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In tropical Asia, and eastward to the Pacific Islands, the Danaidæ take the place of the Heliconidæ of America, in their abundance, their conspicuousness, their slow flight, and their being the subjects of mimicry. They exist under three principal forms or genera. The genus Euplæa is the most abundant both in species and individuals, and consists of fine broad-winged butterflies of a glossy or metallic blue-black colour, adorned with pure white, or rich blue, or dusky markings situated round the margins of the wings. Danais has generally more lengthened wings, of a semitransparent greenish or a rich brown colour, with radial or marginal pale spots; while the fine Hestias are of enormous size, of a papery or semitransparent white colour, with dusky or black spots and markings. Each of these groups is mimicked by various species of the genus Papilio, usually with such accuracy that it is impossible to distinguish them on the wing. Several species of Diadema, a genus of butterflies allied to our Vanessas, also mimic species of Danais, but in this case the females only are affected, a subject which will be discussed in another chapter.

Another protected group in the Eastern tropics is that of the beautiful day-flying moths forming the family Agaristidæ. These are usually adorned with the most brilliant colours or conspicuous markings, they fly slowly in forests among the butterflies and other diurnal insects, and their great abundance sufficiently indicates their possession of some distastefulness which saves them from attack. Under these conditions we may expect to find other moths which are not so protected imitating them, and this is the case. One of the common and wide-ranging species (Opthalmis lincea), found in the islands from Amboyna to New Ireland, is mimicked in a wonderful manner by one of the Liparidæ (the family to which our common "tussock" and "vapourer" moths belong). This is a new species collected at Amboyna during the voyage of the Challenger, and has been named Artaxa simulans. Both


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 insects are black, with the apex of the fore wings ochre coloured, and the outer half of the hind wings bright orange. The accompanying woodcuts (for the use of which I am indebted to Mr. John Murray of the Challenger Office) well exhibit their striking resemblance to each other.

In Africa exactly similar phenomena recur, species of Papilio and of Diadema mimicking Danaidæ or Acræidæ with the most curious accuracy. Mr. Trimen, who studied this subject in South Africa, has recorded eight species or varieties of Diadema, and eight of Papilio, which each mimic some species of Danais; while eight species or varieties of Panopæa (another genus of Nymphalidæ), three of Melanitis (Eurytelidæ), and two of Papilio, resemble with equal accuracy some species of Acræa. He has also independently observed the main facts on which the explanation of the phenomenon rests,—the unpleasant odour of the Danais and Acræa, extending to their larvæ and pupæ; their great abundance, slow flight, and disregard of concealment; and he states that while lizards, mantidæ, and dragonflies all hunt butterflies, and the rejected wings are to be found abundantly at some of their

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 feeding-places, those of the two genera Danais and Acræa were never among them.

The two groups of the great genus Papilio (the true swallow-tailed butterflies) which have been already referred to as having the special characteristics of uneatable insects, have also their imitators in other groups; and thus, the belief in their inedibility—derived mainly from their style of warning coloration and their peculiar habits—is confirmed. In South America, several species of the "Æneas" group of these butterflies are mimicked by Pieridæ and by day-flying moths of the genera Castnia and Pericopis. In the East, Papilio hector, P. diphilus, and P. liris, all belonging to the inedible group, are mimicked by the females of other species of Papilio belonging to very distinct groups; while in Northern India and China, many fine day-flying moths (Epicopeia) have acquired the strange forms and peculiar colours of some of the large inedible Papilios of the same regions.

In North America, the large and handsome Danais archippus, with rich reddish-brown wings, is very common; and it is closely imitated by Limenitis misippus, a butterfly allied to our "white admiral," but which has acquired a colour quite distinct from that of the great bulk of its allies. In the same country there is a still more interesting case. The beautiful dark bronzy green butterfly, Papilio philenor, is inedible both in larva and perfect insect, and it is mimicked by the equally dark Limenitis ursula. There is also in the Southern and Western States a dark female form of the yellow Papilio turnus, which in all probability obtains protection from its general resemblance to P. philenor. Mr. W.H. Edwards has found, by extensive experiment, that both the dark and yellow females produce their own kinds, with very few exceptions; and he thinks that the dark form has the advantage in the more open regions and in the prairies, where insectivorous birds abound. But in open country the dark form would be quite as conspicuous as the yellow form, if not more so, so that the resemblance to an inedible species would be there more needed.

The only probable case of mimicry in this country is that of the moth, Diaphora mendica, whose female only is white,


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 while the larva is of protective colours, and therefore almost certainly edible. A much more abundant moth, of about the same size and appearing about the same time, is Spilosoma menthrasti, also white, but in this case both it and its larva have been proved to be inedible. The white colour of the female Diaphora, although it must be very conspicuous at night, may, therefore, have been acquired in order to resemble the uneatable Spilosoma, and thus gain some protection.

Before giving some account of the numerous other cases of warning colours and of mimicry that occur in the animal kingdom, it will be well to notice a curious phenomenon which long puzzled entomologists, but which has at length received a satisfactory explanation.

We have hitherto considered, that mimicry could only occur when a comparatively scarce and much persecuted species obtained protection by its close external resemblance to a much more abundant uneatable species inhabiting its own district; and this rule undoubtedly prevails among the great majority of mimicking species all over the world. But Mr. Bates also found a number of pairs of species of different genera of Heliconidæ, which resembled each other quite as closely as did the other mimicking species he has described; and since all these insects appear to be equally protected by their inedibility, and to be equally free from persecution, it was not easy to see why this curious resemblance existed, or how it had been brought about. That it is not due to close affinity is shown by the fact that the resemblance occurs most frequently between the two distinct sub-families into which (as Mr. Bates first pointed out) the Heliconidæ are naturally divided on account of very important structural differences. One of these sub-families (the true Heliconinæ) consists of two genera only, Heliconius and Eueides, the other (the Danaoid Heliconinæ) of no less than sixteen genera; and, in the instances of mimicry we are now discussing, one of the pairs or


text: Weird Tales/Volume 30/Issue 4/The Golgotha Dancers


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 triplets that resemble each other is usually a species of the large and handsome genus Heliconius, the others being species of the genera Mechanitis, Melinæa, or Tithorea, though several species of other Danaoid genera also imitate each other. The following lists will give some idea of the number of these curious imitative forms, and of their presence in every part of the Neotropical area. The bracketed species are those that resemble each other so closely that the difference is not perceptible when they are on the wing.

In the Lower Amazon region are found—

In Central America are found—

In the Upper Amazon region—

In New Grenada—


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 In Eastern Peru and Bolivia—

In Pernambuco— In Rio Janeiro—

In South Brazil—

Besides these, a number of species of Ithomia and Napeogenes, and of Napeogenes and Mechanitis, resemble each other with equal accuracy, so that they are liable to be mistaken for each other when on the wing; and no doubt many other equally remarkable cases are yet unnoticed.

The figures above of the fore and hind wings of two of these mimicking species, from Dr. Fritz Müller's original paper in Kosmos, will serve to show the considerable amount of


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 difference, in the important character of the neuration of the wings, between these butterflies, which really belong to very distinct and not at all closely allied genera. Other important characters are—(1) The existence of a small basal cell in the hind wings of Ituna which is wanting in Thyridia; (2) the division of the cell between the veins 1b and 2 of the hind wings in the former genus, while it is undivided in the latter; and (3) the existence in Thyridia of scent-producing tufts of hair on the upper edge of the hind wing, while in Ituna these are wanting; but in place of them are extensible processes at the end of the abdomen, also emitting a powerful scent. These differences characterise two marked subdivisions of the Danaoid Heliconinae, each containing several distinct genera; and these subdivisions are further distinguished by very different forms of larvae, that to which Ituna belongs having from two to four long threadlike tentacles on the back, while in that containing Thyridia these are always absent. The former usually feed on Asclepiadeae, the latter on Solanaceae or Scrophulariaceae.

The two species figured, though belonging to such distinct and even remote genera, have acquired almost identical tints and markings so as to be deceptively alike. The surface of the wings is, in both, transparent yellowish, with black transverse bands and white marginal spots, while both have similar black-and white-marked bodies and long yellow antennae. Dr. Müller states that they both show a preference for the same flowers growing on the edges of the forest paths.

