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Rh darks, and so forth. Nor is it only their varying background that dooms them to visibility. Their flight carries them with equal speed through a series of metamorphoses of their own aspect. Now, for an instant of their passage, they are themselves practically black, because of being in deep shadow, and are perhaps seen against a bright sky-space. The next has brought them out into full sunlight, and they blaze bright against a new background of perhaps inky darkness. The principle of the inevitable visibility produced by this swift succession of visible moments, though alternating with repeated vanishings, is well illustrated by the complete visibility of landscape through the cracks in

 In this figure the two inconspicuous butterflies in the middle show the effacing-power of pattern when it repeats the background. At the left a butterfly of the same costume is represented passing through a moment of illumination too great to admit of its patterns' still cutting it apart into notes of the background. At the right a butterfly of the same pattern Is going through the reverse experience, being for an instant too much in shadow for its pattern to save It from appearing as one single dark form against the light space beyond. This illustration reminds one how perpetually such vicissitudes must succeed each other in the life of such species.

a board fence, to the eyes of any one passing swiftly by. The view recurs again and again to the retina, in time to keep up the image. This is why the average observer thinks he sees these butterflies through all their course. This plate only goes so far as to show how fatal to invisibility it is to have the wrong background. Fig. 6 illustrates the above explanation of that perpetual disharmony between flying species and their background which plays fast and loose, part of every second, with all their patterns' power to cut their forms into deceptive shapes, by making them, so constantly, first so bright against dark that all parts, even the blackest, fall into one light silhouette, and then so dark in shadow, against bright light, that even their white parts join the rest in one dark silhouette. These two climaxes of visibility, first one and then the other, occur in the flight of a bird or butterfly often at the rate of several a second, while, during the rest of the second, the creature is effaced by passing a background that his costume matches, and by


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556 being, as in the case of the butterflies A and B, midway between the extremes, favored by the momentary illumination's being neither too great nor too small. Even in the climaxes of conspicuousness his patterns still perpetually lessen his visibility in direct ratio to their strength. And when he is chased by an enemy every instant of confusion as to where he leaves off and the background begins must often save him, so that the brighter his light marks and the deeper his dark ones, the greater the range of background" he can meet without silhouetting as an entirety, and being for the instant conspicuous. One advantage which patterns do certainly sacrifice in purchasing the above advantages is that, although their Wearer is never seen entire until the background is too dark for his black, or too light for his white, yet it is true that, on the other hand, some note of a pied costume is always to be detected moving when the wearer moves. In this respect, monotone, whenever at rare moments it exactly matches its background, has the advantage. This fact additionally condemns the aerial animal to detection when he moves, yet it is often rather his motion than his form that becomes noticeable, because each of his patterns still has the chance of passing for something beyond him.

Fig. 7 shows one of the cardinal effects of patterns. C is a bird patterned in white, black and gray. Seen against the sky he loses his white part—against the dark he loses his dark part—and against the gray, his gray part.

Now when we find that pattern works always for concealment in direct ratio to its own conspicuousness and elaboration, there remains no vestige of evidence that the specific recognizability of the of course constant pattern of each species has had, even to the slightest degree, a hand in the evolution of such pattern. And those who would still claim for conspicuous patterns any other reason for being than concealment of their wearer must first show what patterns could in the slightest degree better serve procryptic ends, under the circumstances, than the very ones now in use; and also what ones would less aid identification.

There are two groups of supposed warningly-colored animals that seem particularly to lend themselves to the exposure of the weakness of

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Rh these theories. These are the carnivora which bear anal stink-glands, and, among insects, those armed with stings at their rear end. In the first place, very few of these species wear the so-called badge conspicuously

near their weapon, or anywhere that would call attention to the situation of such weapon. (Entomologists have been keen to cite any


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558 supposed cases of the contrary arrangement, any apparent association of "badge" and armament.) In the second place, the coloration of all the members of these groups proves to be the most perfect imaginable concealing coloration, picturing the details in the most exquisitely true colors of the very background against which it is most dangerous for their wearer to be detected (commonly that of their feeding ground). While, on the other hand, apparently no brilliant colors at all are found in any branch of the world of above-ground animal life, either in air or water, where no such colors are typical of any of the animal's backgrounds, no matter how much these animals may need advertising.

The famous black and gold, the supposed blazon of offensiveness, so characteristic of the wasp and bee family, is the utmost picture of the sunlit vegetation which they haunt, with the golden stamens of flowers, the yellow of fruit, and the dark interstices. Were this coloration really such a blazon, why does nature deny it to the hordes of stinging ants that often swarm within a few feet of the wasps, but wear only the comparatively dull tones that match the bark and earth surfaces to which their general lack of wings condemns their lives? (Such red as is found in ants' costumes is a universal detail of the forest débris.)

So ingrained is the time-honored conception that such a creature as a golden-patterned wasp, as he bustles among the flowers, owes his conspicuousness at least in part to his costume, that only actual personal experiment with the laws herein shown can dispel it. Not till naturalists give up collecting records of cases of conspicuousness, and begin to inquire by experiment whether any more procryptic coloration could, under the animal's circumstances, be devised, will they have begun at all the study of this subject. One day's investigation of this kind would greatly astonish them, and they would end by discovering that it is unequivocally the wasp's actions that condemn it to so much visibility, and this in spite of its wearing, as far as they can discover, every available form of concealment-coloration.

As to the supposed warningly colored carnivores, the light-colored marks that are considered as badges are often prominently concentrated upon the animal's face and front top, and in no case equally prominently arranged near his rear. Being always on the creature's sky-lit surfaces, they obliterate him to the eyes of beholders from a lower level, such as the seeing portion of his small terrestrial victims. In doing this they fall into the universal class of concealing coloration. Fig. 12 illustrates this function, and the previous illustrations have shown that this same white, so perfect an auxiliary of the animal's feeding operations, is not, in other views, unfavorable to its concealment.

Let us now find out what traits and habits in these groups do constantly go together. We find among the stench-bearing carnivores, just as among the above insects, that the bright patterns are only found on


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Rh such species as have, in their background, colors that these patterns match, to the eyes of certain other animals whose sight they need to avoid. They are found on skunks, civets, badgers, teledus, ratels, for instance, and the animal life devoured by these carnivores is said to consist largely of worms, insects and mice, most of which are presumably either caught on the surface or dug out of the turf, i. e., procured on a lower level than the predator's head. Such of this list of

victims as can see would certainly have much more chance to escape, were not what would be a dark-looming predator's head converted, by its white sky-counterfeiting, into a deceptive imitation of mere sky. Now let us see whether such stench-gland bearers as hunt in a bolder way wear the white "badges." We find at once that minks, martens and most weasels, though well-armed with the same glands, have no top white, and, instead of hunting along the earth's surface or putting


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Rh had been shot up with a snap through a trap door in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts, they seemed less substantial in their faded coats than their own narrow shadows falling so black across the white road: the military and grotesque shadows of twenty years of war and conquests. They had an outlandish appearance of two imperturbable bonzes of the religion of the sword. And General D'Hubert, also one of the ex-masters of Europe, laughed at these serious phantoms standing in his way.

Said one, indicating the laughing General with a jerk of the head: "A merry companion, that."

"There are some of us that haven't smiled from the day The Other went away," remarked his comrade.

A violent impulse to set upon and beat those unsubstantial wraiths to the ground frightened General D'Hubert. He ceased laughing suddenly. His desire now was to get rid of them, to get them away from his sight quickly before he lost control of himself. He wondered at the fury he felt rising in his breast. But he had no time to look into that peculiarity just then.

"I understand your wish to be done with me as quickly as possible. Don't let us waste time in empty ceremonies. Do you see that wood there at the foot of that slope? Yes, the wood of pines. Let us meet there to-morrow at sunrise. I will bring with me my sword or my pistols, or both if you like."

The seconds of General Feraud looked at each other.

"Pistols, General," said the cuirassier.

"So be it. Au revoir—to-morrow morning. Till then let me advise you to keep close if you don't want the gendarmerie making inquiries about you before it gets dark. Strangers are rare in this part of the country."

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240 They saluted in silence. General D'Hubert, turning his back on their retreating forms, stood still in the middle of the road for a long time, biting his lower lip and looking on the ground. Then he began to walk straight before him, thus retracing his steps till he found himself before the park gate of his intended's house. Dusk had fallen. Motionless he stared through the bars at the front of the house, gleaming clear beyond the thickets and trees. Footsteps scrunched on the gravel, and presently a tall stooping shape emerged from the lateral alley following the inner side of the park wall.

Le Chevalier de Valmassigue, uncle of the adorable Adèle, ex-brigadier in the army of the Princes, bookbinder in Altona, afterwards shoemaker (with a great reputation for elegance in the fit of ladies' shoes) in another small German town, wore silk stockings on his lean shanks, low shoes with silver buckles, a brocaded waistcoat. A long-skirted coat, à la française, covered loosely his thin, bowed back. A small three-cornered hat rested on a lot of powdered hair, tied in a queue.

"Monsieur le Chevalier," called General D'Hubert, softly.

"What? You here again, mon ami? Have you forgotten something?"

