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life among animals moves restlessly round the globe. Here also there is an incessant going and coming, flying and pushing, an endless change of home, to exchange a used-up past for a promising future.

No class of animals, high or low, escapes entirely the general law of movement, and if we read occasionally of flights of storks and shoals of herrings, these are mere anecdotes, nothing but single, detached features of that unwearied life which moves in grand and restless masses round the terrestrial globe.

Of the earliest migrations of animals, even of those whom man has bound up with his own existence, we know but very little. History, which tells us nothing of man's own first journeys, condescends not to speak of beings less noble. We guess, rather than we know, that the domestic animals at least left their common home in the great centre of all earthly life, Upper India, together with the first migrating nations. We conclude this mainly from the fact, that the races of men separated at a time when they were all shepherds. This we know from language; for in all idioms the words relating to pastoral life are cognate words, whilst in other respects the relationship is far more complicated and difficult to trace. A remarkable instance of this connection is the word 'daughter' in German, 'tochter,' from the Greek Juyarng, which is in Sanscrit 'duhitri,' and there means 'milking woman,' because we know that it was the custom of all pastoral nations to leave the milking of the herd to the daughter of the owner. The animals themselves maintain a certain connection with their first home on earth, for most of them have still some wild relations on the high tablelands of Middle Asia, where, in primitive fierceness, strength, and beauty, they rove about, and race for hundreds of miles along the valleys, to exchange exhausted lands for new rich pastures.

Animals, like plants, travel occasionally by means of the various agents whom nature herself places at their disposal. The giant rivers of the earth, the Ganges, Congo, Amazon, Orinoco, and Mississippi, annually float islands towards the ocean, covered with living inhabitants. Nothing is more common than to meet out at sea, thousands of miles from all land, masses of fucus floating on the surface of the water, and serving as a resting-place for small shell-fish,

unable to transport themselves by swimming, far from their native shore. Off the Moluccas and Philippines, sailors often meet, after a typhoon, with floating islands of matted wood, full of life, and covered with large trees, so as to deceive their eyes, and to endanger the safety of their vessels. Trunks of trees, also, are found drifting in the great currents of the ocean, perforated from end to end by the larvae of insects, and filled with the eggs of molluscs and fishes. At other times, they have been known to convey lizards and birds from land to land, and on the island of San Vincent there appeared once a huge boa-constrictor, twisted around a large, healthy cedar-tree, with which it had been torn from its home in the primeval forests of Brazil, and swallowed several sheep before it could be killed by the astonished natives. The gulf-stream, it is well known, carried, more than once, dead bodies of an unknown race, with unusually broad faces, to the Azores, and thus contributed to the discovery of America, by confirming Columbus in his faith in the existence of a New World. Greenlanders and Esquimaux have even been carried alive across the Atlantic, and found themselves, to their amazement, on the coast of England.

Nor are these always individual journeys. Currents of air carry myriads of vegetable seeds, and with them countless eggs of insects and infusoria all over the world. To settle this formerly disputed question, a German philosopher, Unger, placed several plates of glass, carefully cleaned, between the almost air-tight double sashes with which he protected his study against the rigours of a fierce northern climate. Six months later, he took them out, and examined the dust that had fallen on them through imperceptible cracks and crevices, with the microscope. The result was, that he discovered in the apparently inorgnanic dust the pollen of eight distinct plants, the seeds of eleven varieties of fungus, the eggs of four higher infusoria, and living individuals of at least one genus!

But also larger animals are thus carried about by as yet little known modes of conveyance. There exist, among others, countless examples, from the oldest times to our own, of mice and rats, insects, fishes, and reptiles, being carried off by storms and whirlwinds far from home. Only a few years ago, a long and

Far more remarkable, however, are the spontaneous, though casual, journeys of certain animals; as, for instance, those of the almost invisible gossamer of Europe, floating in the air on a silvery thread. They were a marvel to former days, and Chaucer even says

violent rain in the heart of France ing, leaves the deserts of Great Tartary, brought with it millions of well-sized | and feeds in summer to the north and fishes, which were eagerly devoured by east of Lake Aral; in the fall they migrate hosts of storks and crows, and other by the thousand to the north of India, birds, that came suddenly from the four and even to Persia. The hare of Siberia, quarters of the wind to share in the rich and the rat of Norway, the reindeer and and unexpected repast. Rains of frogs the musk-ox, all leave at their season are even more frequent, and have, since the Arctic regions, and travel, impelled by the days of Moses, occurred in almost hunger, to southern latitudes. More reevery country. gular are the lemmings, a kind of Lapland marmot. Scarcity of food or overpopulation drives them once or twice every twenty-five years, in prodigious bands, from the Kolai and Lapland Alps, one species to the east, another to the west. A terrible scourge, they devastate field and garden, ruin the harvest, and hardly spare the contents of houses. Turning neither to the right nor the left, they march on in a direct, straight line, undeterred by mountain, river, or lake, passing boldly through village and town, until their ranks, thinned by numerous enemies, are lost in dense forests, or they reach the Western Ocean, and there end both their journey and their life. Other bands go through Sweden, and perish in the Gulf of Bothnia, so that but rarely, and often after an interval of long years, small armies re-unite again, and turn their steps once more towards home.