We will now proceed to give the explanation of these curious similarities, which have remained a complete puzzle for twenty years. Mr. Bates, when first describing them, suggested that they might be due to some form of parallel variation dependent on climatic influences; and I myself adduced other cases of coincident local modifications of colour, which did not appear to be explicable by any form of mimicry. But we neither of us hit upon the simple explanation given by Dr. Fritz Müller in 1879.

His theory is founded on the assumed, but probable,


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The New International Encyclopædia/Spiræa

SPIRÆA (Lat., from Gk. σπειραία, speiraia, meadow-sweet, from σπεῖρα, speira, coil, twist, spire; so called from the sliape of the follicles). A large genus of herbs and low deciduous shrubs of the natural order Rosaceæ, natives of the Northern Hemisphere. Dropwort (Spiræa filipendula) and meadow-sweet or queen of the meadow (Spiræa ulmaria) are European species. Two other species are shown on the accompanying plate. Many species are cultivated in shrubberies for their flowers.


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 fact, that insect-eating birds only learn by experience to distinguish the edible from the inedible butterflies, and in doing so necessarily sacrifice a certain number of the latter. The quantity of insectivorous birds in tropical America is enormous; and the number of young birds which every year have to learn wisdom by experience, as regards the species of butterflies to be caught or to be avoided, is so great that the sacrifice of life of the inedible species must be considerable, and, to a comparatively weak or scarce species, of vital importance. The number thus sacrificed will be fixed by the quantity of young birds, and by the number of experiences requisite to cause them to avoid the inedible species for the future, and not at all by the numbers of individuals of which each species consists. Hence, if two species are so much alike as to be mistaken for one another, the fixed number annually sacrificed by inexperienced birds will be divided between them, and both will benefit. But if the two species are very unequal in numbers, the benefit will be comparatively slight for the more abundant species, but very great for the rare one. To the latter it may make all the difference between safety and destruction.

To give a rough numerical example. Let us suppose that in a given limited district there are two species of Heliconidae, one consisting of only 1000, the other of 100,000 individuals, and that the quota required annually in the same district for the instruction of young insectivorous birds is 500. By the larger species this loss will be hardly felt; to the smaller it will mean the most dreadful persecution resulting in a loss of half the total population. But, let the two species become superficially alike, so that the birds see no difference between them. The quota of 500 will now be taken from a combined population of 101,000 butterflies, and if proportionate numbers of each suffer, then the weak species will only lose five individuals instead of 500 as it did before. Now we know that the different species of Heliconidae are not equally abundant, some being quite rare; so that the benefit to be derived in these latter cases would be very important. A slight inferiority in rapidity of flight or in powers of eluding attack might also be a cause of danger to an inedible species of scanty numbers, and in this case too the being


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 merged in another much more abundant species, by similarity of external appearance, would be an advantage.

The question of fact remains. Do young birds pursue and capture these distasteful butterflies till they have learned by bitter experience what species to avoid? On this point Dr. Müller has fortunately been able to obtain some direct evidence, by capturing several Acraeas and Heliconidae which had evidently been seized by birds but had afterwards escaped, as they had pieces torn out of the wing, sometimes symmetrically out of both wings, showing that the insect had been seized when at rest and with the two pairs of wings in contact. There is, however, a general impression that this knowledge is hereditary, and does not need to be acquired by young birds; in support of which view Mr. Jenner Weir states that his birds always disregarded inedible caterpillars. When, day by day, he threw into his aviary various larvae, those which were edible were eaten immediately, those which were inedible were no more noticed than if a pebble had been thrown before the birds.

The cases, however, are not strictly comparable. The birds were not young birds of the first year; and, what is more important, edible larvae have a comparatively simple coloration, being always brown or green and smooth. Uneatable larvae, on the other hand, comprise all that are of conspicuous colours and are hairy or spiny. But with butterflies there is no such simplicity of contrast. The eatable butterflies comprise not only brown or white species, but hundreds of Nymphalidae, Papilionidae, Lycaenidae, etc., which are gaily coloured and of an immense variety of patterns. The colours and patterns of the inedible kinds are also greatly varied, while they are often equally gay; and it is quite impossible to suppose that any amount of instinct or inherited habit (if such a thing exists) could enable young insectivorous birds to distinguish all the species of one kind from all those of the other. There is also some evidence to show that animals do learn by experience what to eat and what to avoid. Mr. Poulton was assured by Rev. G. J. Bursch that very young chickens peck at insects which they afterwards avoid. Lizards, too, often seized larvae which they were unable to eat and ultimately rejected.


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Rh -cially in a position of any influence, — all their power was being dissipated and torn to shreds; for none of their resolutions was valid in case even one of them opposed it. They had originally received their office for no other purpose than to resist such as were oppressing anybody, and thus he who tried to prevent any measure from being carried into effect was sure to prove stronger than those who supported it.

especially in a position of influence, to attain harmony. No sooner did others, planning to shatter their influence, go to intriguing, in order that dissension might make them weaker, than the tribunes actually attached themselves some to the one party and some to the other. If even one of them opposed a measure, he rendered the decisions of the rest null and void. Now at first they did not enter the senate-house, but sat at the entrance and watched proceedings, and in case anything failed to please them, they would then and there oppose it. Next they were invited inside. Later, however, the ex-tribunes became members of the senate, and finally some of the senators even sought to be tribunes — unless one chanced to be a patrician. Patricians the people would not accept; for after choosing the tribunes to defend them against the patricians, and advancing them to so great power, they feared that a patrician might turn this power to contrary purposes and use it against them. But if a man abjured the rank given him by birth and changed his status to that of a common citizen, they received him gladly. And a


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 Although the Heliconidae present, on the whole, many varieties of coloration and pattern, yet, in proportion to the number of distinct species in each district, the types of coloration are few and very well marked, and thus it becomes easier for a bird or other animal to learn that all belonging to such types are uneatable. This must be a decided advantage to the family in question, because, not only do fewer individuals of each species need to be sacrificed in order that their enemies may learn the lesson of their inedibility, but they are more easily recognised at a distance, and thus escape even pursuit. There is thus a kind of mimicry between closely allied species as well as between species of distinct genera, all tending to the same beneficial end. This may be seen in the four or five distinct species of the genus Heliconius which all have the same peculiar type of coloration—a yellow band across the upper wings and radiating red stripes on the lower,—and are all found in the same forests of the Lower Amazon; in the numerous very similar species of Ithomia with transparent wings, found in every locality of the same region; and in the very numerous species of Papilio of the "Aeneas" group, all having a similar style of marking, the resemblance being especially close in the females. The very uniform type of colouring of the blue-black Euplaeas and of the fulvous Acraeas is of the same character. In all these cases the similarity of the allied species is so great, that, when they are on the wing at some distance off, it is difficult to distinguish one species from another. But this close external resemblance is not always a sign of very near affinity; for minute examination detects differences in the form and scalloping of the wings, in the markings on the body, and in those on the under surface of the wings, which do not usually characterise the closest allies. It is to be further noted, that the presence of groups of very similar species of the same genus, in one locality, is not at all a common phenomenon among unprotected groups. Usually the species of a genus found in one locality are each well marked and belong to somewhat distinct types, while the


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 closely allied forms—those that require minute examination to discriminate them as distinct species—are most generally found in separate areas, and are what are termed representative forms.

The extension we have now given to the theory of mimicry is important, since it enables us to explain a much wider range of colour phenomena than those which were first imputed to mimicry. It is in the richest butterfly region in the world—the Amazon valley—that we find the most abundant evidence of the three distinct sets of facts, all depending on the same general principle. The form of mimicry first elucidated by Mr. Bates is characterised by the presence in each locality of certain butterflies, or other insects, themselves edible and belonging to edible groups, which derived protection from having acquired a deceptive resemblance to some of the inedible butterflies in the same localities, which latter were believed to be wholly free from the attacks of insectivorous birds. Then came the extension of the principle, by Dr. F. Müller, to the case of species of distinct genera of the inedible butterflies resembling each other quite as closely as in the former cases, and like them always found in the same localities. They derive mutual benefit from becoming, in appearance, one species, from which a certain toll is taken annually to teach the young insectivorous birds that they are uneatable. Even when the two or more species are approximately equal in numbers, they each derive a considerable benefit from thus combining their forces; but when one of the species is scarce or verging on extinction, the benefit becomes exceedingly great, being, in fact, exactly apportioned to the need of the species.