"By heavens! that's just it. I have forgotten something. I am come to tell you of it. No—outside. Behind this wall. It's too ghastly a thing to be let in at all where she lives."

The Chevalier came out at once with that benevolent resignation some old people display towards the fugue of youth. Older by a quarter of a century than General D'Hubert, he looked upon him in the secret of his heart as a rather troublesome youngster in love. He had heard his enigmatical words very well, but attached no undue importance to what a mere man of forty so hard

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Rh hit was likely to do or say. The turn of mind of the generation of Frenchmen grown up during the years of his exile was almost unintelligible to him. Their sentiments appeared to him unduly violent, lacking fineness and measure, their language needlessly exaggerated. He joined calmly the General on the road, and they made a few steps in silence, the General trying to master his agitation, and get proper control of his voice.

"It is perfectly true; I forgot something. I forgot till half an hour ago that I had an urgent affair of honour on my hands. It's incredible, but it is so!"

All was still for a moment. Then in the profound evening silence of the countryside the clear, aged voice of the Chevalier was heard trembling slightly: "Monsieur! That's an indignity."

It was his first thought. The girl born during his exile, the posthumous daughter of his poor brother murdered by a band of Jacobins, had grown since his return very dear to his old heart, which had been starving on mere memories of affection for so many years. "It is an inconceivable thing, I say! A man settles such affairs before he thinks of asking for a young girl's hand. Why! If you had forgotten for ten days longer, you would have been married before your memory returned to you. In my time men did not forget such things—nor yet what is due to the feelings of an innocent young woman. If I did not respect them myself, I would qualify your conduct in a way which you would not like."

General D'Hubert relieved himself frankly by a groan. "Don't let that consideration prevent you. You run no risk of offending her mortally."

But the old man paid no attention to this lover's nonsense. It's doubtful whether he even heard. "What is it? "he asked. "What's the nature of . . .?"

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242 "Call it a youthful folly, Monsieur le Chevalier. An inconceivable, incredible result of . . ." He stopped short. "He will never believe the story," he thought. "He will only think I am taking him for a fool, and get offended." General D'Hubert spoke up again: "Yes, originating in youthful folly, it has become . . ."

The Chevalier interrupted: "Well, then it must be arranged."

"Arranged?"

"Yes, no matter at what cost to your amour propre. You should have remembered you were engaged. You forgot that, too, I suppose. And then you go and forget your quarrel. It's the most hopeless exhibition of levity I ever heard of."

"Good heavens, Monsieur! You don't imagine I have been picking up this quarrel last time I was in Paris, or anything of the sort, do you?"

"Eh! What matters the precise date of your insane conduct," exclaimed the Chevalier, testily. "The principal thing is to arrange it."

Noticing General D'Hubert getting restive and trying to place a word, the old émigré raised his hand, and added with dignity, "I've been a soldier, too. I would never dare suggest a doubtful step to the man whose name my niece is to bear. I tell you that entre galants hommes an affair can always be arranged."

"But saperlotte, Monsieur le Chevalier, it's fifteen or sixteen years ago. I was a lieutenant of hussars then."

The old Chevalier seemed confounded by the vehemently despairing tone of this information. "You were a lieutenant of hussars sixteen years ago," he mumbled in a dazed manner.

"Why, yes! You did not suppose I was made a general in my cradle like a royal prince."

In the deepening purple twilight of the fields spread

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Rh with vine leaves, backed by a low band of sombre crimson in the west, the voice of the old ex-officer in the army of the Princes sounded collected, punctiliously civil.

"Do I dream? Is this a pleasantry? Or am I to understand that you have been hatching an affair of honour for sixteen years?"

"It has clung to me for that length of time. That is my precise meaning. The quarrel itself is not to be explained easily. We met on the ground several times during that time, of course."

"What manners! What horrible perversion of manliness! Nothing can account for such inhumanity but the sanguinary madness of the Revolution which has tainted a whole generation," mused the returned émigré in a low tone. "Who's your adversary?" he asked a little louder.

"My adversary? His name is Feraud."

Shadowy in his tricorne and old-fashioned clothes, like a bowed, thin ghost of the ancien régime, the Chevalier voiced a ghostly memory. "I can remember the feud about little Sophie Derval, between Monsieur de Brissac, Captain in the Bodyguards, and d'Anjorrant (not the pock-marked one, the other—the Beau d'Anjorrant, as they called him). They met three times in eighteen months in a most gallant manner. It was the fault of that little Sophie, too, who would keep on playing . . ."

"This is nothing of the kind," interrupted General D'Hubert. He laughed a little sardonically. "Not at all so simple," he added. "Nor yet half so reasonable," he finished, inaudibly, between his teeth, and ground them with rage.

After this sound nothing troubled the silence for a long time, till the Chevalier asked, without animation: "What is he—this Feraud?"

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244 "Lieutenant of hussars, too—I mean, he's a general. A Gascon. Son of a blacksmith, I believe."

"There! I thought so. That Bonaparte had a special predilection for the canaille. I don't mean this for you, D'Hubert. You are one of us, though you have served this usurper, who . . ."

"Let's leave him out of this," broke in General D'Hubert.

The Chevalier shrugged his peaked shoulders. "Feraud of sorts. Offspring of a blacksmith and some village troll. See what comes of mixing yourself up with that sort of people."

"You have made shoes yourself, Chevalier."

"Yes. But I am not the son of a shoemaker. Neither are you, Monsieur D'Hubert. You and I have something that your Bonaparte's princes, dukes, and marshals have not, because there's no power on earth that could give it to them," retorted the émigré, with, the rising animation of a man who has got hold of a hopeful argument. "Those people don't exist—all these Ferauds. Feraud! What is Feraud? A va-nu-pieds disguised into a general by a Corsican adventurer masquerading as an emperor. There is no earthly reason for a D'Hubert to s'encanailler by a duel with a person of that sort. You can make your excuses to him perfectly well. And if the manant takes into his head to decline them, you may simply refuse to meet him."

"You say I may do that?"

"I do. With the clearest conscience."

"Monsieur le Chevalier! To what do you think you have returned from your emigration?"

This was said in such a startling tone that the old man raised sharply his bowed head, glimmering silvery white under the points of the little tricorne. For a time he made no sound.

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Rh "God knows!" he said at last, pointing with a slow and grave gesture at a tall roadside cross mounted on a block of stone, and stretching its arms of forged iron all black against the darkening red band in the sky—"God knows! If it were not for this emblem, which I remember seeing on this spot as a child, I would wonder to what we who remained faithful to God and our king have returned. The very voices of the people have changed."

"Yes, it is a changed France," said General D'Hubert. He seemed to have regained his calm. His tone was slightly ironic. "Therefore I cannot take your advice. Besides, how is one to refuse to be bitten by a dog that means to bite? It's impracticable. Take my word for it—Feraud isn't a man to be stayed by apologies or refusals. But there are other ways. I could, for instance, send a messenger with a word to the brigadier of the gendarmerie in Senlac. He and his two friends are liable to arrest on my simple order. It would make some talk in the army, both the organized and the disbanded—especially the disbanded. All canaille! All once upon a time the companions in arms of Armand D'Hubert. But what need a D'Hubert care what people that don't exist may think? Or, better still, I might get my brother-in-law to send for the mayor of the village and give him a hint. No more would be needed to get the three 'brigands' set upon with flails and pitchforks and hunted into some nice, deep, wet ditch—and nobody the wiser! It has been done only ten miles from here to three poor devils of the disbanded Red Lancers of the Guard going to their homes. What says your conscience, Chevalier? Can a D'Hubert do that thing to three men who do not exist?"

A few stars had come out on the blue obscurity,

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246 clear as crystal, of the sky. The dry, thin voice of the Chevalier spoke harshly: "Why are you telling me all this?"

The General seized the withered old hand with a strong grip. "Because I owe you my fullest confidence. Who could tell Adèle but you? You understand why I dare not trust my brother-in-law nor yet my own sister. Chevalier! I have been so near doing these things that I tremble yet. You don't know how terrible this duel appears to me. And there's no escape from it."

He murmured after a pause, "It's a fatality," dropped the Chevalier's passive hand, and said in his ordinary conversational voice, "I shall have to go without seconds. If it is my lot to remain on the ground, you at least will know all that can be made known of this affair."

The shadowy ghost of the ancien régime seemed to have become more bowed during the conversation. "How am I to keep an indifferent face this evening before these two women?" he groaned. "General! I find it very difficult to forgive you."

General D'Hubert made no answer.

"Is your cause good, at least?"

"I am innocent."

This time he seized the Chevalier's ghostly arm above the elbow, and gave it a mighty squeeze. "I must kill him!" he hissed, and opening his hand strode away down the road.

