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among the handsomest of American birds (Carpodicus purpureus). On the Cascapediac also I saw, what I did not see on the Restigouche, numbers of the night-heron (Nyctordea Gardeni), a bird reminding one of the graceful bird at home, but, on the whole, a less conspicuous and a less ornamental species. Of one celebrated American bird-the white-headed eagle (Haliaëtus leucocephalus)—I must vindicate the character. He has been accused on high authority of living by piracy, not fishing for himself, but basely using his superior weight and strength to compel the osprey or professional fishing-eagle (Pandion carolinensis) to give up its prey. On this ground no less a man than Benjamin Franklin expressed his regret that this eagle should have been chosen as the national emblem of the United States. The great American ornithologists, Audubon and Wilson, both repeat the same story, and neither of them appears to have ever seen a white-headed eagle capturing his finny prey from the water, except, indeed, on one occasion, when an eagle was seen in most unaquiline fashion wading in some shallow pool and picking out redfins with his bill. But I had the good fortune on the Restigouche to see a fine white-headed eagle catch a salmon for himself, by what seemed a bold and almost a dangerous manœuvre. About a thousand yards below our encampment the river disappeared round a sudden bend, with a very sharp current. The eagle appeared coming up stream round this bend, and flying slowly about thirty feet above the level of the water. Over the sharpest part of the current he hovered for a moment, and then dashed into the stream. With a good glass I saw him buried deeply in the water, holding his neck well above it. It was evident he had some difficulty in getting out of it again. A few heavy and laborious flaps of his immense and powerful wings lifted him at last, but with empty talons. Very tired, apparently, he flew to an adjacent bank of gravel and sat there for some minutes to rest. But his countenance and attitude were those of restlessness, eagerness, and disappointment. He then rose and returned to exactly the same point in the air, and thence made a second plunge. It was beautiful to see his bearing in the stream, with the water breaking against his great brown chest, and his arched neck keeping his snowy head clear of its turbulence. This time the difficulty in emerging was much greater, for his talons were fast in a fine salmon. With a strong effort, however, his pinions again lifted him and his prey, which it seemed as much as he could do to carry to the same bank of gravel, where the struggles of the fish were soon put an end to by the eagle's terrific clutches and his powerful beak. This was all honorable work, and, although the osprey was

frequently to be seen on the same river, I never observed it to be followed or molested by the eagle. On another day one of these magnificent birds lighted on a blasted pine, which overhung the river at the height of about five hundred feet, and from that elevation he watched one of our party playing a salmon, an operation which he seemed to regard with great curiosity, and probably with some longing to take his part in the sport. The pure white head and the equally pure tail of this fire eagle, in contrast with the dark chocolate-brown of the rest of the plumage, make it one of the handsomest of its tribe.

The provinces of North America have one great advantage which is not possessed by any part of Europe. They are in unbroken land connection with the tropics. There is no transverse range of mountain, there is no region of desert sands, no strait even of narrow sea, to impede the most delicate forms of the southern fauna from traveling northward with the summer sun. It is wonderful how many tender creatures make out their passage to our own shores with the returning spring; but in Britain there are none which come from a farther distance than that limited belt of the African Continent which lies between the Atlas and the Mediterranean. Very many of them pass their winters no farther off than the sunny banks of the Riviera. Last winter I found the olives at Cannes full of blackcaps and willow wrens, while the whitethroat and the Sardinian warbler sometimes serenaded us from the roses which climbed around our windows. But no bird from tropical Africa can cross the desert and the Atlas. These great transverse barriers in the path of migration are barriers not to be overcome. In America, on the other hand, there is no such impediment in the way of an uninterrupted passage from the lowest southern to the highest northern latitudes. The consequence is, that even Canada, whose soil is fast bound in ice for some five months of the year, is the resort in summer of a joyous company from the far south, who find upon their way a perfect continuity in the supply of food, and in their final goal, even amid a very different vegetation, a summer heat which is fitted for the rearing of their young. It is due to this that the woods of North America are illuminated with the brilliant coloring of not a few species which almost seem to contrast unnaturally with the foliage of birch and pine. Foremost among these visitants from the far south I knew that Canada was visited every year by a single species of that wonderful family of birds which is one of the glories of nature-the humming-birds. It was one of my great expectations in crossing the Atlantic that I might see the rubythroat (Trochilus colubris). Everywhere I asked about it—wheth