The third extension of the same principle explains the grouping of allied species of the same genera of inedible butterflies into sets, each having a distinct type of coloration, and each consisting of a number of species which can hardly be distinguished on the wing. This must be useful exactly in the same way as in the last case, since it divides the inevitable toll to insectivorous birds and other animals among a number of species. It also explains the fact of the great similarity of many species of inedible insects in the same locality—a similarity which does not obtain to anything


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 like the same extent among the edible species. The explanation of the various phenomena of resemblance and mimicry, presented by the distasteful butterflies, may now be considered tolerably complete.

A very brief sketch of these phenomena will be given, chiefly to show that the same principle prevails throughout nature, and that, wherever a rather extensive group is protected, either by distastefulness or offensive weapons, there are usually some species of edible and inoffensive groups that gain protection by imitating them. It has been already stated that the Telephoridae, Lampyridae, and other families of soft-winged beetles, are distasteful; and as they abound in all parts of the world, and especially in the tropics, it is not surprising that insects of many other groups should imitate them. This is especially the case with the longicorn beetles, which are much persecuted by insectivorous birds; and everywhere in tropical regions some of these are to be found so completely disguised as to be mistaken for species of the protected groups. Numbers of these imitations have been already recorded by Mr. Bates and myself, but I will here refer to a few others.

In the recently published volumes on the Longicorn and Malacoderm beetles of Central America there are numbers of beautifully coloured figures of the new species; and on looking over them we are struck by the curious resemblance of some of the Longicorns to species of the Malacoderm group. In some cases we discover perfect mimics, and on turning to the descriptions we always find these pairs to come from the same locality. Thus the Otheostethus melanurus, one of the Prionidae, imitates the malacoderm, Lucidota discolor, in form, peculiar coloration, and size, and both are found at Chontales in Nicaragua, the species mimicked having, however, as is usual, a wider range. The curious and very rare little longicorn, Tethlimmena aliena, quite unlike its nearest allies in the same country, is an exact copy on a somewhat smaller scale of a malacoderm, Lygistopterus amabilis, both


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 found at Chontales. The pretty longicorn, Callia albicornis, closely resembles two species of malacoderms (Silis chalybeipennis and Colyphus signaticollis), all being small beetles with red head and thorax and bright blue elytra, and all three have been found at Panama. Many other species of Callia also resemble other malacoderms; and the longicorn genus Lycidola has been named from its resemblance to various species of the Lycidae, one of the species here figured (Lycidola belti) being a good mimic of Calopteron corrugatum and of several other allied species, all being of about the same size and found at Chontales. In these cases, and in most others, the longicorn beetles have lost the general form and aspect of their allies to take on the appearance of a distinct tribe. Some other groups of beetles, as the Elateridae and Eucnemidae, also deceptively mimic malacoderms.

Wasps and bees are often closely imitated by insects of other orders. Many longicorn beetles in the tropics exactly mimic wasps, bees, or ants. In Borneo a large black wasp, whose wings have a broad white patch near the apex (Mygnimia aviculus), is closely imitated by a heteromerous beetle (Coloborhombus fasciatipennis), which, contrary to the general habit of beetles, keeps its wings expanded in order to show the white patch on their apex, the wing-coverts being reduced to small oval scales, as shown in the figure. This is a most remarkable instance of mimicry, because the beetle has had to acquire so many characters which are unknown among its allies (except in another species from Java)—the expanded wings, the white band on them, and the oval scale-like elytra. Another remarkable case has been noted by Mr. Neville Goodman, in Egypt, where a common hornet (Vespa orientalis) is exactly imitated in colour, size, shape, attitude when at rest, and mode of flight, by a beetle of the genus Laphria.

The tiger-beetles (Cicindelidae) are also the subjects of mimicry by more harmless insects. In the Malay Islands I found a heteromerous beetle which exactly resembled a Therates, both being found running on the trunks of trees. A longicorn (Collyrodes Lacordairei) mimics Collyris, another genus of the same family; while in the Philippine Islands


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 there is a cricket (Condylodeira tricondyloides), which so closely resembles a tiger-beetle of the genus Tricondyla that the experienced entomologist, Professor Westwood, at first placed it in his cabinet among those beetles.


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 One of the characters by which some beetles are protected is excessive hardness of the elytra and integuments. Several genera of weevils (Curculionidae) are thus saved from attack, and these are often mimicked by species of softer and more eatable groups. In South America, the genus Heilipus is one of these hard groups, and both Mr. Bates and M. Roelofs, a Belgian entomologist, have noticed that species of other genera exactly mimic them. So, in the Philippines, there


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 is a group of Curculionidae, forming the genus Pachyrhynchus, in which all the species are adorned with the most brilliant metallic colours, banded and spotted in a curious manner, and are very smooth and hard. Other genera of Curculionidae (Desmidophorus, Alcides), which are usually very differently coloured, have species in the Philippines which mimic the Pachyrhynchi; and there are also several longicorn beetles (Aprophata, Doliops, Acronia, and Agnia), which also mimic them. Besides these, there are some longicorns and cetonias which reproduce the same colours and markings; and there is even a cricket (Scepastus pachyrhynchoides), which has taken on the form and peculiar coloration of these beetles in order to escape from enemies, which then avoid them as uneatable. The figures on the opposite page exhibit several other examples of these mimicking insects.

Innumerable other cases of mimicry occur among tropical insects; but we must now pass on to consider a few of the very remarkable, but much rarer instances, that are found among the higher animals.

Perhaps the most remarkable cases yet known are those of certain harmless snakes which mimic poisonous species. The genus Elaps, in tropical America, consists of poisonous snakes which do not belong to the viper family (in which are included the rattlesnakes and most of those which are poisonous), and which do not possess the broad triangular head which characterises the latter. They have a peculiar style of coloration, consisting of alternate rings of red and black, or red, black, and yellow, of different widths and grouped in various ways in the different species; and it is a style of coloration which does not occur in any other group of snakes in the world. But in the same regions are found three genera of harmless snakes, belonging to other families, some few species of which mimic the poisonous Elaps, often so exactly that it is with difficulty one can be distinguished from the other. Thus Elaps fulvius in Guatemala is imitated by the harmless Pliocerus equalis; Elaps corallinus in Mexico is mimicked by the


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 harmless Homalocranium semicinctum; and Elaps lemniscatus in Brazil is copied by Oxyrhopus trigeminus; while in other parts of South America similar cases of mimicry occur, sometimes two harmless species imitating the same poisonous snake.

A few other instances of mimicry in this group have been recorded. There is in South Africa an egg-eating snake (Dasypeltis scaber), which has neither fangs nor teeth, yet it is very like the Berg adder (Clothos atropos), and when alarmed renders itself still more like by flattening out its head and darting forward with a hiss as if to strike a foe. Dr. A. B. Meyer has also discovered that, while some species of the genus Callophis (belonging to the same family as the American Elaps) have large poison fangs, other species of the same genus have none; and that one of the latter (C. gracilis) resembles a poisonous species (C. intestinalis) so closely, that only an exact comparison will discover the difference of colour and marking. A similar kind of resemblance is said to exist between another harmless snake, Megaerophis flaviceps, and the poisonous Callophis bivirgatus; and in both these cases the harmless snake is less abundant than the poisonous one, as occurs in all examples of true mimicry.

In the genus Elaps, above referred to, the very peculiar style of colour and marking is evidently a "warning colour" for the purpose of indicating to snake-eating birds and mammals that these species are poisonous; and this throws light on the long-disputed question of the use of the rattle of the rattlesnake. This reptile is really both sluggish and timid, and is very easily captured by those who know its habits. If gently tapped on the head with a stick, it will coil itself up and lie still, only raising its tail and rattling. It may then be easily caught. This shows that the rattle is a warning to its enemies that it is dangerous to proceed to extremities; and the creature has probably acquired this structure and habit because it frequents open or rocky districts where protective colour is needful to save it from being pounced upon by buzzards or other snake-eaters. Quite parallel in function is the expanded hood of the Indian cobra, a


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 poisonous snake which belongs also to the Elapidae. This is, no doubt, a warning to its foes, not an attempt to terrify its prey; and the hood has been acquired, as in the case of the rattlesnake, because, protective coloration being on the whole useful, some mark was required to distinguish it from other protectively coloured, but harmless, snakes. Both these species feed on active creatures capable of escaping if their enemy were visible at a moderate distance.