The delicate attentions of his adoring sister had secured for the General perfect liberty of movement in the house where he was a guest. He had even his own entrance through a small door in one corner of the orangery. Thus he was not exposed that evening to the necessity of dissembling his agitation before the calm ignorance of the other inmates. He was glad of

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Rh it. It seemed to him that if he had to open his lips he would break out into horrible and aimless imprecations, start breaking furniture, smashing china and glass. From the moment he opened the private door and while ascending the twenty-eight steps of a winding staircase, giving access to the corridor on which his room opened, he went through a horrible and humiliating scene in which an infuriated madman with blood-shot eyes and a foaming mouth played inconceivable havoc with everything inanimate that may be found in a well-appointed dining-room. When he opened the door of his apartment the fit was over, and his bodily fatigue was so great that he had to catch at the backs of the chairs while crossing the room to reach a low and broad divan on which he let himself fall heavily. His moral prostration was still greater. That brutality of feeling which he had known only when charging the enemy, sabre in hand, amazed this man of forty, who did not recognize in it the instinctive fury of his menaced passion. But in his mental and bodily exhaustion this passion got cleared, distilled, refined into a sentiment of melancholy despair at having, perhaps, to die before he had taught this beautiful girl to love him.

That night, General D'Hubert stretched out on his back with his hands over his eyes, or lying on his breast with his face buried in a cushion, made the full pilgrimage of emotions. Nauseating disgust at the absurdity of the situation, doubt of his own fitness to conduct his existence, and mistrust of his best sentiments (for what the devil did he want to go to Fouché for?)—he knew them all in turn. "I am an idiot, neither more nor less," he thought—"A sensitive idiot. Because I overheard two men talking in a café. . . . I am an idiot afraid of lies—whereas in life it is only truth that matters."

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248 Several times he got up and, walking in his socks in order not to be heard by anybody downstairs, drank all the water he could find in the dark. And he tasted the torments of jealousy, too. She would marry somebody else. His very soul writhed. The tenacity of that Feraud, the awful persistence of that imbecile brute, came to him with the tremendous force of a relentless destiny. General D'Hubert trembled as he put down the empty water ewer. "He will have me," he thought. General D'Hubert was tasting every emotion that life has to give. He had in his dry mouth the faint sickly flavour of fear, not the excusable fear before a young girl's candid and amused glance, but the fear of death and the honourable man's fear of cowardice.

But if true courage consists in going out to meet an odious danger from which our body, soul, and heart recoil together, General D'Hubert had the opportunity to practise it for the first time in his life. He had charged exultingly at batteries and at infantry squares, and ridden with messages through a hail of bullets without thinking anything about it. His business now was to sneak out unheard, at break of day, to an obscure and revolting death. General D'Hubert never hesitated. He carried two pistols in a leather bag which he slung over his shoulder. Before he had crossed the garden his mouth was dry again. He picked two oranges. It was only after shutting the gate after him that he felt a slight faintness.

He staggered on, disregarding it, and after going a few yards regained the command of his legs. In the colourless and pellucid dawn the wood of pines detached its columns of trunks and its dark green canopy very clearly against the rocks of the grey hillside. He kept his eyes fixed on it steadily, and sucked at an orange as he walked. That temperamental

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Rh coolness in the face of danger which had made him an officer liked by his men and appreciated by his superiors was gradually asserting itself. It was like going into battle. Arriving at the edge of the wood he sat down on a boulder, holding the other orange in his hand, and reproached himself for coming so ridiculously early on the ground. Before very long, however, he heard the swishing of bushes, footsteps on the hard ground, and the sounds of a disjointed, loud conversation. A voice somewhere behind him said boastfully, "He's game for my bag."

He thought to himself, "Here they are. What's this about game? Are they talking of me?" And becoming aware of the other orange in his hand, he thought further, "These are very good oranges. Léonie's own tree. I may just as well eat this orange now instead of flinging it away."

Emerging from a wilderness of rocks and bushes, General Feraud and his seconds discovered General D'Hubert engaged in peeling the orange. They stood still, waiting till he looked up. Then the seconds raised their hats, while General Feraud, putting his hands behind his back, walked aside a little way.

"I am compelled to ask one of you, messieurs, to act for me. I have brought no friends. Will you?"

The one-eyed cuirassier said judicially, "That cannot be refused."

The other veteran remarked, "It's awkward all the same."

"Owing to the state of the people's minds in this part of the country there was no one I could trust safely with the object of your presence here," explained General D'Hubert, urbanely.

They saluted, looked round, and remarked both together:

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250 "Poor ground."

"It's unfit."

"Why bother about ground, measurements, and so on? Let us simplify matters. Load the two pairs of pistols. I will take those of General Feraud, and let him take mine. Or, better still, let us take a mixed pair. One of each pair. Then let us go into the wood and shoot at sight, while you remain outside. We did not come here for ceremonies, but for war—war to the death. Any ground is good enough for that. If I fall, you must leave me where I lie and clear out. It wouldn't be healthy for you to be found hanging about here after that."

It appeared after a short parley that General Feraud was willing to accept these conditions. While the seconds were loading the pistols, he could be heard whistling, and was seen to rub his hands with perfect contentment. He flung off his coat briskly, and General D'Hubert took off his own and folded it carefully on a stone.

"Suppose you take your principal to the other side of the wood and let him enter exactly in ten minutes from now," suggested General D'Hubert, calmly, but feeling as if he were giving directions for his own execution. This, however, was his last moment of weakness. "Wait. Let us compare watches first."

He pulled out his own. The officer with the chipped nose went over to borrow the watch of General Feraud. They bent their heads over them for a time.

"That's it. At four minutes to six by yours. Seven to by mine."

It was the cuirassier who remained by the side of General D'Hubert, keeping his one eye fixed immovably on the white face of the watch he held in the palm of his hand. He opened his mouth, waiting for the beat

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Rh of the last second long before he snapped out the word, "Avancez."

General D'Hubert moved on, passing from the glaring sunshine of the Provençal morning into the cool and aromatic shade of the pines. The ground was clear between the reddish trunks, whose multitude, leaning at slightly different angles, confused his eye at first. It was like going into battle. The commanding quality of confidence in himself woke up in his breast. He was all to his affair. The problem was how to kill the adversary. Nothing short of that would free him from this imbecile nightmare. "It's no use wounding that brute," thought General D'Hubert. He was known as a resourceful officer. His comrades years ago used also to call him The Strategist. And it was a fact that he could think in the presence of the enemy. Whereas Feraud had been always a mere fighter—but a dead shot, unluckily.

"I must draw his fire at the greatest possible range," said General D'Hubert to himself.

At that moment he saw something white moving far off between the trees—the shirt of his adversary. He stepped out at once between the trunks, exposing himself freely; then, quick as lightning, leaped back. It had been a risky move but it succeeded in its object. Almost simultaneously with the pop of a shot a small piece of bark chipped off by the bullet stung his ear painfully.

General Feraud, with one shot expended, was getting cautious. Peeping round the tree, General D'Hubert could not see him at all. This ignorance of the foe's whereabouts carried with it a sense of insecurity. General D'Hubert felt himself abominably exposed on his flank and rear. Again something white fluttered in his sight. Ha! The enemy was still on his front,

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252 then. He had feared a turning movement. But apparently General Feraud was not thinking of it. General D'Hubert saw him pass without special haste from one tree to another in the straight line of approach. With great firmness of mind General D'Hubert stayed his hand. Too far yet. He knew he was no marksman. His must be a waiting game—to kill.

Wishing to take advantage of the greater thickness of the trunk, he sank down to the ground. Extended at full length, head on to his enemy, he had his person completely protected. Exposing himself would not do now, because the other was too near by this time. A conviction that Feraud would presently do something rash was like balm to General D'Hubert's soul. But to keep his chin raised off the ground was irksome, and not much use either. He peeped round, exposing a fraction of his head with dread, but really with little risk. His enemy, as a matter of fact, did not expect to see anything of him so far down as that. General D'Hubert caught a fleeting view of General Feraud shifting trees again with deliberate caution. "He despises my shooting," he thought, displaying that insight into the mind of his antagonist which is of such great help in winning battles. He was confirmed in his tactics of immobility. "If I could only watch my rear as well as my front!" he thought anxiously, longing for the impossible.

It required some force of character to lay his pistols down; but, on a sudden impulse, General D'Hubert did this very gently—one on each side of him. In the army he had been looked upon as a bit of a dandy because he used to shave and put on a clean shirt on the days of battle. As a matter of fact, he had always been very careful of his personal appearance. In a man of nearly forty, in love with a young and charming girl, this

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Rh praiseworthy self-respect may run to such little weaknesses as, for instance, being provided with an elegant little leather folding-case containing a small ivory comb, and fitted with a piece of looking-glass on the outside. General D'Hubert, his hands being free, felt in his breeches' pockets for that implement of innocent vanity excusable in the possessor of long, silky moustaches. He drew it out, and then with the utmost coolness and promptitude turned himself over on his back. In this new attitude, his head a little raised, holding the little looking-glass just clear of his tree, he squinted into it with his left eye, while the right kept a direct watch on the rear of his position. Thus was proved Napoleon's saying, that "for a French soldier, the word impossible does not exist." He had the right tree nearly filling the field of his little mirror.

"If he moves from behind it," he reflected with satisfaction, "I am bound to see his legs. But in any case he can't come upon me unawares."

And sure enough he saw the boots of General Feraud flash in and out, eclipsing for an instant everything else reflected in the little mirror. He shifted its position accordingly. But having to form his judgment of the change from that indirect view he did not realize that now his feet and a portion of his legs were in plain sight of General Feraud.

