object of destroying its ccmmerce and transferring the advantages to Babylon.

In forming an estimate of Babylonian people and their modes of thought it is necessary to keep the essentially commercial spirit of the city well in view. Babylon had all the characteristics of a commercial city; wealth was the measure of respectability; trade was the most dignified pursuit; and even the princes of the royal house did not think it beneath their dignity to engage in it. For example, we find that Belshazzar, the son and heir of Nabunid, sold wool to a private man to the value of twenty silver mines, taking as security for the payment a lien on the purchaser's house. The contract is drawn in the usual style, and subscribed by six witnesses, and also by the priest who drew up the document. Trade must have been in great repute among a people where the heir apparent to the throne could be a wool merchant, and bound by the same rules of trade as were his lowest subjects.

custom, which placed woman at the head of the household while the Semitic people awarded her a subordinate position. The Babylonians were not only pious, but superstitious; but among the educated classes the religion approached closely to a pure monotheism. Listen, for instance, to the following prayer of Nebuchadnezzar: “To Merodach my Lord have I prayed, I commenced to pray, and the words of my heart sought him out, and I said, O Eternal Ruler, Lord of all creatures-for the king whom thou lovest, whom thou callest by names that seem pleasing unto thee, thou makest his name honored, and watchest over him in the straight path. I, the Prince, that obey thee, I am the work of thy hands, thou hast created me, and given me dominion over many, all according the goodness, O Lord, which thou diffusest over all. Awake in me a love for thy lofty majesty, let my heart be penetrated with awe for the divine majesty, give me all which in thy judgment is good for me, for it is thou alone who sustainest my life." These words of Nebuchadnezzar found an echo in many other documents, and afford some indication of what manner of men were Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians of his age.

GIL BLAS.

The lending of money on interest was highly developed ; the interest, usually at 20 per cent., was payable monthly and was well secured. Even the priests lent money both on private account and on behalf of the Temple, and credit-giving was fenced in with so many restrictions that bankruptcy was hardly possible. Interest fluctuated with social and political conditions. There is a record of a case in which, during a famine, a patriotic money lender absolved all his debtors of the interest due.

The national currency was the Silvermine, containing sixty silverseckle and estimated at $45. The Goldmine, rarely used, is estimated to have been worth more than eight times as much. The value of the currency was originally determined by weight. It was cast in bars, perhaps also in rings. This form was found very inconvenient, and during Nebuchadnezzar's reign stamped coins of specific value were substituted for the bars. But we find also that prices were frequently fixed in dates and corn (grain). Dates and grain were very cheap, a quart of either being procurable for two cents. Domestic animals were dearer. We have the record of the sale of a donkey for $29 in 569 B. C., and in the twenty-fourth year of the king's reign we find that an ox for the service, of the temple was bought for $9.75.

Clothing was very costly, especially if ornamented with a gold thread or with gems. Even a common camel-hair mantle was worth about $3.50.

Wine, the beverage of the wealthy, was imported. There is a record of a large cask sold for $8.25, and of five smaller casks of the same brand selling for $7.50. The poorer classes brewed a sort of beer from dates which was drunk extensively.

The Babylonians were not only great traders, but the country people prosecuted agriculture no less energetically. The village lands were all farmed out to contractors, who were responsible for the taxes and for keeping the buildings in order, and who gave the land to be cultivated on shares.

Woman stood on the same plane as man, both socially and in the matter of civil rights. The civilization of the Babylonians was not Semitic, but Summerian; the Babylonians were a mixed race, and woman owed her position to Summerian

W

GUSTAVE LANSON.

Revue Bleue, Paris, October 21.

WHEN people speak of Le Sage as a novelist, they think of Gil Blas alone. All his other novels, although they please sometimes, have as a whole no value, save as they repeat or explain Gil Blas. A good deal of ink has been spilt over the question as to how far Gil Blas was original with its author. He took his novel, says one, from a manuscript of which a certain person made him a present. No, says another, the novel was stolen from a printed book, written by Antonio de Solis. Erudite Germans have scrupulously proved, what loyal Frenchmen, have kindly allowed and valiant Spaniards victoriously maintained, that Le Sage in his Gil Blas committed numerous thefts at the expense of Espinel and many others. Yet all these admit that, if Le Sage sewed together bits pilfered from all parts, he did not steal a complete dress for anyone of his personages. This admission makes it impossible to convict him of theft. Everyone concedes, moreover, that the style of the French writer, light, ironical, and diverting, is his own and was not stolen from Spanish literature.