As sore some wonder at the cause of thunder,

On ebb and flood, on gosomer, and mist, And on all thing till the cause is wist.' The tiny aeronauts may be seen, on almost any fine day in autumn, spinning a wondrously fine thread without fastening it, and then letting it waft about, until it is strong enough to carry them. All of a sudden they shoot out their web, and mount aloft, even when no air is stirring. And on these slender threads they travel we know not how far; for Darwin found, 300 miles from shore, thousands of these little red sailors of the air, each on its own line, fall down upon his vessel. Various and curious have been the surmises as to the precise nature of their mysterious power to float in the air. As they are mostly observed on misty days, when a heavy dew falls, it has been thought that their filmy thread might get entangled in the rising dew, and by its brisk evaporation be enabled to rise even with the additional weight of the spider. Others have discovered that the little creatures are quite familiar with the laws of electricity, and avail themselves of it for their airy voyages. Their threads are said to be negative electric, and consequently repelled by the lower atmosphere, but attracted by the higher layers, which are positive. This remains to be proved, and, in the meantime, we can but repeat: Hearken unto this; stand still and consider the wondrous works of God!

Among the well-known causes of such spontaneous and irregular migrations, none is so frequent and so all-powerful as hunger. The wild ass of the steppes of Asia, of whom it was said that the wilderness and barren lands are his dwell

Of the lower animals, molluscs and infusoria travel probably in largest numbers; their hosts are literally countless, and it is well known how they give a peculiar colour to large tracts of the ocean.

The most curious circumstance in the life of insects is their migration. They appear in large flights from unknown regions, in places where they have never been seen before, and continue their course, which nothing can check for a moment. They fly, they jump, they even crawl, for hosts of slow, clumsy caterpillars have been met with in the attempt to cross broad rivers. The more disgusting they are, the more persevering their labours to fill the earth. The bed-bug, that most hated, and yet most faithful companion of man in all parts of the globe, was not even known in Europe before the eleventh century, when it first appeared in Strasburg, and then, with the beds of exiled Huguenots, was brought to London. The far more useful silkworm, on the other hand, defies all our care and attention, and will not travel beyond the reach of his beloved friend and only food, the mulberry-tree, whose

leaf has to be destroyed by a vile caterpillar, to be changed into bright, beautiful silk. A native of Asia, this worm also was used in China long before any other nation knew of its existence; in the sixth century a monk brought the first eggs in his bosom to Constantinople, and the Emperor Justinian at once spread the new branch of industry zealously through Greece. When King Roger of Sicily conquered that land, he carried the silkworm home with him as his most precious booty, and introduced it into Sicily. From thence it was with equal care carried further north.

The bee loves the west so dearly, that it is not found beyond the Ural Mountains, and at the beginning of this century great pains had to be taken to carry it into Siberia, especially the district of Tobolsk. Unknown to America, it had no sooner reached its shores, in 1675, than it spread with amazing rapidity all over the continent. The fly of the English' soon became an abomination of the Indian, because their appearance in the woods was to them a sure sign of the coming of the white man. Even now it leads the great movement towards the west: first is heard the busy humming of the bee, then the squatter's weighty axe, and after him the German's strange jargon.

Ants also have their well-known migrations, and aimless as they seem to be to human eye, blindly as the little insects seem to wander in the dust, still they go as little astray as the countless stars in heaven. The black ant of the East Indies, especially, becomes even useful to man. They travel in countless bordes; the fields are black as far as the eye can reach, and field and forest are left bare behind them. Boldly they enter human dwellings; they sweep over roof and garret, cellar and kitchen; no corner, no crevice, ever so small, remains unexplored, and no rat or mouse, no cockroach or insect, can be found, after their instinct has moved these not unwelcome guests to continue their march.