General Feraud had been getting gradually impressed by the amazing cleverness with which his enemy was keeping cover. He had spotted the right tree with bloodthirsty precision. He was absolutely certain of it. And yet he had not been able to glimpse as much as the tip of an ear. As he had been looking for it at the height of about five feet ten inches from the ground it was no great wonder—but it seemed very wonderful to General Feraud.

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254 The first view of these feet and legs determined a rush of blood to his head. He literally staggered behind his tree, and had to steady himself against it with his hand. The other was lying on the ground, then! On the ground! Perfectly still, too! Exposed! What could it mean? . . . The notion that he had knocked over his adversary at the first shot entered then General Feraud's head. Once there it grew with every second of attentive gazing, overshadowing every other supposition—irresistible, triumphant, ferocious.

"What an ass I was to think I could have missed him," he muttered to himself. "He was exposed en plein—the fool!—for quite a couple of seconds."

General Feraud gazed at the motionless limbs, the last vestiges of surprise fading before an unbounded admiration of his own deadly skill with the pistol.

"Turned up his toes! By the god of war, that was a shot!" he exulted mentally. "Got it through the head, no doubt, just where I aimed, staggered behind that tree, rolled over on his back, and died."

And he stared! He stared, forgetting to move, almost awed, almost sorry. But for nothing in the world would he have had it undone. Such a shot!—such a shot! Rolled over on his back and died!

For it was this helpless position, lying on the back, that shouted its direct evidence at General Feraud! It never occurred to him that it might have been deliberately assumed by a living man. It was inconceivable. It was beyond the range of sane supposition. There was no possibility to guess the reason for it. And it must be said, too, that General D'Hubert's turned-up feet looked thoroughly dead. General Feraud expanded his lungs for a stentorian shout to his seconds, but, from what he felt to be an excessive scrupulousness, refrained for a while.

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Rh "I will just go and see first whether he breathes yet," he mumbled to himself, leaving carelessly the shelter of his tree. This move was immediately perceived by the resourceful General D'Hubert. He concluded it to be another shift, but when he lost the boots out of the field of the mirror he became uneasy. General Feraud had only stepped a little out of the line, but his adversary could not possibly have supposed him walking up with perfect unconcern. General D'Hubert, beginning to wonder at what had become of the other, was taken unawares so completely that the first warning of danger consisted in the long, early-morning shadow of his enemy falling aslant on his outstretched legs. He had not even heard a footfall on the soft ground between the trees!

It was too much even for his coolness. He jumped up thoughtlessly, leaving the pistols on the ground. The irresistible instinct of an average man (unless totally paralyzed by discomfiture) would have been to stoop for his weapons, exposing himself to the risk of being shot down in that position. Instinct, of course, is irreflective. It is its very definition. But it may be an inquiry worth pursuing whether in reflective mankind the mechanical promptings of instinct are not affected by the customary mode of thought. In his young days, Armand D'Hubert, the reflective, promising officer, had emitted the opinion that in warfare one should "never cast back on the lines of a mistake." This idea, defended and developed in many discussions, had settled into one of the stock notions of his brain, had become a part of his mental individuality. Whether it had gone so inconceivably deep as to affect the dictates of his instinct, or simply because, as he himself declared afterwards, he was "too scared to remember the confounded pistols," the fact is that General D'Hubert never

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256 to stoop for them. Instead of going back on his mistake, he seized the rough trunk with both hands, and swung himself behind it with such impetuosity that, going right round in the very flash and report of the pistol-shot, he reappeared on the other side of the tree face to face with General Feraud. This last, completely unstrung by such a show of agility on the part of a dead man, was trembling yet. A very faint mist of smoke hung before his face which had an extraordinary aspect, as if the lower jaw had come unhinged.

"Not missed!" he croaked, hoarsely, from the depths of a dry throat.

This sinister sound loosened the spell that had fallen on General D'Hubert's senses. "Yes, missed—à bout portant," he heard himself saying, almost before he had recovered the full command of his faculties. The revulsion of feeling, was accompanied by a gust of homicidal fury, resuming in its violence the accumulated resentment of a lifetime. For years General D'Hubert had been exasperated and humiliated by an atrocious absurdity imposed upon him by this man's savage caprice. Besides, General D'Hubert had been in this last instance too unwilling to confront death for the reaction of his anguish not to take the shape of a desire to kill. "And I have my two shots to fire yet," he added, pitilessly.

General Feraud snapped-to his teeth, and his face assumed an irate, undaunted expression. "Go on!" he said, grimly.

These would have been his last words if General D'Hubert had been holding the pistols in his hands. But the pistols were lying on the ground at the foot of a pine. General D'Hubert had the second of leisure necessary to remember that he had dreaded death not as a man, but as a lover; not as a danger, but

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Rh as a rival; not as a foe to life, but as an obstacle to marriage. And behold! there was the rival defeated!—utterly defeated, crushed, done for!

He picked up the weapons mechanically, and, instead of firing them into General Feraud's breast, he gave expression to the thoughts uppermost in his mind, "You will fight no more duels now."

His tone of leisurely, ineffable satisfaction was too much for General Feraud's stoicism. "Don't dawdle, then, damn you for a cold-blooded staff-coxcomb!" he roared out, suddenly, out of an impassive face held erect on a rigidly still body.

General D'Hubert uncocked the pistols carefully. This proceeding was observed with mixed feelings by the other general. "You missed me twice," the victor said, coolly, shifting both pistols to one hand; "the last time within a foot or so. By every rule of single combat your life belongs to me. That does not mean that I want to take it now."

"I have no use for your forbearance," muttered General Feraud, gloomily.

"Allow me to point out that this is no concern of mine," said General D'Hubert, whose every word was dictated by a consummate delicacy of feeling. In anger he could have killed that man, but in cold blood he recoiled from humiliating by a show of generosity this unreasonable being—a fellow-soldier of the Grande Armée, a companion in the wonders and terrors of the great military epic. "You don't set up the pretension of dictating to me what I am to do with what's my own."

General Feraud looked startled, and the other continued, "You've forced me on a point of honour to keep my life at your disposal, as it were, for fifteen years. Very well. Now that the matter is decided to my advantage, I am going to do what I like with your life

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258 on the same principle. You shall keep it at my disposal as long as I choose. Neither more nor less. You are on your honour till I say the word."

"I am! But, sacrebleu! This is an absurd position for a General of the Empire to be placed in!" cried General Feraud, in accents of profound and dismayed conviction. "It amounts to sitting all the rest of my life with a loaded pistol in a drawer waiting for your word. It's it's idiotic; I shall be an object of—of—derision."

"Absurd?—idiotic? Do you think so?" queried General D'Hubert with sly gravity. "Perhaps. But I don't see how that can be helped. However, I am not likely to talk at large of this adventure. Nobody need ever know anything about it. Just as no one to this day, I believe, knows the origin of our quarrel. . . . Not a word more," he added, hastily. "I can't really discuss this question with a man who, as far as I am concerned, does not exist."

When the two duellists came out into the open, General Feraud walking a little behind, and rather with the air of walking in a trance, the two seconds hurried towards them, each from his station at the edge of the wood. General D'Hubert addressed them, speaking loud and distinctly, "Messieurs, I make it a point of declaring to you solemnly, in the presence of General Feraud, that our difference is at last settled for good. You may inform all the world of that fact."

"A reconciliation, after all!" they exclaimed together.

"Reconciliation? Not that exactly. It is something much more binding. Is it not so, General?"

General Feraud only lowered his head in sign of assent. The two veterans looked at each other. Later in the day, when they found themselves alone out of

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Rh their moody friend's earshot, the cuirassier remarked suddenly, "Generally speaking, I can see with my one eye as far as most people; but this beats me. He won't say anything."

"In this affair of honour I understand there has been from first to last always something that no one in the army could quite make out," declared the chasseur with the imperfect nose. "In mystery it began, in mystery it went on, in mystery it is to end, apparently."

General D'Hubert walked home with long, hasty strides, by no means uplifted by a sense of triumph. He had conquered, yet it did not seem to him that he had gained very much by his conquest. The night before he had grudged the risk of his life which appeared to him magnificent, worthy of preservation as an opportunity to win a girl's love. He had known moments when, by a marvellous illusion, this love seemed to be already his, and his threatened life a still more magnificent opportunity of devotion. Now that his life was safe it had suddenly lost its special magnificence. It had acquired instead a specially alarming aspect as a snare for the exposure of unworthiness. As to the marvellous illusion of conquered love that had visited him for a moment in the agitated watches of the night, which might have been his last on earth, he comprehended now its true nature. It had been merely a paroxysm of delirious conceit. Thus to this man, sobered by the victorious issue of a duel, life appeared robbed of its charm, simply because it was no longer menaced.

