ters the revelation. The sensation must even be worse than being shot. It is like falling through a hole out of Paradise into Hell. But it passes as soon as comes, and perhaps goes into the dim animal consciousness as something like a twinge of dyspepsia. Swift as the process is, there is time for its subjects to put on a distinct air of surprise that was not there in the velvet of darkness. Even the slow human being shows it sometimes when the mag. nesium imposes its flash on the welllighted dinner table-and the wild animal is ten times as alert to respond to such a cataclysm.

Flashlight photography, which may, in one sense, be regarded as the acme of animal portraiture, is only night-line photography on a higher plane. We shall see whether a wind of the spiral will not take us to yet greater heights. No success is more marked than the application of animated photography to wild life. Mr. Kearton brings the very bird before us-the bird and the wind or the sunshine in which it lives, for we see the feathers blow awry and each muscular action by which it keeps its perch on a rather difficult twig. The youngsters thrust out their eager maws, and the parents, easily distinguishable from one another by their plumage, come rushing up with caterpillars that wriggle in their beaks. In The Nation.

another picture the wary sparrowhawk is placed close under our eyes. We see her bring the kill to the nest, and every action with which she tears off pieces with her sharp, curved beak for distribution among the fierce young brigands in white fluff.

The spoil of the camera, though it is not spoil in the old sense of the word, is immense. It is but a tithe, however, of the facts and incidents that come to the man who watches behind the screen while waiting for his selected pictures. Unsuspected, he sees many a comedy, and perhaps now and then a tragedy, enacted in parts of the field not covered by the lens. A few years ago someone gave us the whole story of how a thrush taught her young ones to fly, silencing for the nonce those critics who say there is no school of the woods. Then there is Mr. Kearton's robin that used to come and feed the young thrushes by stealth, much as a kindly human neighbor will look after bairns that she believes to be neglected by their parents. These observations are typical of a large class that find their way even now with great difficulty into the books of natural history. They clothe the bones of the old science with the fuller, rounder outlines of the more human and enlightening "nature study."

The Adjutant managed to convert a sigh of relief into a deferential cough as he blotted the Colonel's signature at the foot of the "Weekly State," and murmured: "That's all my papers for *This tale is founded upon what the writer believes to be a true story. It used to be told in the old War Office in Pall Mall a few years ago, and concerned a certain file of correspondence which began with some question about buttons and which ended with the disbanding of a battalion. Although the whole establishment has been reorganized since

to-day, sir. Will you polish off the Quartermaster now? He's lying low in his booth, waiting to be sent for."

The Colonel groaned. "All right, I suppose I must. But just look here, that time in consequence of the recommendations of the Committee presided over by Lord Esher, the War Office has ever been a conservative institution, and its methods remain substantially the same as they were before the proposals of that Committee were given effect to. The story has been adapted to the conditions now existing.

Annesley: none of your sloping off and leaving me to cope with the fellow single-handed! He's always starting

some confounded hare or other, and in this stuffy weather I can make no fight of it."

Everybody remembers what a favorable impression the detachment of the Guava Rifles created at the Diamond Jubilee; and soldiers will recall that the corps enjoyed a high reputation for discipline as long as the rank and file got their own way, and that there was never any question as regards the martial qualities of the personnel provided that the authorities did not fall into the error of sending the regiment on active service. An orderly-a picturesque and soldierly figure in his turban and snowy spats-was despatched in hot haste to the Quartermaster's office to intimate to that functionary that the Commanding Officer was awaiting his pleasure, and the Adjutant proffered a lighted match to his Chief, who had extracted a cigarette out of a drawer marked "Confidential Documents." The mornings are apt to grow sultry even so early in the year as April in San Jago, that sugar island in the Antilles which was filched from its previous possessors by the machinations of Pitt, and the most perfectly appointed orderly-room under such conditions loses some of its undefinable charm. The Adjutant was anon going home on long leave; the Colonel, on the other hand, saw no prospects of a change of scene for many months to come, and it was with something of an effort that he managed to infuse some little geniality into his greeting of the Quartermaster: "Ah, Prout! Good morning; bit warm, isn't it? Got some papers, I see. suspiciously, "what's that you've got in that brown paper parcel?"

But,"

"With your permission, sir, I propose to put the ordinary correspondence before you first," replied the Quartermaster respectfully but firmly,

as he deposited the parcel on a chair and then laid the first out of a handful of documents on the Commanding Officer's blotting-pad.

The Colonel glanced at the paper, signed it, and reached for the next. He signed four in similar fashion, but when he came to the fifth and last he paused and laid down his pen. "Hang it, Prout! Is it necessary to put this quite so unpleasantly. It's positively offensive! Of course it was a nuisance there being nobody there to issue the groceries till five minutes past, and your being kept waiting for a little, but" and he shot a look of appeal at the Adjutant.

