periences before large audiences. Among his publications are My Experiences of the War Between France and Germany and Glimpses Through the Cannon Smoke (1880); Soldiering and Scribbling and A Series of Sketches (1882); Life of Chinese Gordon (1884); Life of the Emperor William of Germany (1889); Havelock (1890); Barracks, Bivouacs, and Battles (1891); The Afghan Wars (1892); Colin Campbell; Lord Clyde, biography (1895); Memoirs and Studies of War and Peace (1895); The Black Watch (1896); and Life of Napoleon (1898).

MONT AVRON.

I am bound for Le Vert Galant, and should turn away from the front at Livry; but let me go a little farther southward, through the col of Bondy, to see what that old bête noir Mont Avron is like in the thickening gloom. The place is true to its established character. From the range of the fringe of felled forest through which I have penetrated, I can only faintly trace the familiar outlines, so rapidly has the darkness fallen. But - flash! up goes the electric light from Nogent and Rosny, and bang comes the first shell-the "top of the evening" from Avron. What a humbug, to be sure, is that same electric light. The French were always using it. You saw it scintillating on the summit of Valérien and flashing out toward Le Bourget from Montmartre. To the defenders of Paris all it could do is to make darkness visible; to its besiegers, if they had only been in the mind, it would have been a gratis illumination that would be worth any money. In the foreground of the electric flashes of the forts before me, lies Avron as clear as if it were noonday. But Chelles, Montfermeil, Noisy, or Villiers might have been swallowed up in an earthquake, so utterly invisible are they. Oh, for something else than the meagre walruses by the windmill and on the vineberg! Half-a-dozen hours' pelting with real artillery on those impudent batteries on the verge and crest of the plateau so brilliant under the

rays of the electric light then in the small hours a storming party of one battalion of Saxons and another of Guardsmen; a bayonet fight on the summit- and then hurrah for the black, white and red flag to flaunt wherewithal the gunners of Nogent and Rosny. It would not be a light cause for which the Saxons, having once got a grip of the summit, would surrender it now. Well, let us live in hope, in early hope. How long? How long? I get angry as I look at the battery, made right in our faces, but the other day comparatively harmless, and at whose door, young as it is, lie the deaths of so many stalwart Saxons, whose corpses will fertilize next year's crops in the fatal horseshoe. I get angry and impatient when I think that this place, which our ground dominates so that not a gun could ever have been mounted but for unaccountable laissez faire, should test the elasticity of our forepost line in a direction that I am disgusted and savage to have the knowledge of. The laissez faire days were over; but there seldom comes an indulgence without a penalty, and on many graves around this side of Paris, the pioneers might have substituted for the "Hier ruhen in Gott" the words, "Here lie the consequences of vacillation."- From My Experiences of the War Between France and Germany.

F

ORBES, EDWARD, a British naturalist; born at Douglas, Isle of Man, February 12, 1815; died near Edinburgh, November 18, 1854. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, but devoted himself mainly to scientific pursuits and to literature. He was among the earliest to collect specimens in natural history by means of deep-sea dredging. In 1842 he became Professor of Botany in King's College, London, and shortly afterward was appointed Curator of the Museum of the Geological Society.

numerous.

His scientific publications were very Among his more important works was the preparation of a paleontological and geographical map of the British Islands, with an explanatory dissertation upon the Distribution of Marine Life. In 1852 he was chosen President of the Geological Society, and in 1853 was made Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh. A collection of his purely literary papers, with a Memoir by Professor Huxley, appeared soon after his death.

"Forbes was pre-eminently a naturalist," wrote Dr. W. A. Browne. "His attention had never been exclusively directed to any one of the natural sciences. He was equally a botanist, a zoologist, and a geologist from first to last. With a remarkable eye and tact for the discrimination of species and the allocation of natural groups, he combined the utmost delicacy in the perception of organic and cosmical relations. He possessed that rare quality so remarkable in the great masters of natural history, Linnæus and Cuvier — the power of availing himself of the labors of his brethren, not, as is too often the case, by appropriating their acquisitions, but by associating them voluntarily in the common labor. Entirely destitute of jealousy in scientific matters, he rather erred in overrating than in underrating the services of his friends. He was consequently as much beloved and confided in by his seniors in science as by the youngest naturalists of his acquaintance."

THE CATERPILLAR STATE OF MAN.

What is the peculiarity of bachelorhood? It is the yearning after love returned, the craving for marriage, the longing for woman's companionship. Surround a