I confess that, from a certain point of view, I am tempted to join the chorus of the gentlemen who reproach Le Sage for his larcenies. My motive, however, would be different from theirs. I am afraid that the thief has lost more by his thefts than those from whom he has stolen. I know that the Spain of picaroons and alguazils—to say constables would be disrespectful—where are heard continuously the tinkle of the bells on plumed mules, the song of nocturnal guitars, and the clashing of the swords which gallants cross with brothers and husbands who are defending their honor-this Spain has always had the privilege of amusing our French imagination. Gil Blas pleases us like the Cid, like Figaro, like Hernani, much because he shows us ourselves, our life, or our genius, a little because he draws us away from ourselves and makes us dream of a world where the garments of the muleteers are covered with embroidery, where the beggars have the airs of great lords, where life from one end to the other is a fête or a drama, where everyday nature is greater than nature.

This quality of French imagination, to which Spain appears to have escaped from the dull vulgarities of existence, explains the frequent and prolonged influence of Spanish literature over our literature. There has been much misconception, however, as to the length of time during which this influence lasted. It is true that it endured for nearly a century, but during the latter part of the time that influence was on the wane,

It is certain that since 1660-and Le Sage was born in 1668— our true classics, the great writers by whom the literature of the time is characterized, owe, indeed, something to Spain, but nothing which is an essential part of their work, or which serves to characterize each one's peculiar genius. When, therefore, Le Sage began to write, Spanish literature was out of fashion in France, and writers-certainly those who were conscious of extraordinary talent-no longer looked to that literature as a pattern and a guide. It is, then, somewhat singular that one of our excellent classics, almost a great writer, a disciple of Boileau and of La Bruyère, should, at the time when he wrote, be smitten with Spanish literature, and adopt its extravagant picaresque fantasies as a frame for his true portrait of French society.

The reason for this, in my opinion, is not a literary one. It was a result of a change in manners, of the new conditions in which writers were placed. Formerly men did not depend on literature for their living. They wrote because they were in the humor to do so, for pastime, to set forth what they thought was the truth, to be useful to others. They did not expect from literature food and lodging, at least directly. When people wrote in that way, slowly, carefully, they took their time and had no temptation to expand their productions beyond what was necessary to express well their thought. When, however, art is a bread-winner, it trades with the booksellers, and trade means an exchange. You must give in order to receive. No book, no money. You must publish in order to live, heap volume on volume incessantly, expand instead of condensing, and make a book out of what could have been put in twenty pages.

"

Le Sage is one of the earliest examples in France of men of letters receiving wages from booksellers, always pushed on by the inexorable demand for " "copy which is their living, obliged to cut down their ideal and their ambition in order to blacken so many sheets of paper a year, in order to bring in so much revenue, at so much a sheet. This is what Le Sage manifests in his works. He could not afford to be brief; that would have been ruin and misery. He had not time to invent; he appropriates the invention of others. He repeats himself constantly. All the methods employed by our contemporaries, in order to sell to booksellers inferior and easy work, he was acquainted with and used. He was not born, however, for such a trade. He could have produced, at long intervals, great works. This is why I say, that his thefts did more damage to himself than to those from whom he stole. It was the Castilian imagination which paid the expense of his invention, and Le Sage, with the charming ease of his natural style, seems to me to resemble one of those handsome but penniless gentlemen, who can rely absolutely on living well at the cost of foolishly vain citizens and superannuated coquettes.

Gil Blas has often been held forth as a perfect example of average humanity. Instructed by experience, rolled over and polished by the eternal flood and ebb of life, by nature vulgar, vain, egotistical, greedy of pleasure yet fearing to be punished therefor, Gil Blas runs twenty times the risk of becoming a rogue and ends by becoming an honest man. Others have protested against such an opinion in the name of humanity which appears to be calumniated by calling the hero of Le Sage a specimen of average human nature. In truth, I fear that Gil Blas is not a character at all. He is a thread on which are strung the various parts of the work, I see him meet with many adventures; I would not dare to say that his soul is modified by these adventures. I find in him every moment naught but the sentiments, vices, virtues, ridiculous traits which introduce each episode and serve as a bridge to the episode which follows. We have, in turn, Gil Blas foolishly vain, Gil Blas the rogue, Gil Blas the poltroon or libertine, Gil Blas the bad son, Gil Blas the honest man, the good husband, the faithful servant. I cannot affirm that all these men are one and the same man.

The supreme excellence of Le Sage is that Gil Blas is a world in itself, and is also the world; so thoroughly, despite impossible adventures and exotic extravagances, has the work a living and natural air. There is in his narrative a healthy and robust simplicity which makes you believe what he says. The author relates with a tone of biting good nature, with a serious irony, which makes you laugh at everything and yet prevents your doubting anything. I do not reflect when I read Le Sage. I have often desired to be shocked by the vulgarity or the immorality of his personages, but never to suspect their reality. Le Sage has the faculty of imparting life. He has eminently, with intensity, the gift of being natural. Hence it is that he has the appearance of being original even when he imitates and translates. It is for this reason, and not from national pride alone, that its Spanish critics have tried so hard to find the original of Gil Blas.