The varied forms and habits of birds do not favour the production among them of the phenomena of warning colours or of mimicry; and the extreme development of their instincts and reasoning powers, as well as their activity and their power of flight, usually afford them other means of evading their enemies. Yet there are a few imperfect, and one or two very perfect cases of true mimicry to be found among them. The less perfect examples are those presented by several species of cuckoos, an exceedingly weak and defenceless group of birds. Our own cuckoo is, in colour and markings, very like a sparrow-hawk. In the East, several of the small black cuckoos closely resemble the aggressive drongo-shrikes of the same country, and the small metallic cuckoos are like glossy starlings; while a large ground-cuckoo of Borneo (Carpococcyx radiatus) resembles one of the fine pheasants (Euplocamus) of the same country, both in form and in its rich metallic colours.

More perfect cases of mimicry occur between some of the dull-coloured orioles in the Malay Archipelago and a genus of large honey-suckers—the Tropidorhynchi or "Friar-birds." These latter are powerful and noisy birds which go in small flocks. They have long, curved, and sharp beaks, and powerful grasping claws; and they are quite able to defend themselves, often driving away crows and hawks which venture to approach them too nearly. The orioles, on the other hand, are weak and timid birds, and trust chiefly to concealment and to their retiring habits to escape persecution. In each of the great islands of the Austro-Malayan region there is a distinct species of Tropidorhynchus, and there is always along with it an oriole that exactly mimics it. All the Tropidorhynchi


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 have a patch of bare black skin round the eyes, and a ruff of curious pale recurved feathers on the nape, whence their name of Friar-birds, the ruff being supposed to resemble the cowl of a friar. These peculiarities are imitated in the orioles by patches of feathers of corresponding colours; while the different tints of the two species in each island are exactly the same. Thus in Bouru both are earthy brown; in Ceram they are both washed with yellow ochre; in Timor the under surface is pale and the throat nearly white, and Mr. H.O. Forbes has recently discovered another pair in the island of Timor Laut. The close resemblance of these several pairs of birds, of widely different families, is quite comparable with that of many of the insects already described. It is so close that the preserved specimens have even deceived naturalists; for, in the great French work, Voyage de l'Astrolabe, the oriole of Bouru is actually described and figured as a honey-sucker; and Mr. Forbes tells us that, when his birds were submitted to Dr. Sclater for description, the oriole and the honey-sucker were, previous to close examination, considered to be the same species.

To set forth adequately the varied and surprising facts of mimicry would need a large and copiously illustrated volume; and no more interesting subject could be taken up by a naturalist who has access to our great collections and can devote the necessary time to search out the many examples of mimicry that lie hidden in our museums. The brief sketch of the subject that has been here given will, however, serve to indicate its nature, and to show the weakness of the objections that were at first made to it. It was urged that the action of "like conditions," with "accidental resemblances" and "reversion to ancestral types," would account for the facts. If, however, we consider the actual phenomena as here set forth, and the very constant conditions under which they occur, we shall see how utterly inadequate are these causes, either singly or combined. These constant conditions are—

 * 1. That the imitative species occur in the same area and occupy the very same station as the imitated.
 * 2. That the imitators are always the more defenceless.


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 :3. That the imitators are always less numerous in individuals.
 * 4. That the imitators differ from the bulk of their allies.
 * 5. That the imitation, however minute, is external and visible only, never extending to internal characters or to such as do not affect the external appearance.

These five characteristic features of mimicry show us that it is really an exceptional form of protective resemblance. Different species in the same group of organisms may obtain protection in different ways: some by a general resemblance to their environment; some by more exactly imitating the objects that surround them—bark, or leaf, or flower; while others again gain an equal protection by resembling some species which, from whatever cause, is almost as free from attack as if it were a leaf or a flower. This immunity may depend on its being uneatable, or dangerous, or merely strong; and it is the resemblance to such creatures for the purpose of sharing in their safety that constitutes mimicry.

Colours which have been acquired for the purpose of serving as a warning of inedibility, or of the possession of dangerous offensive weapons, are probably more numerous than have been hitherto supposed; and, if so, we shall be able to explain a considerable amount of colour in nature for which no use has hitherto been conjectured. The brilliant and varied colours of sea-anemones and of many coral animals will probably come under this head, since we know that many of them possess the power of ejecting stinging threads from various parts of their bodies which render them quite uneatable to most animals. Mr. Gosse describes how, on putting an Anthea into a tank containing a half-grown bullhead (Cottus bubalis) which had not been fed for some time, the fish opened his mouth and sucked in the morsel, but instantly shot it out again. He then seized it a second time, and after rolling it about in his mouth for a moment shot it out again, and then darted away to hide himself in a hole. Some tropical fishes, however, of the genera Tetrodon, Pseudoscarus, Astracion, and a few others, seem


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 to have acquired the power of feeding on corals and medusae; and the beautiful bands and spots and bright colours with which they are frequently adorned, may be either protective when feeding in the submarine coral groves, or may, in some cases, be warning colours to show that they themselves are poisonous and uneatable.

A remarkable illustration of the wide extension of warning colours, and their very definite purpose in nature, is afforded by what may now be termed "Mr. Belt's frog." Frogs in all parts of the world are, usually, protectively coloured with greens or browns; and the little tree-frogs are either green like the leaves they rest upon, or curiously mottled to imitate bark or dead leaves. But there are a certain number of very gaily coloured frogs, and these do not conceal themselves as frogs usually do. Such was the small toad found by Darwin at Bahia Blanca, which was intense black and bright vermilion, and crawled about in the sunshine over dry sand-hills and arid plains. And in Nicaragua, Mr. Belt found a little frog gorgeously dressed in a livery of red and blue, which did not attempt concealment and was very abundant, a combination of characters which convinced him that it was uneatable. He, therefore, took a few specimens home with him and gave them to his fowls and ducks, but none would touch them. At last, by throwing down pieces of meat, for which there was a great competition among the poultry, he managed to entice a young duck into snatching up one of the little frogs. Instead of swallowing it, however, the duck instantly threw it out of its mouth, and went about jerking its head as if trying to get rid of some unpleasant taste.

The power of predicting what will happen in a given case is always considered to be a crucial test of a true theory, and if so, the theory of warning colours, and with it that of mimicry, must be held to be well established. Among the creatures which probably have warning colours as a sign of inedibility are, the brilliantly coloured nudibranchiate molluscs, those curious annelids the Nereis and the Aphrodite or sea-mouse, and many other marine animals. The brilliant colours of the scallops (Pecten)and some other bivalve shells are perhaps


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 an indication of their hardness and consequent inedibility, as in the case of the hard beetles; and it is not improbable that some of the phosphorescent fishes and other marine organisms may, like the glow-worm, hold out their lamp as a warning to enemies. In Queensland there is an exceedingly poisonous spider, whose bite will kill a dog, and cause severe illness with excruciating pain in man. It is black, with a bright vermilion patch on the middle of the body; and it is so well recognised by this conspicuous coloration that even the spider-hunting wasps avoid it.

Locusts and grasshoppers are generally of green protective tints, but there are many tropical species most gaudily decorated with red, blue, and black colours. On the same general grounds as those by which Mr. Belt predicted the inedibility of his conspicuous frog, we might safely predict the same for these insects; but we have fortunately a proof that they are so protected, since Mr. Charles Home states that one of the bright coloured Indian locusts was invariably rejected when offered to birds and lizards.

The examples now given lead us to the conclusion that colours acquired for the purpose of serving as a danger-signal to enemies are very widespread in nature, and, with the corresponding colours of the species which mimic them, furnish us with a rational explanation of a considerable portion of the coloration of animals which is outside the limits of those colours that have been acquired for either protection or recognition. There remains, however, another set of colours, chiefly among the higher animals, which, being connected with some of the most interesting and most disputed questions in natural history, must be discussed in a separate chapter.


text: Weird Tales/Volume 30/Issue 4/Here Lies

title: Weird Tales/Volume 30/Issue 4/Here Lies


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Glagolitic Alphabet

GLAGOLITIC (glag-ō-lĭt'ĭk) ALPHABET, a Slavonic alphabet classed as ancient Bulgarian. There is a MS. of the 11th century written in this alphabet in the Vatican, containing extracts of the Gospels for each day in the year; there are extant also three other MSS. written in the same letters.