Approaching the house from the back, through the orchard and the kitchen garden, he could not notice the agitation which reigned in front. He never met a single soul. Only while walking softly along the corridor, he became aware that the house was awake and more

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260 noisy than usual. Names of servants were being called out down below in a confused noise of coming and going. With some concern he noticed that the door of his own room stood ajar, though the shutters had not been opened yet. He had hoped that his early excursion would have passed unperceived. He expected to find some servant just gone in; but the sunshine filtering through the usual cracks enabled him to see lying on the low divan something bulky, which had the appearance of two women clasped in each other's arms. Tearful and desolate murmurs issued mysteriously from that appearance. General D'Hubert pulled open the nearest pair of shutters violently. One of the women then jumped up. It was his sister. She stood for a moment with her hair hanging down and her arms raised straight up above her head, and then flung herself with a stifled cry into his arms. He returned her embrace, trying at the same time to disengage himself from it. The other woman had not risen. She seemed, on the contrary, to cling closer to the divan, hiding her face in the cushions. Her hair was also loose; it was admirably fair. General D'Hubert recognized it with staggering emotion. Mademoiselle de Valmassigue! Adèle! In distress!

He became greatly alarmed, and got rid of his sister's hug definitely. Madame Léonie then extended her shapely bare arm out of her peignoir, pointing dramatically at the divan. "This poor, terrified child has rushed here from home, on foot, two miles—running all the way."

"What on earth has happened?" asked General D'Hubert in a low, agitated voice.

But Madame Léonie was speaking loudly. "She rang the great bell at the gate and roused all the household—we were all asleep yet. You may imagine what a terrible shock. . . . Adèle, my dear child, sit up."

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Rh General D'Hubert's expression was not that of a man who "imagines" with facility. He did, however, fish out of the chaos of surmises the notion that his prospective mother-in-law had died suddenly, but only to dismiss it at once. He could not conceive the nature of the event or the catastrophe which would induce Mademoiselle de Valmassigue, living in a house full of servants, to bring the news over the fields herself, two miles, running all the way.

"But why are you in this room?" he whispered, full of awe.

"Of course, I ran up to see, and this child . . . I did not notice it . . . she followed me. It's that absurd Chevalier," went on Madame Léonie, looking towards the divan. . . . "Her hair is all come down. You may imagine she did not stop to call her maid to dress it before she started. . . Adèle, my dear, sit up. . . . He blurted it all out to her at half-past five in the morning. She woke up early and opened her shutters to breathe the fresh air, and saw him sitting collapsed on a garden bench at the end of the great alley. At that hour—you may imagine! And the evening before he had declared himself indisposed. She hurried on some clothes and flew down to him. One would be anxious for less. He loves her, but not very intelligently. He had been up all night, fully dressed, the poor old man, perfectly exhausted. He wasn't in a state to invent a plausible story. . . . What a confidant you chose there! My husband was furious. He said, 'We can't interfere now.' So we sat down to wait. It was awful. And this poor child running with her hair loose over here publicly! She has been seen by some people in the fields. She has roused the whole household, too. It's awkward for her. Luckily you are to be married next week. . . . Adèle, sit up. He

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262 has come home on his own legs. . . . We expected to see you coming on a stretcher, perhaps—what do I know? Go and see if the carriage is ready. I must take this child home at once. It isn't proper for her to stay here a minute longer."

General D'Hubert did not move. It was as though he had heard nothing. Madame Léonie changed her mind. "I will go and see myself," she cried. "I want also my cloak.—Adèle" she began, but did not add "sit up." She went out saying, in a very loud and cheerful tone: "I leave the door open."

General D'Hubert made a movement towards the divan, but then Adèle sat up, and that checked him dead. He thought, "I haven't washed this morning. I must look like an old tramp. There's earth on the back of my coat and pine-needles in my hair." It occurred to him that the situation required a good deal of circumspection on his part.

"I am greatly concerned, mademoiselle," he began, vaguely, and abandoned that line. She was sitting up on the divan with her cheeks unusually pink and her hair, brilliantly fair, falling all over her shoulders—which was a very novel sight to the general. He walked away up the room, and looking out of the window for safety said, "I fear you must think I behaved like a madman," in accents of sincere despair. Then he spun-round, and noticed that she had followed him with her eyes. They were not cast down on meeting his glance. And the expression of her face was novel to him also. It was, one might have said, reversed. Those eyes looked at him with grave thoughtfulness, while the exquisite lines of her mouth seemed to suggest a restrained smile. This change made her transcendental beauty much less mysterious, much more accessible to a man's comprehension. An amazing ease

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Rh of mind came to the general—and even some ease of manner. He walked down the room with as much pleasurable excitement as he would have found in walking up to a battery vomiting death, fire, and smoke; then stood looking down with smiling eyes at the girl whose marriage with him (next week) had been so carefully arranged by the wise, the good, the admirable Léonie.

"Ah! mademoiselle," he said, in a tone of courtly regret, "if only I could be certain that you did not come here this morning, two miles, running all the way, merely from affection for your mother!"

He waited for an answer imperturbable but inwardly elated. It came in a demure murmur, eyelashes lowered with fascinating effect. "You must not be méchant as well as mad."

And then General D'Hubert made an aggressive movement towards the divan which nothing could check. That piece of furniture was not exactly in the line of the open door. But Madame Léonie, coming back wrapped up in a light cloak and carrying a lace shawl on her arm for Adèle to hide her incriminating hair under, had a swift impression of her brother getting up from his knees.

"Come along, my dear child," she cried from the doorway.

The general, now himself again in the fullest sense, showed the readiness of a resourceful cavalry officer and the peremptoriness of a leader of men. "You don't expect her to walk to the carriage," he said, indignantly. "She isn't fit. I shall carry her downstairs."

This he did slowly, followed by his awed and respectful sister; but he rushed back like a whirlwind to wash off all the signs of the night of anguish and the morning of war, and to put on the festive garments of

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264 a conqueror before hurrying over to the other house. Had it not been for that, General D'Hubert felt capable of mounting a horse and pursuing his late adversary in order simply to embrace him from excess of happiness. "I owe it all to this stupid brute," he thought. "He has made plain in a morning what might have taken me years to find out—for I am a timid fool. No self-confidence whatever. Perfect coward. And the Chevalier! Delightful old man!" General D'Hubert longed to embrace him also.

The Chevalier was in bed. For several days he was very unwell. The men of the Empire and the post-revolution young ladies were too much for him. He got up the day before the wedding, and, being curious by nature, took his niece aside for a quiet talk. He advised her to find out from her husband the true story of the affair of honour, whose claim, so imperative and so persistent, had led her to within an ace of tragedy. "It is right that his wife should be told. And next month or so will be your time to learn from him anything you want to know, my dear child."

Later on, when the married couple came on a visit to the mother of the bride, Madame la Generale D'Hubert communicated to her beloved old uncle the true story she had obtained without any difficulty from her husband.

The Chevalier listened with deep attention to the end, took a pinch of snuff, flicked the grains of tobacco from the frilled front of his shirt, and asked, calmly, "And that's all it was?"

"Yes, uncle," replied Madame la Génerale, opening her pretty eyes very wide. "Isn't it funny? C'est insensé—to think what men are capable of!"

"H'm!" commented the old émigre. "It depends what sort of men. That Bonaparte's soldiers were

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Rh savages. It is insensé. As a wife, my dear, you must believe implicitly what your husband says."

But to Léonie's husband the Chevalier confided his true opinion. "If that's the tale the fellow made up for his wife, and during the honeymoon, too, you may depend on it that no one will ever know now the secret of this affair."

Considerably later still, General D'Hubert judged the time come, and the opportunity propitious to write a letter to General Feraud. This letter began by disclaiming all animosity. "I've never," wrote the General Baron D'Hubert, "wished for your death during all the time of our deplorable quarrel. Allow me," he continued, "to give you back in all form your forfeited life. It is proper that we two, who have been partners in so much military glory, should be friendly to each other publicly."

The same letter contained also an item of domestic information. It was in reference to this last that General Feraud answered from a little village on the banks of the Garonne, in the following words:

"If one of your boy's names had been Napoleon—or Joseph—or even Joachim, I could congratulate you on the event with a better heart. As you have thought proper to give him the names of Charles Henri Armand, I am confirmed in my conviction that you never loved the Emperor. The thought of that sublime hero chained to a rock in the middle of a savage ocean makes life of so little value that I would receive with positive joy your instructions to blow my brains out. From suicide I consider myself in honour debarred. But I keep a loaded pistol in my drawer."

Madame la Génerale D'Hubert lifted up her hands in despair after perusing that answer.

"You see? He won't be reconciled," said her

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560 merely their heads into holes for their prey, go boldly under ground and attack such prey as hares and marmots, or fasten upon fowls much larger than they themselves. From all such prey their foreheads have nothing to gain by being white, since in the hole all is dark, and in the case of these large victims attacked above ground, the attacker, if it be a weasel, is looked down at, not seen against the sky, while the martens,

arboreal, acrobatic, swift and bloodthirsty, catch doubtless much after the bold manner of the small weasels, and obviously would not seem to have so much use for concealment from any particular viewpoint. The pine marten, however, is enough light-foreheaded to save his head from too much silhouetting in his above-ground forest operations against small terrestrial life.

In tall grass, to catch small terrestrial prey like mice, cats creep low, and fling themselves high in air, dropping flat outspread upon the dazed victim. Foxes vary this by coming down head-first upon it. In neither case would top-white help them—and they haven't it.


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Rh

and say: 'This much earth is enough.' He just doesn't know what to do! "Then God blessed the bee and commanded that its wax should serve to illumine weddings and funerals and its honey should heal the sick.

