great colored diagrams of the dissected human figure. With looks of horror they fled in a noisy stampede down the old staircase, only feeling safe when they had put a street or two between them and the class. The college prospered under its new president, but the Broad church wave was spent. Thẹ rosy glow of an inspired hope passed, fading into the light of common day.

THOMAS SULMAN.

From The Spectator. FISH AND FOWL IN THE NORFOLK MEALMARSHES.

On the coast of North Norfolk, for some sixteen miles from Brancaster to Blakeney, there is now growing up one of the most remarkable natural reclamations to be seen in our islands. The area now added, or in process of being added, to the land is, roughly speaking, forty square miles, fringing the original shore for a depth of from one and a half miles to two and a half miles. Though this is a fact remarkable in itself, the origin, present condition, and vegetable 'and animal life of the "meal-marshes," as they are locally called, make the whole area one of extraordinary interest to the naturalist. Considered from the point of view of mechanical structure, these vast flats are a level of fat, alluvial soil, averaging from ten feet to fifteen feet of rich, soaplike earth laid upon the old sea-bottom, intersected by creeks large and small, up which the tide rushes at every flood. But the whole surface, instead of being mud and slime, is covered with dense vegetation like that of a sea-moor, and the deposit has been so rapid that at present only the highest tides ever cover the surface of the "meals."

We do not know that any one has answered the question, "Whence came the soil that has made the mealmarshes?" By "common form" they ought to have been made either by mud carried down by rivers and spread along the shore, as, for instance, the Lymington River spreads the soil of the New Forest along the foreshore of the

Solent, or by the deposit left by the daily flood-tide, advancing over the bottom of a muddy sea, and depositing the silt on the shore. But here there is not a single stream larger than a brook to lay down these forty square miles of new land, and the sea-bottom opposite the meal-marshes and for a score of miles out into the North Sea is not mud, but one vast shoal of bright and shifting sand. It is clear, therefore, that this new land was not transported from the adjacent sea-bottom. Yet the form of the "meal-marshes" indicates that the soil has been deposited by the tides, and history shows that the process has been extraordinarily rapid. There is evidence of this even in the soil of the new land, for recently at a depth of eight feet the wicker-work of a fisherman's basket was found, in which the osiers had been cut with a knife, and finished off in quite modern fashion. As the few brooks which debouch on the new land could never have made more than the most insignificant contribution to its formation, and the bottom of all the adjacent sea is not earth but sand, it must be inferred that the soil of the "meal-marshes" has been transported from a distance by the sea. Some twenty miles to the east beyond Cromer the sea is washing away the land almost as fast as it is adding to it on the northern coast. But the inference that it is this soil which forms the meal-marshes is unlikely, because all the currents and tides setting from the East show clear water. The main rush of current and tide comes on to the meal-marshes from the West, rushing out of the estuary of the Wash, and these tides are thick and muddy. The bottom of the Wash itself is sand; but it is known that mud is capable of almost infinite subdivision in water, and the conclusion as to the recent formation of the Norfolk mealmarshes is as follows. The whole of these hundreds of millions of tons of soil have been originally brought into the Wash by the great rivers of the Fens. The constant efforts of engineers to increase the current of the outfall of the Fen rivers have had for result that only a part of the earth held in suspension in their flooded water is dropped upon the bottom near their mouths.

In the present month the surface of the new land, and the ebb and flow of the waters in its creeks, present a scene of unique beauty and interest. In parts of the marsh the flowers of the sea-lavender literally cover the ground, flower touching flower, with hundreds of acres of unbroken violet-grey. On the wetter parts the "crab grass" clusters like deep heather, and on the mounds and little lawns of grass, curlews, whimbrel, gulls, redshanks, and terns sit all day basking in the summer sun. As the writer sat up to his waist in sea-lavender and screened by thick bushes of that strange plant, the suæda, which seems capable of living in all shapes, from mere pink bacilli lying on damp sand, to a bush as tall as broom, he saw the whole bird population of the mealmarsh enjoying their siesta. On the fringe of a muddy creek, all set round with young green samphire, were some thirty whimbrel, or "May-birds," as the gunners call them, with three or four curlews keeping sentry on the mud close by. A flock of gulls were washing themselves in a brackish pool close by, and others were floating in from the sands to join them. Stone-plover and a pair of shell-ducks were also sitting on a shingle-bed near the sea-lavender marsh, and the only birds not halfasleep were the redshanks and a flock of terns, which constantly shifted from creek to pool. The terns had discovered a shoal of small fish, and were dropping into one of the deeper creeks in a regular volley of dives and plunges. In the creek we met one of the old fowlers of the shore rowing up to get a shot at the curlews. He was variously equipped, having a coil of fishing-lines, a shrimping-net, and two guns. The lines he had used earlier, at the seaward mouth of the creek, but had taken no fish. "The tides," he remarked, were so heavy that "the poor things got carried past the hooks." Among the curlews he had better fortune, or rather availed himself of an acquired skill which was suffi