The origin of this alphabet is undiscoverable. It is older than the Cyrillac; it may be a modification of Greek cursive writing; perhaps it is connected with Armenian and Albanian alphabets. Its use is confined to the liturgical books of Dalmatian Slavs. Cyril, a monk of Constantinople, invented the Cyrillac alphabet, of which this has sometimes been considered a variant. Both of these differ from the current Russian alphabet.


text: Weird Tales/Volume 30/Issue 4/The Last of Mrs. DeBrugh


text: Weird Tales/Volume 30/Issue 4/To a Skull on My Bookshelf


text:
Author:Elizabeth Virginia Raplee

Works

 * Nostalgia (published in A Book of Living Poems, 1934)
 * Recompense (published in The Lion and unicorn, volume 1, number 1)
 * Brief Moment (published in Good Housekeeping, July 1935, volume 101, number 1)
 * Like Summer Rain (published in Good Housekeeping, August 1935, volume 101, number 2)
 * After Silence (published in Lewiston Evening Journal, March 29, 1937)
 * The Poet Considers Perfection (published in Good Housekeeping, August 1939, volume 109, number 2)
 * The Call (published in Good Housekeeping, August 1942, volume 115, number 2)
 * The Call (published in Good Housekeeping, August 1942, volume 115, number 2)

title: Author:Elizabeth Virginia Raplee


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, Anna Mackenzie


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, Archibald (d.1513)


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Author talk:Elizabeth Virginia Raplee

Biographical note
- AdamBMorgan (talk) 16:03, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Only one source found so far with any sort of biographical information. This PDF: Niagara Falls Gazette (Feb 17, 1940, p. 6) includes a brief bio in the Poetry Promenade section (following a poem that begins "Lament for Our..." Not all of it is legible:
 * "Elizabeth Virginia Raplee, wh secretary to a New York City oecutive, was born at Clayton Y., and spent her childhood Watertown.  She has publis nearly 50 poems in magazines  New York newspapers during  past six years.
 * "The background of my poe she reveals, "might be said to love of beauty, disgust with  present-day, so-called civilizat dislike of the modern  speed without direction and a ing that we have missed the simp and healthiest way to happine our striving for mechanical  technical perfection."
 * Made some guesses:

--Auric (talk) 12:01, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
 * "Elizabeth Virginia Raplee, wh[o was] secretary to a New York City o[il ex]ecutive, was born at Clayton [N.]Y., and spent her childhood [in] Watertown. She has publis[hed] nearly 50 poems in magazines [and] New York newspapers during [the] past six years.
 * "The background of my poe[ms] she reveals, "might be said to [be] love of beauty, disgust with [the] present-day, so-called civilizat[ion] dislike of the modern [craze for] speed without direction and a [feel]ing that we have missed the simp[est] and healthiest way to happine[ss in] our striving for mechanical [and] technical perfection."

title: Author talk:Elizabeth Virginia Raplee


text: Celtic Fairy Tales/Jack and His Comrades


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, Archibald (d.1558)


text: Weird Tales/Volume 30/Issue 4/After Two Nights of the Ear-ache


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, Archibald (1530-1573)


text:
Author:Farnsworth Wright

Works

 * (as Francis Hard)
 * (as Francis Hard)
 * (as Francis Hard)
 * (tr.)
 * (as Francis Hard)
 * (as Francis Hard)
 * "The White Queen" in Oriental Stories, volume 1, issue 1. (as Francis Hard)
 * (as Francis Hard)
 * (tr.)
 * (as Francis Hard)
 * (as Francis Hard)
 * "The White Queen" in Oriental Stories, volume 1, issue 1. (as Francis Hard)
 * (as Francis Hard)

Editor

 * The Moon Terror (1927)
 * Weird Tales (1924-40)
 * Oriental Stories (1930-34)

title: Author:Farnsworth Wright


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Glas, John

GLAS, John, founder of the Glassites, better known as the Sandemanians: b. Auchtermuchty, Fife, 1695; d. Perth, 2 Nov. 1773. He was educated at Saint Andrews and Edinburgh, took orders and became a preacher of note. In 1727 appeared his “Testimony of the King of Martyrs,” in which he maintained that all religious establishments and all interference by the secular arm in ecclesiastical matters are contrary to the true nature of the Church. For advocating these views he was deposed from the ministry in 1730. He founded an independent congregation at Dundee and later removed to Perth, where he built a church. He was

joined here by Sandeman, who became his son-in-law, and who became a prominent leader in the independent church movement in Scotland. His works were issued at Edinburgh in 1761 and at Perth in 1783. His “Christian Songs” passed through its 13th edition at Perth in 1847.


text: Weird Tales/Volume 30/Issue 4/The Eyrie

title: Weird Tales/Volume 30/Issue 4/The Eyrie


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Glaser, Otto C(harles)

GLASER, Otto C(harles), American zoologist: b. Wiesbaden, Germany, 1880. In 1900 he was graduated at the University of Johns Hopkins, and in 1904 received therefrom the degree of D.Ph. In 1901-02 he was assistant in the United States Bureau of Fisheries and in the North Carolina Geological Survey. In 1903 he was marine biologist of the Gulf biological station and from 1905 to 1907 was teacher of biology at Wood's Hole, Mass. Since then he has been connected with the University of Michigan, becoming in 1908 assistant professor of biology.


text: Index:Life among the Apaches.djvu

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Author:Matthew Smith

 * Matthew Smith (1794–1858), Australian magistrate and civil servant
 * David Henry Keller (1880–1966), American science-fiction writer, used name as pseudonym

title: Author:Matthew Smith


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16 shower of sweat-drops burst out of his forehead. Watching the bar grow crooked, I saw a little blood ooze from under his finger-nails. Then he let go. For a moment he remained all huddled up, with a hanging head, looking drowsily into the upturned palms of his mighty hands. Indeed he seemed to have dozed off. Suddenly he flung himself backwards on the sill, and setting the soles of his bare feet against the other middle bar, he bent that one, too, but in the opposite direction from the first.

"Such was his strength, which in this case relieved my painful feelings. And the man seemed to have done nothing. Except for the change of position in order to use his feet, which made us all start by its swiftness, my recollection is that of immobility. But he had bent the bars wide apart. And now he could get out if he liked; but he dropped his legs inwards, and looking over his shoulder beckoned to the soldiers. 'Hand up the water,' he said. 'I will give them all a drink.'

"He was obeyed. For a moment I expected man and bucket to disappear, overwhelmed by the rush of eagerness; I thought they would pull him down with their teeth. There was a rush, but holding the bucket on his lap he repulsed the assault of those wretches by the mere swinging of his feet. They flew backwards at every kick, yelling with pain; and the soldiers laughed, gazing at the window.

"They all laughed, holding their sides, except the sergeant, who was gloomy and morose. He was afraid the prisoners would rise and break out—which would have been a bad example. But there was no fear of that, and I stood myself before the window with my drawn sword. When sufficiently tamed by the strength of Gaspar Ruiz they came up one by one, stretching

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Rh their necks and presenting their lips to the edge of the bucket which the strong man tilted towards them from his knees with an extraordinary air of charity, gentleness, and compassion. That benevolent appearance was of course the effect of his care in not spilling the water and of his attitude as he sat on the sill; for, if a man lingered with his lips glued to the rim of the bucket after Gaspar Ruiz had said 'You have had enough,' there would be no tenderness or mercy in the shove of the foot which would send him groaning and doubled up far into the interior of the prison, where he would knock down two or three others before he fell himself. They came up to him again and again; it looked as if they meant to drink the well dry before going to their death; but the soldiers were so amused by Gaspar Ruiz's systematic proceedings that they carried the water up to the window cheerfully.

"When the adjutant came out after his siesta there was some trouble over this affair, I can assure you. And the worst of it was that the general whom we expected never came to the castle that day."

The guests of General Santierra unanimously expressed their regret that the man of such strength and patience had not been saved.

"He was not saved by my interference," said the General. "The prisoners were led to execution half an hour before sunset. Gaspar Ruiz, contrary to the sergeant's apprehensions, gave no trouble. There was no necessity to get a cavalry man with a lasso in order to subdue him, as if he were a wild bull of the campo. I believe he marched out with his arms free amongst the others who were bound. I did not see. I was not there. I had been put under arrest for interfering with the prisoner's guard. About dusk, sitting dismally in my quarters, I heard three volleys fired, and thought that I

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18 should never hear of Gaspar Ruiz again. He fell with the others. But we were to hear of him nevertheless, though the sergeant boasted that as he lay on his face expiring or dead in the heap of the slain, he had slashed his neck with a sword. He had done this, he said, to make sure of ridding the world of a dangerous traitor.

