distinguish between Agave and Brassica. And he has not attempted to distinguish these from Orchis (except by calling them perennial, as we all do), or Orchis from Fragaria. Here is a subject of much interest for those to study who pay attention to such matters.—Journal of Botany.
There is a strange plant with a curious flower growing in the damp valleys of New Granada, called Masdevallia chimaera. It is one of the unique productions of the vegetable kingdom. This plant has a dense cluster of thick leaves; the slender flower stems creep along and flower under the moss or leaves. The flower cup is divided into three lobes, and is whitish in color, with irregular spots of pink. So fantastic is this flower that a writer in La Nature says: “In looking at this strange flower one sees the colors of a nocturnal bird, the form of a large spider in the middle, with two small, piercing black eyes.”
Trees of Lake Chad.—Dr. Nachtigal, in his “African Journeys,” describes some curious trees that grow in the region of Lake Chad. The butter-tree, called in that country toso-kan, bears a green, round fruit, ripening into yellow, about as large as a small citron. This fruit consists of a nut resembling a horse-chestnut in color and in size, and a palatable, fleshy, smooth-skinned covering like a plum. The nut affords an oil, which solidifies under a slight decrease of temperature, and is used throughout North Africa as a substitute for butter. The Parpia biglobosa, of the same region, a leguminous plant, furnishes an excellent food in its seeds, which are eatable while still unripe. The ripe seeds contain a thick, saffron-colored marrow, inclosing black, shining grains. The meal made from them forms, when mixed with water or milk, a pap, which has a sweet and pleasant taste at first, but soon cloys. Relieved with sour milk or tamarind-juice, it forms a dish healthful and enjoyable to all. The wool-tree is the third characteristic tree of the country. It rises straight up, with thick, horizontal branches arranged in whorls, one above the other, and derives its name from its fruit, which bursts like pods of cotton, and discloses a similar mass of fibers, lustrous and soft as eider-down. This “wool” is used in stuffing cushions and mattresses and for the wadding-armor of heavy cavalry. It has the valuable property of never becoming so compact but that it can be restored to its original volume by a short exposure to the sun. The tree is a favorite place of refuge for the negroes in time of danger. Taking their children and goods up with them they secure an excellent natural fortress among the whorls of its limbs.—Popular Science Monthly.
Peach leaves curl and wither because of a fungus growth upon their surfaces. This vegetable parasite often ruins the first crop of leaves and unless they are replaced by a new growth early in the summer the tree is injured, often permanently.