ciently surprising. Paddling up, under shelter of the creek, to within some three hundred yards of where the curlews and "May-birds" sat, he whistled' the shrill note of the curlew, at the same time shaking his cap over the edge of the creek, and then uttering the screaming whistle with redoubled energy. In an instant every curlew and "May-bird" near rose and came flying across the flats straight to the point at which he lay, and he kept them hovering and returning, until he had shot three of these wild and wary birds in an almost open flat.

This exhibition of the fowler's art drove away all bird-life for the time; but the creatures in the falling waters of the creeks were sufficiently amusing. The stream swarmed with "gillies," bold, bad, unpleasant little crabs, the "street arabs" of the tideway paths. When he thinks he is not observed, the gillie prowls thoughtfully along frontways, picking up bits of rubbish with his claws, or catching and killing any smaller and softer creature he meets. If he sees a man he rushes off sideways, over mud or water, shaking his big claw-like fists with an air of insolent and furious defiance. Once in the water he instantly sinks himself in the mud, digging fast with his small claws, until, with one final snap of defiance from his big claws, he vanishes in the mud. "Tracking" flat-fish is one of the minor sports of the creeks. The "butts" and flounders leave a trail on the sand, and if this is followed the fish may be seen, lying all covered with sand, and only showing a wry mouth and a pair of eyes through the sand-grains. The gunners follow up the fish, and catch it by setting their naked foot upon the flounder's back. This primitive fishing has a certain lazy charm; but the ideal form for the artistic capture of all the creek fishes left in the channels at the ebb-tide would be the employment of trained comorants. If any local gunner or boatman would rear a brood of these clever birds, and train them, they would' earn a living for themselves and him during the summer months, and bring in a certain revenue from visitors curious to witness their performance.

If the lower jaw be a sign of strength of character, the dragon fly (Libellula), in its larval state, must be of an exceptionally resolute disposition, for the lower jaw or mask is no less than three times as long as the head, and is furnished at the end with a kind of horny split lip and a pair of very serviceable nippers. The lower jaw measures half an inch, and the whole head a trifle over a third of this length. No ordinary arrangement could possibly adapt such a jaw to its head, and if any one will try resting the chin in the palm of the hand, and extending the thumb and little finger, he will have a very fair notion of this terrible jaw-the thumb and little finger representing the nippers of the jaw, and the whole arm representing the jaw or mask. This mask, in fact, is jointed in the middle with a kind of elbow, and, when not extended for the purpose of seizing prey, extends downwards from the lingua, to which it is attached, as far as the second pair of legs, and then up again to meet the maxillæ; the edges of the mask, when so folded up, fitting closely against each other, and forming altogether what looks like an enormous chin.

The action of protruding and withdrawing the mask with lightning rapidity is very much like that of the tongue of the frog; but it must be confessed that our friend is not so good a sportsman, for he as often as not aims short in his eagerness and misses his mark, but the more phlegmatic frog never misses.