"Never pays being rude on paper," observed that official, gazing stolidly out of the window at nothing.

"Of course, if you insist upon it, sir, I will 'ave a fresh memo. prepared," said the Quartermaster resentfullywhen irritated he was inclined to drop bis aitches; "but if I may say so, sir, we shall 'ave trouble with the Army Service Corps if we do not stand up for our rights. And I would ask that the Adjutant be not allowed to criticise my method of conducting correspondence, sir!"

"Oh, well, I'll sign the thing," muttered the Colonel; "it'll be all the same a hundred years hence how it's worded, I dare say. Now for your parcel, and then we'll toddle home I declare to goodness I'm regularly fed up with this beastly office."

The Quartermaster fetched the parcel and solemnly unrolled it on his Commanding Officer's table, displaying two packets-one packet contained two marksmen's badges, the other contained five. "I wish to show you, sir," he began, "these badges which the Ordnance Store Department have thought fit to send us for this year's supply. The two in the small packet are samples of last year's issue, the other five are this year's. If you look at them,

sir, you will see that the new lot are of inferior quality to the old." The Colonel examined the badges for some time. "I can't for the life of me see any difference," he said at last. "Let me see, which did you say were the new lot?"

"The two by themselves are last year's, sir, the rest are this year's," explained the Quartermaster in a state bordering on exasperation. “If you will take the trouble to inspect them carefully you must notice what I complain of!" The Colonel gazed at the badges, prodded some of them absent-mindedly with the office knife, and finally turned helplessly to the Adjutant: "What do you say, Annesley?"

Now the Adjutant had been entirely unable to detect any difference between the two lots of badges, and he was bored beyond endurance by the discussion. But what he wanted to do was to go away, and instinct told him that the quickest method of getting the question settled would be to agree with the worthy Prout. So he gave it as his opinion that the new badges were not up to the same standard as the old, devoutly hoping that he would not be called upon to point out features or difference, as he did not know which were the new and which were the old. "Oh, well," said the Colonel, considerably relieved, "if you both agree I must of course be wrong; now that I come to look at them again I rather think that last year's lot are a bit the more classy of the two. However, luckily, it doesn't matter a damn one way or the other."

The Quartermaster gave vent to a sound very like a snort of indignation. "Of course, sir, if you are willing to accept any rubbish for your regiment that the Army Council sends you because no other commanding officer will accept it, I have nothing more to say. They know that this is a colored corps, and they think anything is good enough

for us. I take leave to assert, sir, that they do not treat the Grenadiers or the Gordons like this!" And he made as though to roll up the parcel again.

"But what the devil do you want me to do?" pleaded the Colonel, longing for peace and quiet, and prepared to concur in almost any proposal offering him a promise of escape.

"With your approval, sir, I shall draft a letter on the subject to the War Office," rejoined Quartermaster Prout, "and will bring it to you to-morrow morning ready for your signature. Tomorrow's mail day, you will remember, sir. That's all I have got for you this morning-good morning, sir." And he had gathered up his possessions and was gone before the Colonel had time to make up his mind whether he was to acquiesce or not.

"Now just see what you have let me in for, Annesley," grumbled the Colonel. "What made you agree with the man about his wretched badges? You know perfectly well that it's all rot, and, all the same, you go and aid and abet him in his mischief! 'Pon my word you are worse than he is, and between you I have got to write to those baboos in Whitehall, who'll get level with us somehow for bothering them. My experience is that when you stir up mud and ask those people to look at it, they just job your head in it, whether you're right or wrong." The Adjutant, it must be confessed, felt a little guilty. He had not foreseen the dire consequences which would result from his adopting the very unusual attitude of not contradicting the Quartermaster flatly, no matter what he said. He remarked, however, that it would at least have the effect of keeping that pestilent person Prout quiet for a time, and his chief felt bound to allow that such a consummation would almost compensate for the inconveniences and perils involved in writing a letter to the War Office.