Very different are the migrations of the fearful locust, that ancient symbol of mighty conquerors, laying bare country after country, as an overshadowing and dark cloud, pregnant with the wrath of Heaven. Their home is in the far East, in places near the desert. There they deposit their eggs in the sand; when hatched by the heat of the sun, their young

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emerge without wings from the ground; but, when mature, they rise on the first faint breeze that stirs, and fly, under the guidance of a leader, in masses so huge and so dense, that the air is darkened, and the sound of their wings seems as the murmur of the distant ocean. immense flights they travel from the east to the west, penetrating far into the interior of Africa, crossing apparently without difficulty the wide waters between Africa and Madagascar, and from Barbary to Italy. They have been seen in the heart of Germany, and a few have even been met with in Scotland. land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness, for they destroy all vegetable life with unfailing certainty, and thus often cause famine, whilst the myriads of corpses which they leave behind poison the air, and not unfrequently produce disease and pestilence. Well did the Jews of old know this fierce plague, and well can we understand how the angel of the bottomless pit could appear to the inspired seer in the form of a fearfullyarmed locust.

SATURDAY NIGHT.

The

It is good, when the week is ended, to look back upon its business and its toils, and mark wherein we have failed of our duties, or come short of what we should have done. The close of the week should be to each one of us like the close of our lives. Everything should be adjusted with the world and with our God, as if we were about to leave the one and appear before the other. This week is, indeed, one of the regular divisions of life; and when it closes, it should not be without its moral. From the end of one week to the end of another, the mind can easily stretch onward to the close of existence. It can sweep down the stream of time to the distant period when it will be entirely beyond human power to regulate human affairs. Saturday is the time for moral reflection. When for the mercies of the weak we are thankful, and when our past months and years come up in succession before us, we see the vanity of our youthful days and the vexations of manhood, and tremble at the approaching winter of age. It is then we should withdraw from the business and the cares of the world, and give a thought to our end, and to what we are to be hereafter.

DAYLIGHT IN THE ARCTIC

REGIONS.

For the first time in more than a month we saw daylight, and I cannot describe how cheering was the effect of those pure, white, brilliant rays, in spite of the iron landscape they illumined. It was no longer the setting light of the level arctic sun; not the twilight gleams of shifting colour, beautiful, but dim; not the faded, mock daylight, which sometimes glimmered for a half-hour at noon; but the true white, full golden day, which we had almost forgotten-so nearly, indeed, that I did not for some time suspect the cause of the unusual whiteness and brightness. Its effects upon the trees were superb. The twigs of the birch and the needles of the fir were coated with crystal, and sparkled like jets of jewels spouted up from the bosom of the immaculate snow. The clumps of birches can be compared to nothing but frozen mountains, frozen in full action, with their showery sheaves of spray arrested before they fell. It was wonderful-a fairy world we beheld; too beautiful to be lifeless, but every face we met reminded us the more that this was the chill beauty of death-of dead nature. Death was in the sparkling air, in the jewelled trees, in the spotless snow. Take off your mitten, and his hand will grasp yours like a vice; uncover your mouth, and your frozen lips will soon acknowledge his kiss.—Bayard Taylor.

THE BANK OF ENGLAND NOTE. The bank of England possesses no security which may not be known by any person who will make himself acquainted with the following characteristics of the paper, the plate-printing, and the typeprinting of the note. The paper is distinguished-1. by its peculiar colour, such as is neither sold in shops nor used for any other purpose; 2. by its thinness and transparency-qualities which prevent any portion of the printing on the note being washed or scratched out without a hole being made; 3. by its characteristic feel, which consists of a singular crispness and toughness, owing to the fact that the bank paper is made from new linen and cotton, not from rags; 4. by the peculiar wire mark or water mark, which can only be produced when the paper is in a state of pulp; consequently the forger must procure a mould, and make his own paper, both requiring

the skill of such first-rate artisans as are not to be met with in the haunts of crime; 5. by the three-deckle or rough edges. These edges are produced when the paper is in pulp; two notes being placed in the mould and divided lengthways. The deckle is the raw edge of the paper, and cannot be imitated by cutting. 6. By the strength of the paper; a banknote will lift a hundredweight, if carefully adjusted. The printing is of two kinds, type and plate; the paper is moistened by water driven through its pores by the pressure of the atmosphere; 30,000 double notes are thus moistened in the space of an hour; the ink used is made at the bank, from linseed oil and the charred husks and vines of Rhenish grapes; this gives a peculiar velvety black to the mark in the left-hand cor

ner of the note. The notes are numbered

by a machine which cannot err: and, lastly, are authorised by the signature of the clerk. The bank-notes are printed on the side of the paper which receives the watermark, so that, if the watermark be split, the unprinted surface only retains the slightest trace of that mark.

