During twelve months spent in the Australian colonies, in the years 1870-71, I had more opportunities than were pleasant of studying the habits of ants. These insects, as is well known, are not only a nuisance but an absolute pest in hot countries. They march in myriads and destroy everything in their road. I have heard it seriously stated that they consume everything except bottled beer- and that even this is safe only when the bottles are fitted with glass screw-stoppers. Cork, it seems, is not excluded from the formic bill of fare, and would no doubt be more succulent and appetizing when soused in Bass or Allsopp. In justice to the ants, I am bound, however, to admit that I have found them useful in more ways than one. For instance, I bought an opossum-skin rug from a native. I soon became painfully aware of the fact that it literally swarmed with fleas and other vermin. In vain did I exhaust my stock of pepper. Even turpentine seemed to have no effect beyond increasing the restless activity of these irritating settlers. At last in despair I threw my rug down on an ant-hill. In less than half an hour every flea and objectionable parasite was eaten, but the rug was full of ants. I therefore hung it on a mimosa bush, and as soon as the ants found they were suspended they hastened to leave the rug, and descended by the bush as best they could.

Again, I had killed a snake in Tasmania, and wished to clean and bleach the skeleton, which I intended to have mounted as a necklace. I left the body near an ants' nest. In a few hours there was not a vestige of flesh on the bones. The sun soon did the rest.

But I am digressing; to return to our paths. Ants I found usually left their nests by one and the same road. In some cases this road was distinctly marked the herbage having been bitten or trodden down. In other cases its course could not be distinguished from the surrounding ground, but yet this course was, as far as my observation went, invariably followed.

When the ants issued forth in large numbers on some hunting or hostile expedition, they would advance in a com

We shall not have to go so far from home to find the second and last insect to whose tactics I shall call attention.

This is none other than the mason-bee (Osmia bicornis), whose aerial path, it will be seen, differs entirely from the wellknown direct course pursued by the common honey-bee (Apis mellifica), whence we get the expression a “bee-line."

I fear the value of my observations will be depreciated if I confess (as the fact is) that I at first took this bee for a solitary wasp. Its flight, however, I marked carefully. On leaving the nest it was engaged in constructing, it flew in a straight line to a clay bank some twenty yards off. On returning with its load of cement it proceeded by a circuitous route, which I can best describe by saying it suggested a figure of 8 placed at right angles to a corkscrew, the point of the latter terminating in a hole between the stones of an old wall which formed the entrance to the nest.

I watched this insect come and go many times, and I could distinguish no variation in its course. Probably this circuitous flight was intended to deceive the ichneumon-fly or some other insect pirate, or perhaps the bee was aware of my presence and suspicious of my intentions. If so, I must confess the insect had good reason for its suspicions. I had, as I have already said in the first instance, mistaken it for a wasp, and my intention had been to catch it and impale it on a hook as a bait for chubb.

And now I must conclude these notes with the hope that some naturalist will furnish a clue to the labyrinth of "invisible paths" into which I have wandered.

BASIL FIELD.

From Hand and Heart.

WHY I AM AN ABSTAINER.

I BECAME an abstainer from alcohol for the most commonplace and selfish reason

in the world, the instinct of self-preservation. From a lecture delivered in one of my experimental and practical courses to medical brethren, on December 7, 1869, I infer that I had got, at that time, very near to the practice of abstinence, and quite near to the truth; for I find myself closing the lecture with the following words: "Speaking honestly, I cannot, by any argument yet presented to me, admit the alcohols through any gate that might distinguish them as apart from other chemical bodies. I can no more accept them as foods than I can chloroform, or ether, or methylal. That they produce a temporary excitement is true; but as their general action is quickly to reduce the animal heat, I cannot see how they can supply animal force. I can see clearly how they reduce animal power, and can show a reason for using them in order to stop physical pain, or to stupefy mental pain; but that they give strength- i.e., that they supply material for construction of fine tissue, or throw force into tissues supplied by other material, must be an error as solemn as it is widespread. The true character of the alcohols is that they are agreeable temporary shrouds. The savage, with the mansions of his soul unfurnished, buries his restive energy under their shadow. The civilized man, overburdened with mental labor, or with engrossing cares, seeks the same shade; but it is shade after all, in which, in exact proportion as he seeks it, the seeker retires from the perfect natural life. To resort for force to alcohol is, to my mind, equivalent to the act of searching for the sun in subterranean gloom until all is night. It is time now for the learned to be precise respecting alcohol, and for the learned to learn the positive value of one of their most potent agents for good

or for evil; whereupon, I think, they will place the alcohol series in the position I have placed it, even though their prejudices in regard to it are, as mine are, by moderate habit but confessed inconsistency, in its favor." I have heard it said many times that this was the strongest ututterance I ever made against alcohol; because, when I made it, I was not an abstainer. But I have a word more to add. At the time when the lecture above named was delivered, I had looked only at the physiological side of the matter. Afterwards I studied, in the same experimental way, the power of alcohol in producing disease. Thereupon I discovered that, so potent is alcohol in producing structural and fatal disease, that just as certainly as I could make an animal dead drunk by it, so I could conjure up organic disease to order, if I may so put it, according to my will, and almost according to fixed time and season. Also, I detected that the fatal changes were much more quickly and surely brought about than I had ever supposed possible. I was startled at what I witnessed, and, selfish like, applied the moral. I said to myself, Maybe I am experimenting on myself. But why should I? "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off," was the daily plea of conscientious knowl. edge; and, at length, the plea prevailing, I cut off alcohol root and branch. Then, when I found how strong and healthy I was, as well as safe, under total abstinence, I thought it my duty, even at the risk of speaking less forcibly against alcohol than I might do if I partook of it — as the spirit of evil suggested I began and continued boldly to expound all the facts; and that is the way I became an advocate of total abstinence as well as a total abstainer. DR. B. W. RICHARDSON.