pedo-boat, and without any perceptible means of propulsion. Having, apparently, anticipated the latest discovery of naval mechanics, he propels his vessel by means of a jet of water violently driven out of the stern; as the water, however, has to be drawn in again by the same vent (the rectum), his journeys by this method are not very long, and are somewhat spasmodic. This drawing in and expelling of water through the rectum is the ordinary method of respiration also, which is effected chiefly under water, at least during the earlier larval stages; but the larva is also able to breathe atmospheric air in a way not yet fully understood, I believe, but which was to be expected in an insect whose later existence was to be spent in air-not in water. It may be noticed that as the time for the final change approaches, the nymph is fond of resting with either the extreme tip of the tail out of water or else the head and one or both shoulders (if they may so be called). Now if a dry nymph skin be examined, two spiracles like horny lips will be found, one on each side, behind the head, placed vertically in the fold between the segments bearing the first and second pair of legs, and these spiracles in the living larva may be noticed open when above water; and, again, of the three spines closing the rectum, the two lateral ones are sharp, but the third is cut off at the point and grooved within, and forms with the two lateral ones a minute channel as large as a fine needle, which is always open-even when the spines appear to be quite closed-and this apparently also serves as a spiracle. White threads are seen proceeding from the split nymph skin. These are the trachea, which connect with the pair of spiracles already referred to, and are ruptured as the imago comes out. They easily locate the position of the spiracles in the dry nymph skin, if any difficulty is experienced in finding them from the outside.

When full fed the dull brown eyes of the larva become brilliant green, being indeed the color of the perfect eyes within; the larva then crawls la

boriously up some stick or water plant, the body close pressed against the stem, and assisted by the scales and spines of the abdomen-not disdaining the friendly help of a pencil if such be forthcoming, and trying apparently with vigorous switchings of the abdomen, the stability of its chesen support.

After about ten minutes to half an hour of drying, the part immediately behind the eyes and above the wing cases swells, cracks, and opens, and discloses the bright green body of the perfect insect. Slowly the body emerges; the brown cases of the eyes are thrust farther and farther aside, and the enormous head with its compound eyes protrudes fully out; at the same time the little crumpled wings are drawn out of their cases, then the legs one by one, the imago now hanging with head bent right back and the wings pointing upwards, the whole insect hanging, with six segments of the abdomen exposed, wet and limp from the dry nymph skin, still clinging firmly to its support by its stiff and empty legs.

After hanging like this for some ten minutes or more, until the legs are strong enough, the insect, by a quick contraction of the body, suddenly lifts

its head, and seizing with all six legs the dry nymph skin, quickly withdraws the remaining four segments of the abdomen out of its sheath, and hangs by its legs alone. The wings now hang down and hegin slowly to expand, at first dull and mealy-looking; as they lengthen they get flatter and clearer, until in about half an hour they show all the beauty of their gauzy texture. They are still, however, very pale green and soft, and the body of the insect is still wet and limp; but as the fluid which fils the animal is exuded drop by drop, the body stiffens and darkens, the wings dry, and are raised and then lowered to the position so well known. After about five hours from first emerging from the water, the perfect dragon fly is ready with quivering wings for its new life, often, alas! to be cut short within an hour by a hungry bird. It may seem incredible that birds should be able to catch so rapid a flier but when first out the dragon fly is not so very rapid on the wing, and is when fluttering or resting, a most conspicuous object. The poor ethereal demoiselle, almost before she has tasted the joys of her new and beautiful life, is snapped up by a vulgar sparrow.

A. EAST.

Physical Effects of Music.-The influence of music upon the respiration, the heart and the capillary circulation is the subject of a paper by MM. A. Binet and J. Courtier, in the Revue Scientifique (February 27). Experiments were made upon a well-known musical composer, and the investigators endeavored to determine effects produced by musical sound alone, as distinct from those due to emotions aroused by pieces associated with dramatic incidents or words. Isolated notes, chords in unison and discords were first tried. Both major chords struck in a lively manner and discords quickened the respiration, the latter more especially. Minor chords tended to retard respiration. When melodies were tried it was found that all, whether grave or gay, produced quickened respiration and increased

.

action of the heart. The lively tunes produced the greatest acceleration.

Where the sound was wholly uncomplicated by emotional ideas, as in single notes or chords, the heart's action was accelerated, but not in so marked a degree as when a melody either grave or gay was played. During operatic pieces, or those well known to the subject, the acceleration attained its maximum. The influence of music on the capillary circulation was tested by a plethysmograph attached to the right hand. The capillary tracing showed that a slight diminution of pulsation was usually produced by musical sounds, the effect being very small when sad melodies were played, but well marked when lively airs were played.-Nature.