In the Rumanian Sage the bee goes to the wise hedgehog for advice and the hedgehog says:

The Setts say (p. 128):

As the earth was created it did not fit under the arch of heaven. Where shall one put such a great disk? Just then the hedgehog came along and asked what the trouble was. "Verily the earth is done, but we can not get it under the arch of heaven and it would not do to break a piece off." "That's nothing," said the hedgehog, "You must squeeze the disk together a little and then it will go." Good: God quickly pressed the disk together and it was easy to stick it under the heaven.

Now there appeared here and there, by the pressure, wrinkles which are the present mountains and valleys. God gave the hedgehog, for his shrewd head, an excellent coat, all of needles, so that no enemy can get near him.


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612

harm." They went to it and God broke the stone with his whip. Then the devil sprang out of it and grabbed God's horse. The devil said to God, "I and you were both in the same stone. I and you are of the same origin. I am the heart of the stone like you, so give me part of the world." While God chose for himself men and animals, the devil chose the souls. But the angels said to him: "Rejoice not overmuch. Know that the souls will remain in your hand only until a Son of God is born, who will free the dead from thy kingdom." The devil answered: "That will be a long time hence."

God placed himself and his archangels upon the cloud, raised himself high over the earth and created the heavens. Satanael made, with his devils, a second heaven that was higher than God's. God would not live below Satanael and raised himself higher and made a third heaven. In this way, vying with each other, they created nine heavens, one above the other, and Satanael began to build a tenth heaven still higher. Then God lost his patience and commanded his angels that they throw Satanael and his devils down from heaven.

Satanael and his angels fell down upon the earth. Each took his name from the place where he fell. He who fell in the wood became a wood devil, he that fell upon the water became a water devil.

In the Balkans they describe this fall of the angels thus:

We may continue the story as it is told by the Bulgarians:

As now Satan saw the great broad earth, he hit upon the deceitful plan of putting God to sleep and then throwing him in the water; taking possession of the earth himself and claiming honor as creator of the earth. God of course knew Satan's plan, but laid him down as if to sleep. Satan then seized God and carried him to the great water to throw him in. As he came to the shore the land began to grow rapidly so that he could in no wise reach the water. He turned back to the opposite shore, but for the same reason could not reach that. And as he could not reach the water from the third side because of the growth of the land before him, he let God slide down on the ground, and sank down beside him. After he had slept awhile he took God up again and carried him in the fourth direction to the water. As the land began immediately to grow in this direction also, so in this direction also he failed to reach the water.

He then waked God up, saying, "Arise, God, let us bless the earth 1 Lo, how it is grown while we slept." God answered him, "As you have carried me in four directions, to throw me in the water, and thus with my body described a cross, I have blessed the earth already, that it grow and flourish." This made Satan wroth and he left God. God remained alone, and the earth grew continuously, so that it could no longer be covered by the sun's light. Then God created out of his spirit angels and sent the war angel to ask Satanael what he should do to stop the earth's growing.

In the meantime the devil had made him a goat, and he came to God riding on the back of the goat, for which he had made a beard of earth. Since that time goats have beards to the present day. As the angels saw the devil riding toward them they laughed at him; he was wroth and rode back. On the instant God created a bee and said: "Fly quickly to Satan and listen to his speech. Return and inform me." The bee then flew to Satan and perched on his shoulder as he spoke to himself, "Oh, this foolish God (O dieser dummer Gott), he knows not that he needs only to take a stick and mark the earth with a cross


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will be decades before we outgrow the zoological age of Linné But his great work was undoubtedly reptilian embryology—indeed his papers on the gastrulation and embryonic membranes of turtles have long become classic. Here, for example, he first gave the correct interpretation of the primitive streak, discovering the rudiment of the yolk plug and enabled comparisons, on the one hand, with the amphibian, on the other, with avian and mammalian types. Here, also, he gave the first satisfactory explanation of the relation of the archenteric to the subgerminal cavity, and the peculiar growth of the sero-amniotic canal, which, by the way, one of his pupils afterwards demonstrated in the chick. It is in a manner the test of the bigness of Mitsukuri that with the keen interest in his purely morphological work he did not fear loss of dignity by contributing to economic subjects. A delightful little paper is his report on Japanese oyster culture, quite after the fashion of his old teacher, Professor Brooks.

has performed a useful service in exploring and restoring one of the great aboriginal monuments of the country, and the Bureau of Ethnology has now printed a description of the ruin. The Spruce Tree House and the Cliff Palace, the largest of the ruins of the Mesa Verde Park, were discovered by native cattle herders, and were first adequately described by Baron Gustav Nordenskiold in 1893. The imposing ruin shown in the illustrations extends 216 feet under the over-hanging cliff. It contains about 120 rooms and probably housed some 350 people.

The buildings are divided by an alley into two sections, the northern being the larger and the older. There are in all eight subterranean rooms, which were used for ceremonial purposes and are known as kivas. Above these are plazas used for dancing and other ceremonies, and about the plazas are the living and other rooms, sometimes


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N almost neglected chapter in the history of the natural sciences in this country is that dealing with Peale's Museum. Of the accounts of the museum that have appeared from time to time, one alone is worthy of consideration, being written from a scientific point of view. The work referred to is by Mr. Witmer Stone and considers the ornithological collections alone.

Through the great kindness of Mr. Horace Wells Sellers, access has been had to the diaries, letter books and unpublished autobiography of Charles Willson Peale. With the material thus furnished by Mr. Sellers, to whom the writer is deeply indebted, and much other material from the Pennsylvania Historical Society and the Philadelphia Library, very little of which has been referred to by biographers, many clouds enveloping the history of Peale's Museum have been cleared away. As this history is so intimately connected with the life of the founder, a better beginning can not be made than by reviewing briefly his career.

His life was a long one—eighty-six years. It divides itself very naturally into four periods—of about equal length—twenty to twenty-four years: the period of youth, the period of the prime of life, the period of middle age, and the period of old age. The first period begins with his birth in Queen Anne County, Maryland, April 15, 1741. His progenitors were English. In the paternal line, they were for several generations rectors of the parish of Edith Weston in Rutlandshire. Charles Peale, his father, although educated in turn for the church at Cambridge, did not take a degree, but came to this country and became headmaster of the Kent County Free School in Maryland. Although the school was popular and patronized by the best families of Kent County, yet he, at times, had great difficulty in making both ends meet; and died when his eldest son Charles Willson Peale was nine years old. His widow, being left with very little to provide for a large family, removed to Annapolis, and, by dressmaking, maintained herself and her children.


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222 Charles was now put to school; but, after he had learned writing and arithmetic, etc., he was apprenticed, at the age of thirteen, to a saddler. Working out his apprenticeship, when he was twenty-one he married into an influential family; and, with the assistance of a lifelong friend of his father, James Tilghman, set up in business for himself.

The saddlery business did not prove a success; and it was about this time that he, on seeing a poorly executed painting and having had from childhood a taste for drawing, thought that he could paint as well. With some borrowed colors and by the aid of a looking glass, he painted a portrait of himself with such good results that some of his friends advised him to study painting seriously. Thus, at the age of twenty-four, he began the second period of his life—that of a painter.

After studying under the best available talent in Maryland and in Virginia, he went to Boston and took a few lessons under Copley and shortly afterward was engaged to paint several portraits. Returning to Annapolis, his work soon became noticed. John Beale Bordley and several of his fellow members of the Governor's Council of Maryland made up a purse and sent Peale to London to study under Benjamin West. Returning to Maryland two years later, his ability was soon recognized and for the next twenty years he was the leading portrait painter of Pennsylvania and the south.

His many engagements in Philadelphia caused him to move to that city in 1774 and to make it his permanent home. Being an ardent patriot, he offered his services to the American cause at the beginning of the Revolution, being made lieutenant and later captain in a company of Philadelphia militia. He was in action in the battles of Germantown, Trenton and Princeton. At Valley Forge in the winter of 1777 he found occupation in painting portraits of his fellow officers. Many of his portraits painted during the war were subsequently placed in his "painting room" to form a nucleus of what he hoped would become a national portrait gallery. During this period, his interest in public affairs led him into various activities and public positions in connection with the British evacuation of Philadelphia.

As soon as opportunity offered, he established himself in a house at Third and Lombard streets and resumed with his former energy the practise of his portrait painting. In connection with this house he built a long room to hold his pictures and to use as a studio. As curiosities Dr. Morgan gave him some bones of a mammoth from Ohio; Professor Robt. Patterson, of the College of Philadelphia, presented him with a paddle fish from the Allegheny River; Dr. Franklin gave him an Angora cat from France, which was soon lost for want


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Rh of proper means to preserve it; with these as a nucleus, it was suggested to Peale that he start a museum of natural history.