True to his word the Quartermaster turned up in the Commanding Officer's sanctum next morning, having carefully watched to see the Adjutant depart to mount the guard. The letter proved to be a weighty and a formidable document. It dwelt upon the vital importance of fostering emulation in marksmanship and of affording encouragement to a soldiery second to none in military zeal and in desire for efficiency. It announced that the inferior quality of the marksmen's badges recently received would be instantly detected in a corps in which all ranks were so jealous of appearances as were the rank and file of the Guava Rifles, and it not only asserted that the issue of decorations so disappointing in character would prove the death-blow of good shooting in the regiment, but it also hinted that the dissatisfaction which would arise might prove disastrous to discipline. It enclosed samples (two of the old badges and five of the new) and it wound up with an expression of touching confidence that the military authorities at headquarters would treat a deserving corps with justice. This portentous effusion, which was the result of many hours of labor on the part of Quartermaster Prout, was duly signed by the Colonel after unavailing efforts on his part to avoid committing himself until the Adjutant returned to the office. For fear of a change of mind on the part of his chief the Quartermaster took care that it was posted without delay, and a few hours later it was safely stowed in the mail-room of the liner steaming out of harbor.

jackets with contents which bear (or are supposed to bear) on the subject are attached, making up a bundle which is swathed liberally in red tape. That having been accomplished the bundle is conveyed by a messenger to whichever branch or section the Registry officials decide to be the one that is most concerned by the communication.

The lettter about the marksmen's badges obviously concerned the Equipment Branch of the Quartermaster-General's Department, and it was sent to that Branch to be dealt with. Several previous papers were attached, one of which-a bulky, packet distinguished with the number 74 | Claims | 1352— contained the correspondence in connection with a thrilling incident in the career of the Guava Rifles which had occurred some months before. A company at musketry had succeeded in wounding an infant which had strayed unobserved on to the range, there had been a demand for compensation on the part of the parents, supported by a doctor's bill as voucher, and the question had eventually been referred to the Treasury, who (with a very bad grace, and after ascertaining that the officer in charge of the company at the time had since succumbed to yellow fever, leaving no assets) assented to a money payment out of public funds. It might appear at first sight that there was no connection between the wounded infant and the badges, but a moment's consideration will serve to show the faultiness of such a conclusion; for not only did both questions have some connection with musketry, but the same regiment-to wit, the Guava Rifles-figured in each.

The Equipment Branch, like most branches, has many sub-divisions, and its ramifications jut outwards to Woolwich and to Pimlico; most of its subdivisions were afforded the opportunity of writing minutes on the subject of

the badges, but without any satisfactory conclusion being arrived at by anybody. Owing to a grave impropriety on the part of a messenger boy who dropped the correspondence when using it for playing "catch" with one of his fellows in the passage, the two sets of badges had unfortunately become intermingled, and a deputy-assistant-something was preparing to draw attention to this circumstance and to point out that there were now three of them in one packet and four in the other instead of two and five as stated by the Officer Commanding the Guava Rifles in his letter under consideration, when the whole bundle was called for by the Finance Department.

the

The reason for this intervention on the part of the Finance Department was one to which no exception could be taken; a question had arisen over a cow accidentally killed during field-firing near Ballincollig, and the General Officer Commanding at Cork had put forward a proposition that the owner of the animal should be reimbursed for his loss at the public expense; it was only natural, therefore, that Branch of the War Office dealing with financial problems of this kind should wish to study the file, 74 | Claims |,1352, in which the Treasury decision with regard to the wounded infant was stored up. The Finance Department is, however, by nature retentive. When it obtains possession of a bundle of papers it sticks to them, and it stuck to this particular bundle for weeks, and might have stuck to it for months had not the official at the bottom of whose tray it was reposing been attacked by influenza, and had not a new broom in the shape of a locum tenens cleared the tray out. When it found its way back to the Equipment Branch, three months had already elapsed since the letter about the badges had reached the War Office. Still, considering that only eleven minutes had as yet been written,

it was obvious that the question had not yet been adequately investigated.

It was therefore decided to send the correspondence to the Royal Army Clothing Department at Pimlico with the request that a full report should be furnished. The report, when it arrived, was found to be of a most exhaustive character. It began by asserting in uncompromising language that it was impossible to tell which badges in the enclosure were which; it went on to point out at considerable length that all of the badges had been so extensively fingered that, even supposing there had originally been shades of difference between them, such difference would now be effectually concealed by dirt; it solemnly declared that, as a matter of fact, there had been no difference whatever between the badges which had been manufactured in the establishment and had been issued to regiments during the two preceding years, and it wound up by asking whether any similar complaint had been received from any other corps.

The propounding of this question by the Superintendent of the Royal Army Clothing Department was hailed with unqualified satisfaction-it furnished

an

excuse for delaying a decision. "You must never, my dear fellow," an officer of wide experience in War Office procedure who has risen to very high estate is reported on one occasion to have said, "give a decision on any point if you draw less than £2000 a year." It is reported that that officer has now raised the qualifying figure to £3000 a year. The author of a wellknown military text-book has moreover pointed out that if you can only manage to keep correspondence circulating, you can generally escape from taking any definite action until the matter at issue has settled itself. On the strength of the question put by the Clothing Department, it was decided to address a circular letter to all battal