For them, now Adam's been elected, [Beelzebub, feigning submission to Deity, thus addresses the rebel angels :] [They appeal from him to Lucifer.] Forbid it, Lucifer, nor suffer that our ranks Be mortified so low and sink without a crime, While man, above us raised, may flash and bean sublime In the very core of light, from which we seraphim Pass quivering, full of pain, and fade like shadows dim. . .. To set thee on the throne for Adam late designed! [Gabriel relates to Michael the effect which the knowledge of the rebellion pro duced at the throne of God himself.] I saw God's very gladness with a cloud of woe O'ershadowed; and there burst a flame out of the gloom And cried out, "Mercy, mercy! God, let Justice rest!" ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE. WALLACE, ALFRED RUSSEL, a celebrated English naturalist and traveller; born at Usk, Monmouthshire, January 8, 1822. After education at the grammar school of Hertford, he became a landsurveyor and architect. In 1848 he travelled in the valley of the Amazon, and from 1854 to 1862, in the Malay Islands, where he independently originated the theory of natural selection. His paper "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type" was read before the Linnæan Society, July 1, 1888, on which occasion was read Darwin's, to the same effect. Dr. Wallace, however, magnanimously yielded to Darwin the privilege of a first book on the subject. His books are "Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro" (1852); "Palm Trees of the Amazon, and their Uses" (1853); "The Malay Archipelago" (1869); "Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection" (1870); "On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism" (1875); "The Geographical Distribution of Animals" (1876); "Tropical Nature" (1878); "Australasia" (1879-94); "Island Life" (1880); "Land Nationalization" (1882); "Forty Years of Registration Statistics, Proving Vaccination to be Both Useless and Dangerous," and "Bad Times" (1885); "Darwinism" (1889); "The Wonderful Century" (1898). LIFE IN THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. (From the "Malay Archipelago.") A VISIT TO THE CHIEF (ORANG KAYA) OF A BORNEO VILLAGE. In the evening the orang kaya came in full dress (a spangled velvet jacket, but no trousers), and invited me over to his house, where he gave me a seat of honor under a canopy of white calico and colored handkerchiefs. The great veranda was crowded with people; and large plates of rice, with cooked and fresh eggs, were placed on the ground as presents for me. Α very old man then dressed himself in bright-colored clothes and many ornaments, and sitting at the door, murmured a long prayer of invocation, sprinkling rice from a basin he held in his hand, while several large gongs were loudly beaten, and a salute of muskets fired off. A large jar of rice wine, very sour, but with an agreeable flavor, was then handed round, and I asked to see some of their dances. These were, like most savage performances, very dull and ungraceful affairs; the men dressing themselves absurdly like women, and the girls making themselves as stiff and ridiculous as possible. All the time six or eight large Chinese gongs were being beaten by the vigorous arms of as many young men ; producing such a deafening discord that I was glad to escape to the round-house, where I slept very comfortably, with half a dozen smoke-dried human skulls suspended over my head. THE DURION. The banks of the Sarawak River are everywhere covered with fruit-trees, which supply the Dyaks with a great deal of their food. The mangosteen, lansat, rambutan, jack, jambou, and blimbing are all abundant; but most abundant and most esteemed is the durion, — a fruit about which very little is known in England, but which both by natives and Europeans in the Malay Archipelago is reckoned superior to all others. The old traveller Linschott, writing in 1599, says, " It is of such an excellent taste that it surpasses in flavor all the other fruits of the world, according to those who have tasted it." And Doctor Paludanus adds, "This fruit is of a hot and humid nature. To those not used to it, it seems at first to smell like rotten onions, but immediately they have tasted it they prefer it to all other food. The natives give it honorable titles, exalt it, and make verses on it." When brought into a house the smell is often so offensive that some persons can never bear to taste it. This was my own case when I first tried it in Malacca; but in Borneo I found a ripe fruit on the ground, and eating it out of doors, I at once became a confirmed durion eater. The durion grows on a large and lofty forest-tree, somewhat resembling an elm in its general character, but with a more smooth and scaly bark. The fruit is round or slightly oval, about the size of a large cocoanut, of a green color, and covered all over with short stout spines, the bases of which touch each other, and are consequently somewhat hexagonal, while the points are very strong and sharp. It is so completely armed that if the stalk is broken off, it is a difficult matter to lift one from the ground. The outer rind is so thick and tough that from whatever height it may fall, it is never broken. From the base to the apex five very faint lines may be traced, over which the spines arch a little; these are the sutures of the carpels, and show where the fruit may be divided with a heavy knife and a strong hand. The five cells are satiny-white within, and are each filled with an oval mass of cream-colored pulp, imbedded in which are two or three seeds about the size of chestnuts. This pulp is the eatable part, and its consistence and flavor are indescribable. A rich butter-like custard highly flavored with almonds gives the best general idea of it; but intermingled with it come wafts of flavor that call to mind cream cheese, onion sauce, brown sherry, and other incongruities. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp, which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid, nor sweet, nor juicy, yet one feels the want of none of these qualities, for it is perfect as it is. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat durions is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience. When the fruit is ripe it falls of itself; and the only way to eat durions in perfection is to get them as they fall, and the smell is then less overpowering. When unripe, it makes a very good vegetable if cooked, and it is also eaten by the Dyaks raw. In a good fruit season large quantities are preserved salted, in jars and bamboos, and kept the year round; when it acquires a most disgusting odor to Europeans, but the Dyaks appreciate it highly as a relish with their rice. There are in the forest two varieties of wild durions with much smaller fruits, one of them orange-colored inside; and these are probably the origin of the large and fine durions, which are never found wild. It would not, perhaps, be correct to say that the durion is the best of all fruits, because it cannot supply the place of the subacid juicy kinds, such as the orange, grape, mango, and mangosteen, whose refreshing and cooling qualities are so wholesome and grateful; but as producing a food of the most exquisite flavor it is unsurpassed. If I had to fix on two only as representing the perfection of the two classes, I should certainly choose the durion and the orange as the king and queen of fruits. The durion is however sometimes dangerous. When the fruit begins to ripen, it falls daily and almost hourly, and accidents not unfrequently happen to persons walking or working under the trees. When the durion strikes a man in its fall, it produces |