At the age of forty-four the third period of Peale's life may be said to begin. Acting on the suggestion that he form a museum of natural history, he at once referred to books to discover the means to preserve reptiles, quadrupeds and birds. At the end of the second summer those preserved were all eaten up by dermestes and moths. After a great deal of experimenting, a method was devised that fills many pages of his autobiography. The basis of this method was the use of arsenic and alum. Although it had a very serious effect on his health for awhile, yet he was obliged to use it. "The many difficulties I had encountered in this new business," said he in his autobiography, "had made me often repent that I had undertaken so arduous a task, yet. . . the idea of handing down to posterity a work, that if judiciously managed might become equal to any undertaking of the like kind in, Europe"—this was a stimulus to his exertions. Although, by the neglect of his portrait painting, he found it difficult, at times, to meet the expenses not only of his family, but of taxes, ground rents and other unavoidable expenses of his establishment, yet his enthusiasm, perseverance and ingenuity enabled him to conquer the difficulties, but not without the aid of his talents as a painter. Finally, after placing his museum on a self-supporting basis he retired in 1808 to his country place, "Belfield," in Germantown.

In the midst of the active period of museum development he made trips when his funds were low into all the neighboring states to paint. During his trips he never lost an opportunity to gather specimens or further the interests of his museum. On a trip to Maryland he met a Rev. Mr. Kerby who was a collector of beetles. His account, in his diary, of the effect of this meeting shows the enthusiasm that was instilled into his collecting. Said he:

The museum grew rapidly and soon he was obliged to seek for other quarters. Being a member of the Philosophical Society, some of his


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224 friends suggested that he rent Philosophical Hall. This the society allowed him to do, making him curator and librarian. In describing the moving of the collection he writes:

Governor Mifflin allowed Peale to fence in part of the State House Garden so as to make a place to keep living animals. Speaking of this, Peale said:

Notwithstanding legends to the contrary, this was the only zoological garden that Peale ever attempted to form, it being but a temporary expedient.

It was not Peale's practise to sell his duplicate specimens; but wherever opportunity offered he would exchange. In this way he was soon in communication with the various museums of Europe and from his letters I find that he sent many specimens to the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, to the British Museum, to the Royal Society of Sweden, and many others scattered over Europe.

It must be remembered that during much of this time Europe was at war. Privateers scoured the seas, which made many letters go astray and caused many cases of specimens to be lost. Notwithstanding these troubles he mentions receiving an orang-outang and a "Platipus," and many other beasts from all over the world. "Now to show all these things to advantage," said Peale, "required judgment as well as a tasteful disposition of them to be pleasing to the eye as well as useful to enquiring visitors." In classifying animals he followed Linnæus. In fact he was such an admirer of Linnæus that he named one of his children after the great Swede. He used Button's work to identify the specimens. However, as one would expect in a new country that had been visited by but few naturalists, much of the material gathered by Peale would be classed as "non-descripts." To these Peale gave a common name but did not describe. It fell to the labors of Wilson, Say and other Philadelphia naturalists who followed to describe those animals. As arranged in the cases each animal had on it a label that gave the English, French and (when one had been given to it) Latin name.


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With respect to the arrangement of the specimens on the shelves Peale says:

It is not customary in Europe, it is said, to paint skies and landscapes in their cases of birds and other animals, and it may have a neat and clean appearance to line them only with white paper, but on the other hand it is not only pleasing to see a sketch of a landscape, but by showing the nest, hollow, cave or a particular view of the country from which they came, some instances of the habits may be given.

This idea is interesting because it is the one that is growing in favor in the museums of Europe and America at the present time.

In 1792 Peale writes:

Having exerted myself to my utmost ability to collect and preserve articles for the museum and believing I could get men of distinction to form a board of visitors and obtain legislative aid for the further improvement of it so that at last it might become a great national institution, I waited on several gentlemen.


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226 As a result of this, a board of visitors or directors was formed of twenty-five individuals. Thomas Jefferson was elected president, and among the others present were Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thos. Mifflin, Robert Morris, David Rittenhouse and Dr. Caspar Wistar. In the registration book of season ticket holders for the year 1794, the first signature is that of George Washington, who signed for four tickets. Then follow the names of John Adams, Munroe, etc. The fact that he was able to procure the aid of such men and the fact that he was allowed the use of Independence Hall rent free for a time and later for a nominal rental, all show that the museum was recognized as a valuable institution.

The decades 1790-1810, during which Peale was most active, composed part of the period of American zoology called by Brown Goode the period of Jefferson. The influence that the great statesman exerted Goode compared to that of Agassiz in a later period. Among the medical profession of the country were a few men interested in natural history. These centered about the newly founded medical school of the University of Pennsylvania. The ones only that might be placed in a class with Jefferson were Caspar Wistar and Benjamin Smith Barton. Later may be mentioned the names of Wilson, Ord and Rafinesque.

At this time the pure sciences centered around the American Philosophical Society. The minute books of the society show that from the time that Peale was elected a member in 1786, he was rarely absent from a meeting. Renting, as he did, a large part of the hall and being librarian and curator, he was for many years closely identified with it.

In 1804, Baron Humboldt, Bompland, the botanist, and a Peruvian gentleman, Montrefar, arrived in Philadelphia from the famous trip to South America. Peale was a member of an informal committee from the Philosophical Society to see to their reception. The committee went with the travelers to Washington, where they were entertained by President Jefferson. Of this journey Peale writes to his brotherin-law in New York:

However, I have been richly repaid for the expense and trouble of a journey, by the agreeable conversation of Baron Humboldt, who is, without exception, the most extraordinary traveler I have ever met with; he is a fountain of knowledge that flows in copious streams; to drop this metaphore, he is a great luminary diffusing light in every branch of science, I say diffusing because he is so communicative of his knowledge, which has been treasured up in his travels of upward of nineteen years.

The Baron sat before Peale for his portrait and on sailing for France Peale presented him with a mounted specimen of an alligator. This


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Rh later was presented on the Baron's return to France to the National Museum.

With the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, Peale had more intercourse than with any other institution in Europe. This began when the museum in Philadelphia was very young, by the arrival in Philadelphia of the naturalist, Baron Palisot de Beauvois, a refugee from the terrible massacre at St. Domingo. For the short time that he was in Philadelphia, Beauvois aided Peale in many ways. Not only did he help Peale in identifying the specimens, but he also wrote the French edition of the catalogue; and Peale in turn aided him by furnishing him with many letters of introduction whenever he went on collecting trips into other states. A personal friendship sprang up which lasted till Beauvois' death in 1820, and it is in Peak's letters to Beauvois after the latter^ return to France that one finds the best account of what was going on in Philadelphia. With respect to the museum, Peale was in correspondence with Geffroy St. Hilaire and with Cuvier, also receiving letters from Lamarck. With all these connections joining the museum to France it was not strange that the French influence was strong.

The feat which was Peale's greatest achievement in connection with the museum was the recovery and reconstruction of the skeleton of a mastodon. In the spring of 1801, receiving information from a scientific correspondent in the state of New York that the bones of a mammoth had been found in digging a marl pit near Newburg, Peale hastened to the spot; and, after bargaining with Mr. Masten, who owned the farm on which the bones were found, he finally paid $300 for those bones that had already been procured and the right to drain and excavate the morass to recover if possible the rest of the skeleton. On Mr. Masten showing Peale the spot where the bones were found, which was a spacious hole filled with water, he wrote in his autobiography:

He went at once to New York. Through President Jefferson he was able to borrow pumps from the Navy Department and other things from the War Office. The Philosophical Society advanced him $500 without interest, with his house in Philadelphia as security. He then returned to the scene of operation with his son Rembrandt. After


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Rh and was allowed to occupy the building as long as he allowed persons to pass through the hall into the State House Garden. His son Rembrandt used the east room on the first floor as his studio, while the entire second floor and tower was given up to the use of the museum.

The best picture that we have of the museum in Independence Hall is found in a letter written by the late George Escol Sellers, of Chattanooga, Tenn., a grandson of Peale, who as a boy and a young man spent much of his time in the museum, and who subsequently became one of its trustees. The period referred to in this letter is about 18201824, twelve years or more after Charles Willson Peale ceased to take an active part in the management, Mr. Rubens Peale being in control. There is very little evidence that much of scientific value was added after the father retired, except, perhaps, the collections of Major Long's expedition to the Rocky Mountains, and Dr. Harlan's anatomical and craniological preparations.

Mr. Sellers, in describing the arrangement of the hall writes:

I will go with you up the stairs and try to lead you through the Museum rooms. At the top of the stairs is a small window where tickets to the Museum are sold. We enter a great door from the landing and find ourselves in what was called the hall lecture room. The bench seats rose all around at such an angle that the two or three upper seats crossed the passage into the Quadruped Room at sufficient height to give headway under them. To the right is a door that is worthy of consideration. (This door leads into the* Quadruped Room, the south-west Room of the State House.) On the west end of the room, the


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230 floor was raised about 1 foot and on it stood the great seal, Buffalo, Elk, Moose, Bears, etc., but most attractive to country folk was a 5 legged cow giving milk to a 2 headed calf. As we turn to the passage into the long room, the great case at our right hand is the wolf case. The great gray wolf with bloody fangs is rending a lamb, whose papier-mache entrails from the skilled and realistic hands of Uncle Rubens bulge out so naturally that they appear living and in motion. The opposite case was of particular interest to children. Smaller animals crowd the cases that fill this room.