"I confess to you, señores, that I thought of that strong man with a sort of gratitude, and with some admiration. He had used his strength honourably. There dwelt, then, in his soul no fierceness corresponding to the vigour of his body."

  V

, who could with ease bend apart the heavy iron bars of the prison, was led out with others to summary execution. "Every bullet has its billet," runs the proverb. All the merit of proverbs consists in the concise and picturesque expression. In the surprise of our minds is found their persuasiveness. In other words, we are struck and convinced by the shock.

What surprises us is the form, not the substance. Proverbs are art—cheap art. As a general rule they are not true; unless indeed they happen to be mere platitudes, as for instance the proverb, "Half a loaf is better than no bread," or "A miss is as good as a mile." Some proverbs are simply imbecile, others are immoral. That one evolved out of the naive heart of the great Russian people, "Man discharges the piece, but God carries the bullet," is piously atrocious, and at bitter variance with the accepted conception of a compassionate God. It would indeed be an inconsistent occupation for the Guardian of the poor, the innocent, and the helpless, to carry the bullet, for instance, into the heart of a father.

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Rh Gaspar Ruiz was childless, he had no wife, he had never been in love. He had hardly ever spoken to a woman, beyond his mother and the ancient negress of the household, whose wrinkled skin was the colour of cinders, and whose lean body was bent double from age. If some bullets from those muskets fired off at fifteen paces were specifically destined for the heart of Gaspar Ruiz, they all missed their billet. One, however, carried away a small piece of his ear, and another a fragment of flesh from his shoulder.

A red and unclouded sun setting into a purple ocean looked with a fiery stare upon the enormous wall of the Cordilleras, worthy witnesses of his glorious extinction. But it is inconceivable that it should have seen the ant-like men busy with their absurd and insignificant trials of killing and dying for reasons that, apart from being generally childish, were also imperfectly understood. It did light up, however, the backs of the firing party and the faces of the condemned men. Some of them had fallen on their knees, others remained standing, a few averted their heads from the levelled barrels of muskets. Gaspar Ruiz, upright, the burliest of them all, hung his big shock head. The low sun dazzled him a little, and he counted himself a dead man already.

He fell at the first discharge. He fell because he thought he was a dead man. He struck the ground heavily. The jar of the fall surprised him. "I am not dead apparently," he thought to himself, when he heard the execution platoon reloading its arms at the word of command. It was then that the hope of escape dawned upon him for the first time. He remained lying stretched out with rigid limbs under the weight of two bodies collapsed crosswise upon his back.

By the time the soldiers had fired a third volley

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20 into the slightly stirring heaps of the slain, the sun had gone out of sight, and almost immediately with the darkening of the ocean dusk fell upon the coasts of the young Republic. Above the gloom of the lowlands the snowy peaks of the Cordilleras remained luminous and crimson for a long time. The soldiers before marching back to the fort sat down to smoke.

The sergeant with a naked sword in his hand strolled away by himself along the heap of the dead. He was a humane man, and watched for any stir or twitch of limb in the merciful idea of plunging the point of his blade into any body giving the slightest sign of life. But none of the bodies afforded him an opportunity for the display of this charitable intention. Not a muscle twitched amongst them, not even the powerful muscles of Gaspar Ruiz, who, deluged with the blood of his neighbours and shamming death, strove to appear more lifeless than the others.

He was lying face down. The sergeant recognized him by his stature, and being himself a very small man, looked with envy and contempt at the prostration of so much strength. He had always disliked that particular soldier. Moved by an obscure animosity, he inflicted a long gash across the neck of Gaspar Ruiz, with some vague notion of making sure of that strong man's death, as if a powerful physique were more able to resist the bullets. For the sergeant had no doubt that Gaspar Ruiz had been shot through in many places. Then he passed on, and shortly afterwards marched off with his men, leaving the bodies to the care of crows and vultures.

Gaspar Ruiz had restrained a cry, though it had seemed to him that his head was cut off at a blow; and when darkness came, shaking off the dead, whose weight had oppressed him, he crawled away over the plain on

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Rh his hands and knees. After drinking deeply, like a wounded beast, at a shallow stream, he assumed an upright posture, and staggered on light-headed and aimless, as if lost amongst the stars of the clear night. A small house seemed to rise out of the ground before him. He stumbled into the porch and struck at the door with his fist. There was not a gleam of light. Gaspar Ruiz might have thought that the inhabitants had fled from it, as from many others in the neighbourhood, had it not been for the shouts of abuse that answered his thumping. In his feverish and enfeebled state the angry screaming seemed to him part of a hallucination belonging to the weird, dreamlike feeling of his unexpected condemnation to death, of the thirst suffered, of the volleys fired at him within fifteen paces, of his head being cut off at a blow. "Open the door!" he cried. "Open in the name of God!"

An infuriated voice from within jeered at him: "Come in, come in. This house belongs to you. All this land belongs to you. Come and take it."

"For the love of God," Gaspar Ruiz murmured.

"Does not all the land belong to you patriots?" the voice on the other side of the door screamed on. "Are you not a patriot?"

Gaspar Ruiz did not know. "I am a wounded man," he said, apathetically.

All became still inside. Gaspar Ruiz lost the hope of being admitted, and lay down under the porch just outside the door. He was utterly careless of what was going to happen to him. All his consciousness seemed to be concentrated in his neck, where he felt a severe pain. His indifference as to his fate was genuine.

The day was breaking when he awoke from a feverish doze; the door at which he had knocked in the dark stood wide open now, and a girl, steadying herself

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22 with her outspread arms, leaned over the threshold. Lying on his back, he stared up at her. Her face was pale and her eyes were very dark; her hair hung down black as ebony against her white cheeks; her lips were full and red. Beyond her he saw another head with long grey hair, and a thin old face with a pair of anxiously clasped hands under the chin.

  VI

" those people by sight," General Santierra would tell his guests at the dining-table. "I mean the people with whom Gaspar Ruiz found shelter. The father was an old Spaniard, a man of property ruined by the revolution. His estates, his house in town, his money, everything he had in the world had been confiscated by proclamation, for he was a bitter foe of our independence. From a position of great dignity and influence on the Viceroy's Council he became of less importance than his own negro slaves made free by our glorious revolution. He had not even the means to flee the country, as other Spaniards had managed to do. It may be that, wandering ruined and houseless, and burdened with nothing but his life, which was left to him by the clemency of the Provisional Government, he had simply walked under that broken roof of old tiles. It was a lonely spot. There did not seem to be even a dog belonging to the place. But though the roof had holes, as if a cannon-ball or two had dropped through it, the wooden shutters were thick and tight-closed all the time.

"My way took me frequently along the path in front of that miserable rancho. I rode from the fort to the town almost every evening, to sigh at the window of a lady I was in love with, then. When one is young,

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Rh you understand. . . She was a good patriot, you may believe. Caballeros, credit me or not, political feeling ran so high in those days that I do not believe I could have been fascinated by the charms of a woman of Royalist opinions. . . ."

Murmurs of amused incredulity all round the table interrupted the General; and while they lasted he stroked his white beard gravely.

"Señores," he protested, "a Royalist was a monster to our overwrought feelings. I am telling you this in order not to be suspected of the slightest tenderness towards that old Royalist's daughter. Moreover, as you know, my affections were engaged elsewhere. But I could not help noticing her on rare occasions when with the front door open she stood in the porch.

"You must know that this old Royalist was as crazy as a man can be. His political misfortunes, his total downfall and ruin, had disordered his mind. To show his contempt for what we patriots could do, he affected to laugh at his imprisonment, at the confiscation of his lands, the burning of his houses, and at the misery to which he and his womenfolk were reduced. This habit of laughing had grown upon him, so that he would begin to laugh and shout directly he caught sight of any stranger. That was the form of his madness.

"I, of course, disregarded the noise of that madman with that feeling of superiority the success of our cause inspired in us Americans. I suppose I really despised him because he was an old Castilian, a Spaniard born, and a Royalist. Those were certainly no reasons to scorn a man; but for centuries Spaniards born had shown their contempt of us Americans, men as well descended as themselves, simply because we were what they called colonists. We had been kept in abasement

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24 and made to feel our inferiority in social intercourse. And now it was our turn. It was safe for us patriots to display the same sentiments; and I being a young patriot, son of a patriot, despised that old Spaniard, and despising him I naturally disregarded his abuse, though it was annoying to my feelings. Others perhaps would not have been so forbearing.

