-a

to be capable of being pulled far out of place without breaking. When the spirals are finished, the spider returns again to the centre, and proceeds to bite off the circling line, by which she much increases the elasticity of her web. It is in or beneath this central opening that the spider usually sits and watches for the coming of her prey. But while these circular creations are perhaps the most beautiful, they are by no means the only cobwebs. You have probably seen, or rather felt, the long gossamer threads that sometimes draw across the face, as one walks beneath the trees on a summer evening. At certain seasons they are very numerous. They float in the air, they fall upon the grass, they gather on the trees. These are all cobwebs. They are made by spiders, and in a manner so marvellous as

when she saw that of Minerva she knew | leaving the spider's body, is of great that she was defeated; and, in her despair, strength and very firm; but these spirals went and hanged herself. Minerva, moved are formed of a substance which differs by pity for her vain but skilful opponent, essentially. When first drawn from the transformed her into a spider; and she spinneret it is extremely glutinous and her descendants still retain a portion most important property, as by this it is of her marvellous gifts of spinning and enabled to adhere tenaciously to the radii weaving. Now let us see how the garden and it is, besides, so highly elastic as spider uses its inherited talent. Each individual is endowed with a spinneret, or natural spinning machine, through which can be drawn innumerable strands, so fine that they can be seen only under a power-points of all the radii close to the first enful microscope (Leeuwenhoeck claims that it takes four million of these strands to make a thread as thick as a hair from a man's head). First, our spider begins to draw from out her spinneret a cord of as many of these strands as seem to her good, and fastens it to some leaf or twig, then runs on another leaf, spinning all the while; fastens again to that; and to another and another; continuing until a circle is formed inclosing as large a space as she designs for the outer boundary of her web. Then she passes back and forth over her work, adding fresh threads, and strengthening this outer line, which she secures to every possible object. Finally she stops, fastens her thread with special to be almost incredible. The spider spins care, and begins to run around the circle, spinning as she goes; but now carrying her fresh thread carefully raised upon one hind foot, thus keeping it from touching the older strands and becoming glued to them. When half-way round she stops, pulls her thread tight, fastens it very strongly, and a firm line is drawn straight across the centre of the circle. She runs down this centre line to the middle, fastens another thread to it there, carries it to a new point upon the outer edge, fastens it, and we now see that she is engaged in making those lines in the web that look so like the spokes of a wheel. She repeats this operation again and again, until all the radii or spokes are formed. When they are done she carefully tests each thread by pulling, to make sure that it is firm and strong; and, if one proves unsatisfactory, she either strengthens or remakes it altogether. Now that the main lines are built, our spider goes once more to the centre point, and begins to spin again this time in circles fastening to each radius as she passes. At first these circles, or more correctly spirals, are placed quite close together, but she leaves ever a wider and wider space between as she approaches the outer edge. The outer circle and the radii were spun of a silk which becomes dry directly after

the silk from its spinneret, pushing it off into the air. It is so light that it does not fall. It rather rises in the air. It grows a longer and longer thread, until it is carried by some current against an object, often at a surprising distance, to which it attaches itself. This spider's slack rope is quite strong enough to serve the little spinner as a bridge, over which it can pass at its pleasure. Indeed, in the tropics spiders' webs are found of gigantic size, sometimes even spanning streams; and of a strength so great that humming. birds are caught and held by them, as flies are by the cobwebs of our own land.

From The Lancet.

THE LOW DEATH-RATE IN LONDON.

THE remarkable decline in the death-rate of the huge aggregation of urban population in London continues. The registrargeneral reports that the annual death-rate in the London population during the thirteen weeks of the second quarter of this year was as low as 16'0 per 1,000, against 18'0 and 16'9 in the corresponding periods of 1887 and 1888. The death-rate in London in 1888 was far the lowest recorded in the metropolis since the commencement

of civil registration; and yet during the rates. The recent low death-rate from first half of this year the annual death-rate zymotic diseases, as well as the decline of was 17.8 per 1,000, against 195 in the first infant mortality, moreover, corroborate the six months of 1888. In connection with assumption, based upon the low death-rate, all vital statistics of large towns, there is that continuous improvement in the health at the present time an unpleasant element condition of the metropolitan population of doubt arising from the fact that it is is in active progress. The annual deathnow more than eight years since the last rate from the principal zymotic diseases census was taken in England, and that in registration London in the thirteen consequently we have no accurate and weeks ending last Saturday was 19 per trustworthy knowledge of the present pop- 1,000, and very considerably below the ulation of our towns. The registrar-general average, notwithstanding the epidemic estimates, on the doubtful hypothesis that prevalence of measles during the greater the metropolitan population has increased part of the quarter. Not a single death since 1881 at the same rate that prevailed from small-pox has occurred among the between the two censuses of 1871 and 1881, population of London since the beginning the present population of London to be of the year, and the mortality from enteric rather more than four and a quarter mil- fever and from scarlet fever was considerlions, and it is upon this figure that the ably less than half the corrected average. official death-rates are calculated. It is, The recorded deaths from whooping-cough therefore, quite possible either that the were also considerably below the average; present population of London is over-esti- and the deaths attributed to diarrhoea only mated and the death-rate under-stated, or showed a slight excess in the last week or that it is under-estimated and the death- two of the quarter in consequence of the rate over-stated. Experience, however, high temperature. The only zymotic dishas shown the rate of increase of the Lon- ease which considerably exceeded the don population to have been very steady average during last quarter was diphtheria, in previous intercensal periods; and on which caused 318 deaths, against 188,193, other grounds there appears to be no good and 226 in the corresponding second quarreason to doubt the approximate accuracy ters of 1886, 1887, and 1888. The rate of either of the present official estimate of infant mortality, measured by the deaths population or of the recent death-rate. under one year of age to registered births, That it has been abnormally low, and that was 120 per 1,000 last quarter, and 5 below its decline has been continuous in recent the exceptionally low rate that prevailed years, is indisputable, although more in the corresponding quarter of last year. authoritative facts as to the present popu- Such facts as these place beyond doubt lation of the metropolis, as well as of other the fact that the mortality of the London towns, would add materially to the confi- population during the first half of this dence inspired by the calculated death-year has been unprecedentedly low.