-The

FEMALE PHARMACISTS IN FRANCE. new projet de loi as to the practice of medicine and the subsidiary arts connected therewith, which is now before the French Legislature, provides for the admission of duly qualified women to the pharmaceutical profession. It is remarkable that France, which has shown itself so liberal in throwing open the portals of the faculties of medicine and law, if not also divinity, to women, should so long have denied them admission to a profession not open to some of the graver objections which have been held to justify their exclusion from other careers. Pharmacy has not always been

a close borough of the male sex in France, for in the statutes of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, which were enacted in 1350, mention is made of "chirurgiens" and "chirur giennes,' "apothicaires" and " 'apothicairesses,' ""herbiers" and "herbières," without any distinction of professional rights or privileges. It is clear from this that in the so-called "Dark Ages women could dispense simples and practise pharmacy, as well as surgery, and the bill now before the French Senate only proposes to restore them to the position in this respect which they held five centuries ago. British Medical Journal.

THE OLD ROCKING HORSE.

IN THE LUMBER-ROOM.)

BY VIOLET FANE.

HE stands in the desolate chamber,
Snorting and pricking his ears,
With the dauntless glance
And the spirited prance

That we knew in the bygone years;

For full thirty summers and winters, From the dawn to the close of the day, Has he dwelt in this room,

With never a groom,

Or ever a feed of hay.

The roof is so dingy with cobwebs, The window so coated with grime, That he only knows

By the caws of the crows

The morn from the evening time.

The mice, in their frolicsome revels,
Sport over him night and day,
And the burrowing moth
In his saddle-cloth

Has never been flick'd away;

It is seldom his desolate dwelling
Ever echoes to human tread,
And its carpetless floor

Is all litter'd o'er

With the relics of days long dead.

What a medley of eloquent lumber
Do his proud eyes lighten upon,
From those drums and flutes
To the high snow boots

And the mouldering stuff'd wild swan!

And the ruinous magic-lantern,

And the bottomless butterfly net,

And the cage for the doves,

And the prize-fighter's gloves,

And the rickety old spinnet!

He must know, this spirited charger,
As he snorts and pricks up his ears,
Why my heart is in pain

As I toy with his mane

And my eyes are half blind with tears;

He must know who slept in that old swing cot,
And who sat in that tiny chair,
And who flew the great kite
That ghostly and white

Leans up in the corner there;

And the bats, and the balls, and the ninepins, And the boat with the batter'd prow,

Ah, that charger tall

Knows who play'd with them all,

And how sound some are sleeping now!

Yet for all this burden of knowledge
His bearing is proud and high,

With the dauntless glance

And the spirited prance

That we knew in the days gone by;

And in spite of his lonely confinement, His muscles are firmly strung,

For the passing of time,

That has wither'd our prime

Has left him still fresh and young.

He wears saddle, and stirrups, and snaffle, And frontlet of faded blue,

And a bridle-rein

On his flowing mane,

And his tail fits on with a screw.

Alas, for the sorrows and changes Since, mounting this dappled grey, With whip in hand

To some fairy land

I was speedily borne away!

On, on, to those unknown regions
Where all are so fair and kind!
And away and away
Goes the dappled grey,

And we leave the world behind!

How his stout green rockers are creaking' How his long tail feathers and streams! How his whole frame thrills

With 66 the pace that kills "

As we hie to the land of dreams!

Of those times, so good to remember, Few vestiges now remain,

Yet, here, to-day,

Stands my gallant grey,

With saddle and bridle-rein;

And I think, as I stroke him sadly,

66 For one hour, how sweet it would be If the women and men

Who were children then,

Could be all as unchanged as he!"

English Illustrated Magazine.

AT SAN SEBASTIAN.*

WHERE San Sebastian's citadel
Keeps watch and ward beside the deep,
The sons of England, where they fell,
Upon the bed of honor sleep,
The rolling waves their passing bell,

The flowery sod their winding sheet.

Brave hearts, that never knew a fear, For liberty such death were sweet; Though far from home and England dear, Methinks your resting-place is meet. For sleeping thus, 'neath every sky Where freedom breathes true life in men, As sentinels your comrades lie

To point the way, to-day, as then, For God and fatherland to die.

OLIVER GREY.

On the seaward slope of the citadel of San Sebas tian are buried the officers and men who fell in the storming of that fortress by Wellington in 1813. Their graves are in excellent order, and covered with exquisite wild flowers.