er any had been seen, and if so, where? Everywhere I was told that they were more or less common, but that they had not come that season yet, or that they were only to be seen in the evenings-or that they only come out on very hot days or that they never came except to honeysuckle in the verandas. My eyes searched in vain round every horse-chestnut tree in blossom, under every “piazza" with baskets of flowers, and over the surface of every wall bedecked with creepers. The rubythroat, like Wordsworth's cuckoo, was "still longed for, never seen." At last, in walking one day up the mountain behind Montreal, I leaned over a paling which inclosed the water reservoir of the city. Below me there was a steep bank of grass, facing the south, and rich in the common flowers of such grass in England. Suddenly there emerged from it what first struck me as a very large but also a very narrowshaped beetle, which flew with the straight, rapid, and steady flight of the larger Coleoptera. As in them, the wings were not distinctly visible, but were represented by a sort of vibratory haze. I was speculating on this extraordinary object, when a clearer light revealed, projecting from the head of my supposed beetle, a long, slender, and curved proboscis or bill. In an instant it was flashed upon me that I was looking for the first time on the flight of a humming-bird in its wild and native state. I have often read of the insect-like habits and appearance of these birds. But until I saw it I had formed no distinct conception of this curious feature in their appearIts flight was not in the least like that of a bird. Nor was its gorgeous but partial brilliancy of coloring on the throat visible to me. The metallic green of the back of this particular species, which was turned toward me, being in shadow, produced a very dark effect upon the eye. But there it was-this gem of creationthis migrant from the far south-this representative of a group of birds whose headquarters are in the dense forests or among the luxuriant blossoms or on the lofty volcanic cones of tropical America-there it was living and flying among trees which might have been English trees, and over grass which was indistinguishable from English grass. I was not so fortunate as to see one other specimen alive in any part of Canada or the States. I heard of them, indeed, everywhere. At one place my informant had seen one a few evenings before in his own garden. At another place one had visited that morning some flowers in a window or a veranda. But, strange to say, where one other specimen was seen was near our encampment, thirty miles up the forests of the Restigouche, where there was no garden, not a single cultivated flower, and not even among the woods a single blossoming tree or shrub, except

ance.

perhaps the mountain-ash, the sloe, or the birdcherry. One of our party in search of rare birds saw a strange outline on the topmost twig of a withered pine, and on shooting it found, by the help of the Indians, that he had killed a “rubythroat." It brought home to me how secondary, in the distribution of animals, is the mere effect of climate and of vegetation. This hummingbird could evidently live quite as well in the woods of Scotland as in the woods of the Restigouche, so far as climate or food is concerned. If the Trochilidæ existed in any part of the Old World, and had an uninterrupted path of migration, we should doubtless have them every summer in England as surely as we have the swallow, or as Canada has the rubythroat. But this particular form of bird has been born, or created, or developed in the New World alone; and to that one sole area of distribution it is limited by surrounding oceans.

On the other hand, the ornithologist from Europe recognizes in the birds of North America a great number of species so closely allied to those at home that they have precisely the same habits and the same general aspect. The common thrush of America (Turdus migratoriu:), which the first colonists absurdly called the robia, for no other reason than that it has a russet-colored breast, is so like our own common thrush or blackbird that there is no generic difference whatever. Its alarm-notes combine those of the fieldfare and the blackbird. The bluebird (Sialia sialis) is the real representative of our robin, though it has not the same habits of familiarity with man. But it is not one or two species merely that exhibit this likeness. There is an obvious cousinship and correspondence between the great bulk of the species which can not be mistaken, and the closeness of which would be unaccountable if their original centers of origin had been separated, as the habitats now are, by three thousand miles of ocean. Naturalists are, therefore, now coming to trace the cause of this near relationship between the European and the North American fauna to that ancient connection which the two continents had at the time when the regions, which are now under Arctic conditions, were in the enjoyment of a climate compatible with a rich development of both animal and vegetable life. In that mysterious Miocene age when abundant forests, like the forests of Japan, flourished in Greenland, and in all probability elsewhere within the Arctic Circle, the Old and the New Worlds may have been united, so to speak-as, indeed, they almost now are-in their northern roots. One thing is quite certain, that if the near likeness to each other of different organic forms is the index of a common origin, if, in short, closely related species can not have