"He would begin with a great yell—'I see a patriot. Another of them!' long before I came abreast of the house. The tone of his senseless revilings, mingled with bursts of laughter, was sometimes piercingly shrill and sometimes grave. It was all very mad; but I felt it incumbent upon my dignity to check my horse to a walk without even glancing towards the house, as if that man's abusive clamour in the porch were less than the barking of a cur. Always I rode by preserving an expression of haughty indifference on my face.

"It was no doubt very dignified; but I should have done better if I had kept my eyes open. A military man in war time should never consider himself off duty; and especially so if the war is a revolutionary war, when the enemy is not at the door, but within your very house. At such times the heat of passionate convictions passing into hatred, removes the restraints of honour and humanity from many men and of delicacy and fear from some women. These last, when once they throw off the timidity and reserve of their sex, become by the vivacity of their intelligence and the violence of their merciless resentment more dangerous than so many armed giants."

The General's voice rose, but his big hand stroked his white beard twice with an effect of venerable calmness. "Sí, Señores! Women are ready to rise to the heights of devotion unattainable by us men, or to sink

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text: Popular Science Monthly/Volume 81/July 1912/Is a Scientific Explanation of Life Possible?


text: Author:Otto Charles Glaser

title: Author:Otto Charles Glaser


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Rh into the depths of abasement which amazes our masculine prejudices. I am speaking now of exceptional women, you understand. . . ."

Here one of the guests observed that he had never met a woman yet who was not capable of turning out quite exceptional under circumstances that would engage her feelings strongly. "That sort of superiority in recklessness they have over us," he concluded, "makes of them the more interesting half of mankind."

The General, who bore the interruption with gravity, nodded courteous assent. "Si. Si. Under circumstances. . . . Precisely. They can do an infinite deal of mischief sometimes in quite unexpected ways. For who could have imagined that a young girl, daughter of a ruined Royalist whose life was held only by the contempt of his enemies, would have had the power to bring death and devastation upon two flourishing provinces and cause serious anxiety to the leaders of the revolution in the very hour of its success!" He paused to let the wonder of it penetrate our minds.

"Death and devastation," somebody murmured in surprise: "how shocking!"

The old General gave a glance in the direction of the murmur and went on. "Yes. That is, war—calamity. But the means by which she obtained the power to work this havoc on our southern frontier seem to me, who have seen her and spoken to her, still more shocking. That particular thing left on my mind a dreadful amazement which the further experience of life, of more than fifty years, has done nothing to diminish." He looked round as if to make sure of our attention, and, in a changed voice: "I am, as you know, a republican, son of a Liberator," he declared. "My

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26 mother, God rest her soul, was a Frenchwoman, the daughter of an ardent republican. As a boy I fought for liberty; I've always believed in the equality of men; and as to their brotherhood, that, to my mind, is even more certain. Look at the fierce animosity they display in their differences. And what in the world do you know that is more bitterly fierce than brothers' quarrels?"

All absence of cynicism checked an inclination to smile at this view of human brotherhood. On the contrary, there was in the tone the melancholy natural to a man profoundly humane at heart who from duty, from conviction, and from necessity, had played his part in scenes of ruthless violence.

The General had seen much of fratricidal strife. "Certainly. There is no doubt of their brotherhood," he insisted. "All men are brothers, and as such know almost too much of each other. But"—and here in the old patriarchal head, white as silver, the black eyes humorously twinkled—"if we are all brothers, all the women are not our sisters."

One of the younger guests was heard murmuring his satisfaction at the fact. But the General continued, with deliberate earnestness: "They are so different! The tale of a king who took a beggar-maid for a partner of his throne may be pretty enough as we men look upon ourselves and upon love. But that a young girl, famous for her haughty beauty and, only a short time before, the admired of all at the balls in the Viceroy's palace, should take by the hand a guasso, a common peasant, is intolerable to our sentiment of women and their love. It is madness. Nevertheless it happened. But it must be said that in her case it was the madness of hate—not of love."

After presenting this excuse in a spirit of chivalrous

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Rh justice, the General remained silent for a time. "I rode past the house every day almost," he began again, "and this was what was going on within. But how it was going on no mind of man can conceive. Her desperation must have been extreme, and Gaspar Ruiz was a docile fellow. He had been an obedient soldier. His strength was like an enormous stone lying on the ground, ready to be hurled this way or that by the hand that picks it up.

"It is clear that he would tell his story to the people who gave him the shelter he needed. And he needed assistance badly. His wound was not dangerous, but his life was forfeited. The old Royalist being wrapped up in his laughing madness, the two women arranged a hiding-place for the wounded man in one of the huts amongst the fruit trees at the back of the house. That hovel, an abundance of clear water while the fever was on him, and some words of pity were all they could give. I suppose he had a share of what food there was. And it would be but little: a handful of roasted corn, perhaps a dish of beans, or a piece of bread with a few figs. To such misery were those proud and once wealthy people reduced."

  VII

was right in his surmise. Such was the exact nature of the assistance which Gaspar Ruiz, peasant son of peasants, received from the Royalist family whose daughter had opened the door of their miserable refuge to his extreme distress. Her sombre resolution ruled the madness of her father and the trembling bewilderment of her mother.

She had asked the strange man on the doorstep, "Who wounded you?"

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28 "The soldiers, señora," Gaspar Ruiz had answered, in a faint voice. "Patriots?"

"Si."

"What for?"

"Deserter," he gasped, leaning against the wall under the scrutiny of her black eyes. "I was left for dead over there."

She led him through the house out to a small hut of clay and reeds, lost in the long grass of the overgrown orchard. He sank on a heap of maize straw in a corner, and sighed profoundly.

"No one will look for you here," she said, looking down at him. "Nobody comes near us. We, too, have been left for dead—here."

He stirred uneasily on his heap of dirty straw, and the pain in his neck made him groan deliriously.

"I shall show Estaban some day that I am alive yet," he mumbled.

He accepted her assistance in silence, and the many days of pain went by. Her appearances in the hut brought him relief and became connected with the feverish dreams of angels which visited his couch; for Gaspar Ruiz was instructed in the mysteries of his religion, and had even been taught to read and write a little by the priest of his village. He waited for her with impatience, and saw her pass out of the dark hut and disappear in the brilliant sunshine with poignant regret. He discovered that, while he lay there feeling so very weak, he could, by closing his eyes, evoke her face with considerable distinctness. And this discovered faculty charmed the long, solitary hours of his convalescence. Later on, when he began to regain his strength, he would creep at dusk from his hut to the house and sit on the step of the garden door.

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Rh In one of the rooms the mad father paced to and fro, muttering to himself with short, abrupt laughs. In the passage, sitting on a stool, the mother sighed and moaned. The daughter, in rough threadbare clothing, and her white haggard face half hidden by a coarse manta, stood leaning against the side of the door. Gaspar Ruiz, with his elbows propped on his knees and his head resting in his hands, talked to the two women in an undertone.

The common misery of destitution would have made a bitter mockery of a marked insistence on social differences. Gaspar Ruiz understood this in his simplicity. From his captivity amongst the Royalists he could give them news of people they knew. He described their appearance; and when he related the story of the battle in which he was recaptured the two women lamented the blow to their cause and the ruin of their secret hopes.

He had no feeling either way. But he felt a great devotion for that young girl. In his desire to appear worthy of her condescension, he boasted a little of his bodily strength. He had nothing else to boast of. Because of that quality his comrades treated him with as great a deference, he explained, as though he had been a sergeant, both in camp and in battle.

"I could always get as many as I wanted to follow me anywhere, señorita. I ought to have been made an officer, because I can read and write."

Behind him the silent old lady fetched a moaning sigh from time to time; the distracted father muttered to himself, pacing the sala; and Gaspar Ruiz would raise his eyes now and then to look at the daughter of these people.

He would look at her with curiosity because she was alive, and also with that feeling of familiarity and awe with which he had contemplated in churches the

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30 inanimate and powerful statues of the saints, whose protection is invoked in dangers and difficulties. His difficulty was very great.

He could not remain hiding in an orchard for ever and ever. He knew also very well that before he had gone half a day's journey in any direction, he would be picked up by one of the cavalry patrols scouring the country, and brought into one or another of the camps where the patriot army destined for the liberation of Peru was collected. There he would in the end be recognized as Gaspar Ruiz—the deserter to the Royalists—and no doubt shot very effectually this time. There did not seem any place in the world for the innocent Gaspar Ruiz anywhere. And at this thought his simple soul surrendered itself to gloom and resentment as black as night.