Of the Long Room Peale himself has perhaps given us the best account. He writes:

For instruction to those who wish to know the Linnean classification of Birds on the side of the door entering the Long Room, is a large frame containing the several orders and genera of Birds with the characters of each. This Long Room has an elegant appearance. Its length is 100 feet. It is handsome because of its regularity of the numerous glass cases, which are neat without being gaudy and the catalogue in the frames makes a beautiful division covering each of the shelves extending from end to end of the room. There are 9 windows opposite, between them projecting are partitions to hold the cases of insects and also cases for minerals and fossils.

Over the center window is a neat well tuned organ for the use of such visitors that understand music. Under the orchestra are microscopes for showing Insects and other subjects to advantage.

Over the Bird cases are two rows of portraits of Distinguished Personages in gilt frames extending almost the whole length of the room. They are original portraits painted from life by C. W. Peale and his son Remb1 At each end of the room are also some portraits. The most conspicuous being those of General Washington and his lady, which are the last they sat for C. W. Peale.

To complete the description of the museum we return to Mr. Sellers' letter:

If the day be chilly, the settees are around the great six plate wood burning stove. This was a very attractive feature. This Long Room was a promenade to show off finery, gay bonnets and cashmere shawls. Most of the more modern paintings and the portraits painted by Uncle Rembrandt when in Europe for the Museum were in the Mammoth Room.

On entering this room in the corner case was a wax figure of Col. Lewis or Clark, I do not remember which, in a complete Indian costume. The cases of Indians and their dresses and implements were very attractive. Back of the skeleton of the Mammoth at the end of the room was a large, what might be called, historical painting showing the tread wheels and other appliances that were used to pump out the morass while the bones were being exhumed. In fact this and a smaller painting gave a graphic history.

The marine room, up the lobby stairs, better known as the anatomical room was really a gruesome room in spite of its end cases of Monkeys at work. There was shown the smith, the carpenter, the cooper and even the shoe maker, a shoe between his knees, his arms akimbo as if drawing tight his waxed ends, a grin from ear to ear. The side cases were shallow and filled with snakes long and coiled. One snake was charming a stuffed bird with its bead eyes. One was in the act of swallowing a toad or frog with the hind quarters projecting from the mouth. There were also lizards big and little. Among the various cases was one filled with real anatomical preparations, including a


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ghastly tatooed head, a manufactured South American Mermaid—half fish and half hairless dried monkey—, innumerable alcoholic preparations, also an embryo shelf with animal and human fœtuses.

In 1805 Peale started to write a book called "A Walk with a Friend to the Philadelphia Museum." This seems never to have been finished and was never published. A comparison of the above account of Mr. Sellers with that of Peale shows that on the whole the same specimens were on exhibition as in the days that Mr. Sellers recorded; nevertheless there was a lack of sensational attractions in 1805. As an instance of this may be mentioned the fact that the monkeys at work were not added until 1809, a year after Peale retired to his Germantown farm. The two-headed calf was not added for some years after that.

In "A Walk with a Friend" Peale writes about the quadruped room, and it is of interest in relation to modern methods of taxidermy:

The door opens to us and behold a multitude of animals fills the room on every side. They seem to be in characteristic attitudes; the Lama of South America is rearing up in the act of spitting through the fissure of his upper lip. . ..

The muscles of this as well as many of these quadrupeds are so well represented that painters might take them for models and all is so well preserved that no insects can destroy them; a thing too generally the case in other museums.

The Proprietor has invented a mode of mounting them which I believe was never practised before. As the muscles can not be preserved to keep their natural plumpness nor can it be expected that the most careful operator can stuff skins in the common way to preserve perfectly the true form more especially of animals that have not an abundance of hair or fur—the limbs of these have been carved in wood; closely imitating the form after the skins had been taken off; giving swell to the muscles proportional to their action so that, in fact, they are statues of animals with the real skin to cover them—a stupendous labour originating from and effected by an enthusiastic desire of exhibiting a series of real forms as they exist in nature. . ..

Besides the methods of taxidermy as practised by Peale, there was another equally striking innovation. We have seen that there was a large frame illustrating Linnaeus's classification of birds. To aid the inquiring visitor much information of general interest was contained in similar frames. In the Mammoth Room on the wall beside the skeleton of the Mastodon, Rembrandt Peale's "Historical Disquisition on the Mammoth" was framed page by page. By reading this account and by referring to the skeleton and to the paintings Peale intended that his visitors should have the opportunity of becoming well informed. These were points the importance ©f which were emphasized by Brown Goode many years afterward.


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232 As an attraction, one winter when the attendance was lbw, Peale installed in one corner of the hall a man to cut silhouettes by a new method. In one year 8,880 people carried away likenesses of themselves. After he retired, but particularly after his death, under the direction of his sons this precedent that Peale himself established of having attractions was increased, so that in its last years the institution became little more than a dime museum.

In the library of the Pennsylvania Historical Society there is a large blank book bound in whole calf entitled "Memoranda of the Philadelphia Museum/' This book contains a record of the donations, accessions and exchanges between the years 1803 and 1837. An impression that one gets from reviewing its pages is that of the enormous amount of valueless material presented by travelers from Europe and from farmers up in the state. This, however, is a common feature of all museums; nothing offered must be refused, but, if of no value, will find its way to the official rubbish heap.

The library of the museum must have been of exceeding value. Every page records books bought or books received in exchange. As an exchange for specimens sent to France the museum received Buffon's works in five volumes. The following is a sample page showing the type of entry:

Peale's early training and natural ingenuity enabled him to turn his hand to anything; this quality has been exaggerated by his biographers and mere incidents pointed to as periods in his career.

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Rh resigned the active management of the museum and moved to his "Belfield" place, at Germantown. With him old age was robbed of its infirmities. Temperate habits, outdoor exercise and constant employment of mind and body, were responsible, according to his own theories, for the vigor that he enjoyed at eighty. He was eighty-three when he painted without his glasses a full-length portrait of himself by order of the trustees of the museum. This is the portrait that now hangs in the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, an institution of which he was the chief founder. These latter years of his life were not marked by reduced activities, but by more varied occupations. His attempts to make porcelain teeth and similar undertakings have been unduelyunduly [sic] emphasized. Undoubtedly it is the memory of this period that has led many of his biographers to refer to him as a "jack of all trades."

It may be interesting to outline briefly the later history of the museum and the fate of its collections.

In the first decade of the nineteenth century the value of the collections was from an educational point of view equal to those of the famous museums of Europe. At this time, with a view to its preservation and to carry out a cherished hope, Peale offered it to the government at Washington to form the nucleus of a National Museum. According to Jeffersonian simplicity it was not in the province of the government to father institutions not directly connected with government, so the offer was refused.

In 1816 the city purchased the State House from the state; and, at once, raised the rent on Peale from $400 to $2,000. As Peale could not pay so much, a compromise was made for $1,200. The museum was run at a loss for three years, at the end of which time Peale induced councils to lower the rent to $600. About this time Peale offered the museum to the city on condition that they would agree to house, add to it, and promise not to sell any part of it except duplications. The city refused to accept the gift.

In 1821 the museum took another lease of life, and its aged proprietor, still fearing that it would become divided on his death, had it incorporated with five trustees, all, except one, members of his family. As organized, four professors were appointed to give lectures in Natural History, viz.:


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234 The publishing of a journal was undertaken which perished after the appearance of the first number.

In 1827 Charles Willson Peale died and the next year the museum moved into the Arcade on Chestnut Street above Sixth Street., on the north side. In 1835, the stock of the company was increased from $100,000 to $400,000 and a magnificent building was started at Ninth and Sansom on the site of the present Continental Hotel. Three years later the collections were moved from the Arcade into their new home.

Up to this time the museum had been very prosperous financially and had become largely a money-making concern. In 1841 the failure of the United States Bank carried down the Museum Company. The receivers of the bank foreclosed on the building, which was soon sold at auction. By paying rent the Museum Company was allowed by the new owner to occupy the building. In the hard times that followed, the Museum Company attempted to keep its head above water by vaudeville attractions and concerts. Thus the museum was thrown into direct competition with the dime museum as typified by Barnum's Museums. The directors of the company were not equal to competition with the trained showman. When, in 1846, the end came, the collections were sold at auction, the pictures going all over the country; yet one third subsequently came back to Independence Hall.

An attempt was made to keep the Natural History collections together; and until 1850 they were exhibited at Masonic Hall, but not by the Peales. At that time they were sold by the sheriff and bought for five or six thousand dollars by P. T. Barnum and his associate, Moses Kimball. They were divided, half going to the Boston Museum and half going to Barnum's American Museum, in New York. Legend has it that the mastodon went to this latter place and was destroyed when, in 1865, the American Museum burned. Since its whereabouts was not known in 1852 when Warren wrote his monograph, it is possible that it was burned in the fire that destroyed, in 1851, Barnum's Philadelphia Museum. If this be the case it would seem to indicate that Barnum did not take all his share of the specimens to New York as he said he did. In either case it was destroyed.

In 1900 the Boston Museum broke up, and the specimens were presented to the Boston Society of Natural History, where about 1,300 of the birds now are. There is nothing to indicate that any specimens were added to the collections after they were removed from the Philadelphia Museum.