been created or developed in widely separated portions of the globe, then there must have been at some former time some close connection between Europe and America which does not exist at present. It is to be observed, however, that the impossibility of separate origins for forms alike, or even identical, is a mere assumption which may not be true. Although it figures largely in the theory of development as propounded by Mr. Darwin and by Mr. Wallace, it is no necessary part of the idea of creation by birth or by evolution. It is an assumption founded on another assumption—namely, that the natural variations of form which occur from time to time (and which are the supposed origin of species) are variations which can never be identical in two separate places; and this assumption rests again upon a third-namely, that varieties are really accidental, and not due to any internal law of growth inherent in all forms of life. But this is an assumption which not only may be, but probably is, contrary to fact. Mr. Darwin has never pretended to account for variations. He assumes that, as a matter of fact, they do occur, and that once they have occurred they are preserved or rejected according as they do or do not fit well into surrounding conditions. This may be quite true, and yet it may be equally true that these variations are not accidental, but are determined by a law of which we know nothing, but which is as definite and certain in its operation as the law determining the primary and the derivative forms of crystals. In this case the same or closely similar forms may have arisen at widely different parts of the globe; and the necessity of any geographical connection between land-surfaces now widely separated would be either disposed of altogether or would be pushed back to such primordial times as to be incapable of being traced. I am not now propounding this supposition as one which can be verified. It would certainly throw the whole subject of the distribution of species and genera into great confusion. But, then, it is a kind of confusion which closely corresponds with the apparent confusion which actually prevails in nature. The assumption that identical or almost identical forms can not arise at any place but one is an assumption which has a most attractive simplicity about it. It rests, however, upon nothing except upon the doctrine of chances. But if the work of creation and development is not a work subject to chance at all, but has been due to the evolution of germs having potential energies of a fixed and definite kind, then the doctrine of chances does not apply, and would be of little avail against the probability of similar forms appearing in regions very far apart. It is well known that the existing distribution of species is such as to involve the utmost

difficulties in applying to it the theory of exclusive centers of creation. These difficulties are so great that to a naturalist so eminent and so competent as Agassiz they seemed insuperable. The counter-hypothesis, which I have here suggested, does not exclude the probable effects of external conditions in modifying forms which are, nevertheless, mainly due to the laws of internal growth. And, perhaps, in some combination of these hypotheses the most probable solution may be found. The birds of North America present some cases of multiplied variety that suit very well the theory which dwells principally on the effect of surrounding conditions. But, on the other hand, there are many cases in which it does not seem to fit the facts at all. The boundless forests of that country, for example, seem admirably adapted to encourage the establishment of variety in such a family as that of the Picidæ or woodpeckers. And, accordingly, we do find a very large variety of kindred forms, one of them scarcely distinguishable from its cousin in Europe. I saw at least three or four distinct species in the very limited distance I could penetrate into the forests of the Restigouche. But, on the other hand, let us see how the same expectation is disappointed in another remarkable family of birds-the Alcedinidæ or kingfishers. If there is one feature which more than another distinguishes the North American Continent, it is its wealth of waters. Mighty rivers, with every degree of rapidity and of stillness, smaller streams in every measure of size, and with every variety of character, lakes in millions which are mere ponds, and lakes so large that the navigator upon them loses sight of land, creeks and lagoons of every shape and form, marshes fringed with wood, and marshes on the bare and open coast— and all this immense variety of aqueous surface swarming with fish, and with crustaceans, and with every form of creature that "inhabiteth the waters under the earth." Yet, in spite of all this wealth of external conditions, this vast hot-bed, as one might have supposed, for the growth of variety in that peculiar family of birds which is specially adapted for the capture of fish, there is but one solitary species-the belted kingfisher. If the family were wholly unrepresented upon the American Continent, this absence of variety would be less remarkable. But the stock exists. It has thrown off no varieties-one solitary species fishes in the boundless waters of North America from the Delaware to Baffin's Bay. I may mention here that, on examining a nest of this fine bird in a gravel-bank on the Restigouche River, we found that the eggs were laid not on fish-bones, but on the broken shells of crawfish-which was the first intimation we had of the existence of these freshwater crustaceans in the stream.