They had made him a soldier forcibly. He did not mind being a soldier. And he had been a good soldier as he had been a good son, because of his docility and his strength. But now there was no use for either. They had taken him from his parents, and he could no longer be a soldier—not a good soldier at any rate. Nobody would listen to his explanations. What injustice it was! What injustice!

And in a mournful murmur he would go over the story of his capture and recapture for the twentieth time. Then, raising his eyes to the silent girl in the doorway, "Si, señorita," he would say with a deep sigh, "injustice has made this poor breath in my body quite worthless to me and to anybody else. And I do not care who robs me of it."

One evening, as he exhaled thus the plaint of his wounded soul, she condescended to say that, if she were a man, she would consider no life worthless which held the possibility of revenge.

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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, Archibald (1598-1661)


text: Celtic Fairy Tales/The Battle of the Birds


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, Archibald (1576?-1638)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, George (1719-1796)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, George (1761-1817)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, Guy


text:
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Rh anthem that, for any save musical reasons, I delighted in, and where we had a pew. After we moved from Third Street, our pew was at the Cathedral, more distinguished from the clerical standpoint, for there we sat under the Bishop. No matter which our church, High Mass was long: I could not have got to the appointed part of Walnut Street in time, had I found at the door the companion to go there with me. There was nothing to do but to walk home alone or sedately at my Father's side, and one's Father, however correct he might be under other circumtances, was not the right person for these occasions. On Sundays I could not conceal from myself that I was socially at a discount. The reflection that this was where I, as a Catholic, scored, should have consoled me, for if the Episcopalian was performing a social duty when he went to church, I, as a Catholic, was making a social sacrifice, and sacrifice of some sort is of the essence of religion.

III

If I could but have taken the trouble to be interested, it must also have occurred to me to wonder why St. Joseph's, where I went so often, was hidden in an obscure alley. In Philadelphia, the town of straight streets crossing each other at right angles, it is not easy for a building of the kind to keep out of sight. But not one man in a hundred, not one in a thousand, who, passing along Third Street, looked up Willing's Alley, dreamt for a minute that somewhere in that alley, embedded in a


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188 of brokers' and railroad offices, carefully concealing every trace of itself, was a church with a large congregation. Most churches in Philadelphia, as everywhere, like to display themselves prominently with an elaborate façade, or a lofty steeple, or a green enclosure, or a graveyard full of monuments. St. Peter's, close by, fills a whole block. Christ Church stands flush with the pavement. The simplest Meeting-House, by the beautiful trees that overshadow it or the high walls that enclose it or the bit of green at its door, will not let the passer-by forget it. But St. Joseph's, evidently, did not want to be seen, did not want to be remembered; evidently hesitated to show that its doors were wide and hospitably open to all the world in the beautiful fashion of the Catholic Church. There was something furtive about it, an air of mystery, it was almost as if one were keeping a clandestine appointment with religion when one turned from the street into the humble alley, and from the alley into the silence of the sanctuary.

Perhaps I thought less about this mysterious aloofness because, once in the church, I felt so much at home. I do not mind owning now, though I would not have owned it then for a good deal, that after my return from the Convent, I had the uncomfortable feeling of being a stranger not only in my town, but in my family. I had been in the Convent eleven years and until this day when I look back to my childhood, it is the Convent I remember as home. St. Joseph's seemed a part of the Convent, therefore of


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Rh home, that had strayed into the town by mistake. In some ways it was not like the Convent, greatly to my discomfort. The chapel there was dainty in detail, exqnisitely kept, the altars fresh with flowers from the Convent garden, and for congregation the nuns and the girls modestly and demurely veiled. But nothing was dainty about St. Joseph's,—men are as untidy in running a church as in keeping a house—it was not well kept, the flowers were artificial and tawdry, and the congregation was largely made up of shabby old Irishwomen. The priests—Jesuits—were mostly Italian, with those unpleasant habits of Italian priests that are a shock to the convent-bred American when she first goes to Italy. They had, however, the virtue of old friends, their faces were familiar, I had known them for years at the Convent which they had frequently visited and where, by special grace, they had refrained from some of the unpleasant habits that offended me at St. Joseph's.

There was Father de Maria, tall, thin, with a wonderful shock of white hair, a fine ascetic face and a kindly smile, not adapted to shine in children's society—too much of a scholar I fancied though I may have been wrong—and with an effect of severity which I do not think he meant, but which had kept me at a safe distance when he came to see us at Torresdale. But he had come, I could not remember the time when I had not known him, and that was in his favour.

There was Father Ardea, a small, shrinking, dark man, from whom also it was more comfortable to keep at a


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192 safe distance, so little had he to say and such a trick of looking at you with an "Eh? Eh?" of expectation, as if he relied upon you to supply the talk he had not at his own command. But I could have forgiven him worse, so pleasant a duty did he make of confession. His penances were light and his only comment was "Eh? Eh? my child? But you didn't mean it! You didn't mean it!" until I longed to accuse myself of the Seven Deadly Sins with the Unpardonable Sin thrown in, just to see if he would still assure me that I didn't mean it.

There was Father Bobbelin—our corruption I fancy of Barbelin—a Frenchman, short and fat, sandy-haired, with a round smiling face: the most welcome of all. He was always very snuffy, and always ready to hand round his snuff-box if talk languished when he went out to walk with us, which I liked better than Father Ardea's embarrassing "Eh? Eh?" It was to Father Bobbelin an inexhaustible joke, and the only other I knew him to venture upon resulted in so unheard-of a breach of discipline that ever after we saw less of him and his snuff-box. He was walking with us down Mulberry Avenue one afternoon, the little girls clustered about him as they were always sure to be, and the nun in charge a little behind with the bigger, more sedate girls. When we got to the end of the Avenue, the carriage gate leading straight out into the World was open as it had never been before, as it never was again. Father Bobbelin's fat shoulders shook with laughter. He opened the gate wider. "Now,


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Rh children," he said, "here's your chance. Run for it!" And we did, we ran as if for our lives, though no children could have loved their school better or wanted less to get away from it. One or two ran as far as the railroad, the most adventurous crossed it, and were making full tilt for the river before all were caught and brought back and sent to bed in disgrace. After that Father Bobbelin visited us only in our class-room.

And there were other priests whose names escape me, but not their home-like faces. Now and then Jesuits who gave Missions and who had conducted the retreats at the Convent, appeared at St. Joseph's,—Father Smarius, the huge Dutchman, so enormous they used to tell us at the Convent that he had never seen his feet for twenty years, who had baptized my Father and his family in the Convent chapel; and Father Boudreau, the silent, shy little Louisianian, whom I remember so well coming with Father Smarius one June day to bless, and sprinkle Holy Water over that big yellow and white house close to the Convent which my Father had taken for the summer; and Father Glackmeyer, and Father Coghlan, and with them others whose presence helped the more to fill St. Joseph's with the intimate convent atmosphere.

IV

These old friends and old associations took away from the uneasiness it might otherwise have given me to find the church, for which I had exchanged the Convent chapel,


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194 hidden up an alley as if its existence were a sin. But overlook it as I might, this was the one important fact about St. Joseph's which, otherwise, had no particular interest. It did not count as architecture, it boasted of no beauty of decoration: an inconspicuous, commonplace building from every point of view, of which I consequently retain but the vaguest memory. As I write, I can see, as if it were before me, the Convent chapel, its every nook and corner, almost its every stone, this altar here, that picture there, the confessional in the screened-off space where visitors sat, the dark step close to the altar railing where I carried my wrongs and my sorrows. But try as I may, I cannot see St. Joseph's as it was, cannot see any detail, nothing save the general shabbiness and untidiness that shocked my convent-bred eyes. Could it have appealed by its beauty, like the old Cathedrals of Europe, or, for that matter, like the old churches of Philadelphia, no doubt I should be able to recall it as vividly as the Convent chapel. Because I cannot, because it impressed me so superficially, I regret the more that I had not the sense to appreciate the interest it borrowed from the romance of history and the beauty of suffering—the history of the Catholic religion in Philadelphia which I might have read in this careful hiding of its temple; the suffering of the scapegoat among churches, obliged to keep out of sight, atoning for their intolerance in a desert of secrecy, letting no man know where its prayers were said or its services held. Catholics had to practise their religion like criminals skulking from the


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, Harriette


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, Hugh


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, Ilay


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Campbell, James (1667-1745)