LEPROSY AND THE STATE. - The need for a renewed investigation into leprosy and its contagiousness is becoming imperative; and we are glad to see that the College of Physicians are prepared to urge the matter upon the government, for it is a question that vitally concerns the interests of the empire. If, as some assert, leprosy be spreading in certain of our colonial possessions, it is incumbent on the State to determine why so frightful a scourge occurs, and to take the best possible counsel as to the measures to prevent its ravages. What is required is not merely the perusal of reports, but the actual study of the disease in the affected districts, and the circumstances under which it occurs. It would cost money, but is this empire so poor or so selfish as to be unable or unwilling to devote some of its resources to a work which is of practical humanitarian interest as well as of

scientific importance? Meanwhile, there is good work being done in leper asylums under British dominion. The report of one such institution, small though it be, lies before us. It is that of the Asylum of Lepers, at Dehra Dun, North-West Provinces, India, and is issued by Surgeon-Major Maclaren, M.D. The statistics it contains clearly show that by enforcing the segregation of the sexes this asylum has, during the past ten years, wrought a great benefit to the district. Dr. Maclaren calculates that it has prevented a probable increase in this period of at least seventy, and possibly of as many as one hundred and twenty cases; and he pertinently remarks that with a thousand such institutions throughout India the disease might eventually become as rare as it is in Europe. For there is no known remedy for the disease. Prevention alone can cope with it.

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From The Quarterly Review.
OLD AGE.

It is a proof, and a noticeable instance,
of the unity and continuity of human life,
that the arguments in favor of old age, its
compensations and its enjoyments, should
still be those which Cicero put into the
mouth of Cato nineteen centuries ago.
And the expansion and continuation of
those arguments, as the progress of civil-
ization has perpetually presented new facts
in support of them, show a variety in that
unity, a progress with permanence, no less
noteworthy. Nor must we pass by with-
out recognition the genius of Cicero,
which enabled him to apprehend, and to
bring into clear view, and in anticipation
of so much later experience, those truths
which, in this matter, are still the master-
light of all our seeing. For great, infi-
nitely great we may say, as has been the
growth of human experience and knowl-
edge on this subject since the days of
Cicero, it is not the less certain that all
that knowledge and experience still centre
themselves in Cicero's two principles and
ultimate facts in which he finds the proper
happiness of old age the benignity of
nature, and the hope of another life. And
we, who now read the "Dialogue on Old
Age," may sum up our own experience
and that of the great Roman philosopher
in the words of Lord Tennyson:-

Through the ages one increasing

purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened by the
process of the suns.

| number who are carried off by the acci-
dents or the diseases which open like pit-
falls before every step in the journey of
life, and into one or other of which hardly
any man does not fall. How then can we
talk of old age as natural? We cannot
deny that there is truth in the paradox;
but it is a half-truth, which leaves us still
in possession of the other half. We do
not deny, but fully recognize, the uncer-
tainty of man's life; and the fact cannot
be recognized in stronger language than
that which Cicero makes Cato employ in
the discourse before us.
He says:

Who is so foolish, though he be young, as to be certain that he will live till evening? For youth is liable to many more accidents than age: the young fall ill more easily, their illnesses are more severe, and are more hardly cured: thus few come to old age. Did not this happen so, we should live better and more wisely. For thought and understanding and counsel are the endowments of the old, and without these no State can stand. . . That death is common to the young and old, I, too, had to know in the death of my most Scipio-men whom we looked to see among excellent son, and in that of your brothers,

our most honored statesmen.

There are, and always have been, other ideals of the course and the end of a man's life than that of a benign and happy old age; nor has it ever been denied that the former have sometimes been more noble, and more to be desired, than the latter. The thought and the belief, that "he whom the gods love dies young,' "'*have cheered many a desolate home, in one or But when we propose to ourselves to other of the many forms into which they look at old age in the light of past and have been translated and paraphrased, and present experience, and when in so doing of which perhaps none is more beautiful we take for granted that old age is the than Longfellow's "Reaper and the Flownatural end of life, we are stopped on the ers." The emperor Julian in his dying threshold of our enquiry by the argument, speech declared that his religion had which Montaigne puts with the shrewd taught him that an early death was often cynicism which characterizes him, that the reward of piety.† In all ages would length of years and old age are not the the choice of Achilles of an early but gloordinary, and therefore not the natural, rious death have found approval; and conditions of our life. Old age he main-poets have never ceased to win the widest tains to be the exception to which very and heartiest response to their praises of few attain, in comparison with the greater

1. Marci Tullii Ciceronis Cato Major, B.C. 44.
2. Locksley Hall: Locksley Hall Sixty Years
After. The Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Lon-
don, 1888.

* Ὃν οἱ θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνήσκει νεός.

MENANDER.

↑ Gibbon, with a curious but characteristic cynicism, suspects that this speech of Julian may have been prepared beforehand for the possible occasion.