The truth is, that as yet we have made very little way in understanding the origin of species. The general idea of origin by descent, or of creation by birth, fits well into many of the facts. But this general conception does not necessitate our acceptance of the particular theory of Mr. Darwin, that variations occur only as it were by accident, or only by small and almost insensible modifications, or that one particular form can only arise at one time and one place. On the contrary, it may be that all variations arise out of a definite and predetermined law, that this law may determine the appearance of the same forms at many places and at different times, and also that such changes are not always gradual or infinitesimally small, but sometimes comparatively sudden and comparatively large.

With regard to the birds of North America, I can not doubt from what I saw and heard that as songsters they are inferior to our own. This is the testimony of Mrs. Grant of Laggan, who was familiar with both. It is a curious circumstance that between one Canadian bird and the corresponding species at home, the only difference I could detect was that the American species was silent, while our own is always talking. I refer to that charming bird, the common sandpiper (Totanus hypoleucus), abounding on the banks of every stream and lake in the Highlands. Its American cousin (Totanus macularius) is equally abundant on all the rivers of Canada; but while at home its call-notes are incessant, and the male bird has even a continuous and most lively song, I did not hear a solitary sound from the sandpiper of Canada. This, however, may have been an accident, and the sandpipers are nowhere reckoned among the birds of song. One hears the migratory thrush (robin) everywhere, in the midst of the gardens and villas of towns and cities, and in every little clearing of forest on the outskirts of human habitation. It is a pleasant song, but decidedly inferior to any one of its cousins in Britain. It is inferior in power to the missal thrush, in variety to our common "mavis," in melody to the blackbird. Near Niagara I heard one very broken and interrupted song of fine tone, and of considerable power. But although I was in the woods and fields of Canada and of the States in the richest moment of the spring, I heard little of that burst of song which in England comes from the black

cap and the garden warbler, and the whitethroat, and the reed warbler, and the common wren, and (locally) from the nightingale. Above all, there is one great want which nothing can replace. The meadows of North America were to my eye thoroughly English in appearance, the same rich and luxuriant grass-the same character of wild flowers-and even the same weeds. The skies of America are higher and wider, and more full of sunshine. But there is no skylark to enjoy that "glorious privacy of light." "The sweetest singer in the heavenly Father's choir "* is wanting in the New World. I can not help thinking that it might be introduced. Of course, the winters of Canada and of the Northern States would compel it to follow almost all the other birds which summer there, and to retire with them until the return of spring to Virginia or the Carolinas. It would be an interesting experiment. I do not know whether it has been tried. If not, I would suggest it to my American friends as one worth trying. It would be a happier introduction than that of the "London sparrow."

I can not conclude this very hasty sketch of my first impressions of the New World without thanking the many friends and countrymen both in the States and in the Dominion, who offered their hospitality, or otherwise testified their kindness. Circumstances compelled me to avoid society, and to find my occupations in the woods and on the waters. But I saw enough to assure me that even the most insignificant services in their great and now triumphant cause is never forgotten in the American Union. In Canada I had abundant evidence that old hereditary associations are not less strong than at home. It was a real joy to see the vast regions of hospitable soil which afford there an inexhaustible outlet for the increase of our people, and to feel that the facilities of communication, which are every year extending, will tend more and more to keep up the attachment of the colonists to the land of their fathers.

ARGYLL (Fraser's Magazine).