THE BROKEN DOLL
An infant is a selfish sprite;
But what of that? the sweet delight
Which from participation springs

Is quite unknown to these young things.
We elder children, then, will smile
At our dear little John awhile,
And bear with him, until he see
There is a sweet felicity

In pleasing more than only one,
Dear little, craving, selfish John.
He laughs, and thinks it a fine joke,
That he our new wax-doll has broke.
Anger will never teach him better;
We will the spirit and the letter
Of courtesy to him display,
By taking in a friendly way
These baby frolics, till he learn
True sport from mischief to discern.
Reproof a parent's province is;
A sister's discipline is this-
By studied kindness to effect
A little brother's young respect.
What is a doll?-a fragile toy;
What is its loss? if the dear boy,
Who half perceives he has done amiss,
Retain impression of the kiss
That follow'd instant on his cheek-
If the kind, loving words we speak
Of 'Never mind it,' 'We forgive'-
If these in his short memory live,
Only perchance for half-a-day-
Who minds a doll, if that should lay
The first impression in his mind
That sisters are to brothers kind?
For thus the broken doll may prove
Foundation to fraternal love.

HOME FINDINGS.

FINDING VIII.

'Juliana, my dear, you will be too late for the post. It goes at twelve; yet there you are, scribbling away at your crossed letter of eight pages, as if you had all the day before you.'

Oh! never fear, papa,' replied Juliana, a spoiled boarding-school miss of some sixteen years of age. 'I must finish this for my dear Letitia, or she will be so disappointed.'

'But, my dear, you ought to have written it yesterday. You knew as well as I that the post was early to-day, and that not being able to go myself, nor to trust the boy, I should have to depend on you to take some very important letters. But ever and always this procrastination!' And Juliana's father threw himself back in his gouty chair, and sighed impatiently.

Juliana thought to herself, 'What an old fidget papa is!' and then she went on with her long, crossed scrawl, abounding in 'dears,' and 'loves,' and emphatic dashes. The clock struck eleven.

'Juliana, I must insist on your coming to a conclusion. The walk will consume nearly half-an-hour, and I know to my cost how long it takes you to put on your bonnet.'

'Papa, what nonsense! Just as if I should care how I put on my things to go to a country post-office. One moment, and I have just done.' ('With warmest love, and many, many kisses, your ever affectionate though melancholy JULIANA.') 'Now, papa, I will not be five minutes. Stay! I must seal my letter. Oh dear! where is my tiny love of a seal?'

Juliana searched her writing-desk, her work-box, her drawing-box, in vain. Meanwhile, her papa was almost stamping with impatience, and the clock chimed a quarter past eleven.

Oh! here it is, in the pocket of my apron. Now, papa.'

Up flew Juliana to her bedroom, two or three steps at a time. She had nearly attired herself for her walk, when she remembered that there was a chance of her meeting the new curate in the village. "This old straw bonnet will never do,' she thought. 'I look such a fright in it.' So she put it off again, and taking a pale green silk one out of a bandbox, was proceeding to arrange it on her elaborate curls, when the voice of her father sounded from the bottom of the stairs in accents

so unlike his usual mild tones, that she ran down-stairs all in a flurry, with her bonnet-strings untied.

Mr Kerr was indeed very angry, and his face and manner, as he told her that the clock had chimed the half-hour, and gave the important missives, together with her own to her dear Letitia, into her yet ungloved hand, convinced her that he was no longer to be trifled with. She hastened through the garden, and down the hill towards the village, tying her bonnet and putting on her gloves as she went.

But the conventional school-girl, trained to walk in a stiff double row of her fellows, with the stately governesses bringing up the rear, and on the watch to repress any vivacious movement, was ill fitted to bear the exertion of a run up-hill and down-hill, such as she was now taking; so that the natural consequence of her unwonted exertion soon reached her in the shape of what is vulgarly called a 'stitch in the side.' This took her so suddenly and so violently, that she was compelled to stop, and walk very quietly up the abrupt ascent towards the village; and while thus slowly progressing, the village clock rang the quarter to twelve.

Juliana well understood the importance of posting her papa's letters in time, and it was only her blameable habit of procrastination, and not any real indifference about her errand, that had caused her to run so great a risk of being too late after all. "There is time enough,' has been the ruin of many important interests; even of that most weighty one of all, the salvation of an immortal soul. Having with much effort surmounted the abrupt ascent, there was still the long village street to traverse, on the left-hand of which, mid-way to the post-office, stood the church. As Juliana passed the gates, she cast an anxious glance up at the clock. Seven minutes to twelve.

Oh! how the poor girl tugged and strained to overcome the remaining distance. Too late! the post-office window closed inexorably down just as she reached it, and to her knockings and timid supplications, she could only obtain the cool, matter-of-fact answer, "The bags are being made up; we can take in no more letters.'

The father could not but forgive his child at the sight of her sincere repentance, but Juliana could not forgive herself. Nor were the results of her delay

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