* I quote this line from some verses of great beauty, published in a little volume of poems, "Songs of the Rail," by Alexander Anderson, a surface-man on one of our Scotch railways. Some of these verses on the skywhich have been written on the same subject by several lark appear to me to compare not unfavorably with those of the masters of English song. (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Edinburgh: J. Menzies & Co.)

RA

RUSSIAN NIHILISM.

I ATIONALISM and radicalism exist to a certain extent in every country of Europe. But the Social Democrats of Germany and Austria and the Communists of France and Spain turn with horror from Russian revolutionists, who consider the programme of the Paris Commune of 1871 condemnably weak, and Felix Pyat, Cluseret, and their companions as little better than Conservatives.

The Social Democrats and even the Communists of the rest of Europe have in view aims which, no matter how fantastic, are always of a sufficiently defined nature. They look forward to an entirely democratic form of government, and hope for a reorganization of the social world, under which all capital and property would be held either by the state or commune for the equal benefit of everybody. They are levelers, but they are not destroyers.

The revolutionary party in Russia, on the other hand, has no definite aims of reorganization or improvement in view. In its sight, everything as it now exists is rotten, and, before anything new and good can be created, all existing institutions must be utterly destroyed. Religion, the state, the family, laws, property, moralityall are equally odious, and must be rooted out and abolished.

It is because "nothing" as it exists at present finds favor in their eyes that they have been called "Nihilists." They desire to break up the actual social organization into mere individualism, with entire independence for each separate person. They maintain that no one should be bound by laws or even moral obligations of any kind, but that everybody should be allowed to do exactly as he pleases. Their object is anarchy in the very truest sense of the word. They are only modest enough to decline the attempt to create a new order of things in the place of what they propose to destroy. That they intend to leave for a better and more enlightened generation.

Nihilism can not be better described than by the Nihilists themselves in their speeches, proclamations, and writings. Here is a speech made in 1868, at Geneva, by the father of Nihilism, the arch-conspirator, Michael Bakunin, to whose history we shall have occasion to refer later on:

Brethren, I come to announce unto you a new gospel, which must penetrate to the very ends of the world. This gospel admits of no half-measures and hesitations. The old world must be destroyed, and

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It is our mission to destroy the Lie; and, to effect this, we must begin at the very commencement. Now, the beginning of all those lies which have ground down this poor world in slavery, is God. For many hundred years monarchs and priests have inoculated the hearts and minds of mankind with this also invented for the people the notion of another notion of a God ruling over the world. They have world, in which their God is to punish with eternal torture, those who have refused to obey their degrading laws here on earth. This God is nothing but the personification of absolute tyranny, and has been invented with a view of either frightening or alluring nine tenths of the human race into submission to the remaining tenth. If there were really a God, surely he would use that lightning which he holds in his hand, to destroy those thrones, to the steps of which mankind is chained. He would assuredly use it to overthrow those altars, where the truth is hidden by clouds of lying incense. Tear out of your hearts the belief in the existence of God; for, as long as an atom of that silly superstition refreedom is. mains in your minds, you will never know what

When you have got rid of the belief in this priest-begotten God, and when, moreover, you are convinced that your existence, and that of the surrounding world, is due to the conglomeration of atoms, in accordance with the laws of gravity and attraction, then, and then only, you will have accomplished the first step toward liberty, and you will experience less difficulty in ridding your minds of that second lie which tyranny has invented.

The first lie is God. The second lie is Right. Might invented the fiction of Right in order to insure and strengthen her reign; that Right which she herself does not heed, and which only serves as a barrier against any attacks which may be made by

the trembling and stupid masses of mankind. society. Might makes and unmakes laws, and that Might, my friends, forms the sole groundwork of might should be in the hands of the majority. It should be in the possession of those nine tenths of the human race whose immense power has been ren

dered subservient to the remaining tenth by means of that lying fiction of Right before which you are accustomed to bow your heads and to drop your arms. Once penetrated with a clear conviction of your own might, you will be able to destroy this mere notion of Right.

And when you have freed your minds from the fear of a God, and from that childish respect for the fiction of Right, then all the remaining chains which bind you, and which are called science, civilization, property, marriage, morality, and justice, will snap asunder like threads.

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