G

THE PLACE OF GREECE IN CIVILIZATION.
M. GENNADIOS,* GREEK MINISTER.

Asiatic Quarterly Review, Calcutta, October. REECE is the one country, and the Greek nation is the people, which, from pre-historic times to this day, serves as an indispensable bridge between the East and the West. Having had their cradle in the East, and still retaining in their language, their traditions, and their philosophy an Oriental background, they are nevertheless the soul and embodiment of Western thought-of that European genius which blossomed forth in them first in its most captivating beautythat ever new and irresistible impulse which is called progress. From the moment that Greece appears on the stage of the world's history, this mighty force comes into play, actuated by the two chief traits of the Greek mind-by the sense of individuality, and by the love of freedom-qualities hitherto unknown, which seem to emerge from the very soil of Greece, as the Greeks considered themselves to have sprung from the earth. Thus armed, the Greeks at once come in contact and join issue with Asia. They are the first who venture to fathom her mysteries, to unravel her symbolism, and to grapple with her learning. Greece encounters Asia already mature in the development of its Eastern civilization. It is in Asiatic Ionia that the Greek mind first conceives the idea -diametrically opposed as it is, to Eastern thought-that there are fixed laws which govern nature. Therefore, “Know thyself" is the first law in life which the Greek-in opposition to the Asiatic-sets to himself, and to this law literature, art, politics, religion itself, conform. It is the watchword of a fearless intellect, the first step toward knowing the world rightly. This love of inquiry and possible knowledge, as opposed to the contemplation, doubt, and indifferentism of Asia is personified by Odysseus, that truly typical Greek, who had seen the abodes and learnt the minds of many men," who loved to wander over the world and who delighted in his own adventures. Odysseus was the earliest of great travelers, and the boldest of explorers. Herodotus, himself an Asiatic Greek, first reveals to the world, by scientific inquiry and in a systematic history, the religious, political, and artistic life of Asia and of Egypt. His nine books have remained, and will remain, the most reliable and most complete storehouse of Oriental lore. When we look to the field of arts, of politics, and of religion, we find the genius of Greece takes its start from Oriental sources, only to transform its prototype completely and soar up to all but unattainable heights. The art of Egypt having been the outcome of a priestly domination was an art of the dead, still-born and conventional; size, not grace and spirit, being its merit. That of Assyria, on the other hand, labored under the crushing weight of a secular despotism, which kept its tone low, and narrowed down its horizon. Greek art, emerging from the thraldom of Asia, was guided by * Speech at the Ninth Congress of Orientalists.

the idea that reason should not be divorced from beauty, but that the beautiful should always be true to nature. With a bold, yet measured grace, the Greek modeled his gods, not after beast and monsters, but after an idealized human form. In political life, again, the East had not then known a medium condition between despotism and anarchy. But the pliant genius of Greece first made the effort to reconcile the rights and duties of the State to those of the individual. With regard to religion, the priesthood in the East overmastered every phase of social and intellectual life; the art of writing itself was a hieratic secret, and the study of literature and science belonged to the priestly office. The Greeks, having received with the alphabet their earliest mythology from Asia, soon threw off sacerdotal influence; and priesthood never constituted a caste in Greece. Although polytheism was the religion of Greece her earliest poetry clearly pointed to higher religious conceptions, while her philosophy, ruthlessly overturning every mythological fiction, produced the teaching of Socrates which falls but little short of that of Christ. Thus purged and prepared by the application of a clear and fearless intellect to every branch of human knowledge, Greek genius was ready to render its greatest service to the world by receiving again from the East and interpreting to the West, the Revelation of Christ. The Jews, the only Asiatic people which, by adopting theocracy, escaped despotism, were the people among whom the teachings of Christ could first be promulgated. But the Greek language was alone able, by reason of its inimitable sublety, to give adequate expression to the noblest thoughts of the Christian faith. The Apostles starting from Asia, wrote the new Testament in Greek, and the Greek fathers versed in the philosophy of Plato and of Aristotle, expounded, in an abiding form, the dogmas of Christianity. Such is the rich and imperishable legacy which the contact of Greece with the East has left to humanity: and so overspanning, universal, and continuous are the benefits derived from it, that we may well say with Shelley: "We are all Greeks; our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their roots in Greece."

THER

ENGLISH NOVELS.

Quarterly Review, London, October.

HERE are eight hundred novels a year published in England! Of which, how many survive the year after? The staple English commodity which circulates in three volumes is a conventional product, an institution like Saturday excursions to Brighton and Margate for half-a-crown, a refuge for distressed needlewomen, a thing as native to our shores as Britannia metal and afternoon tea. The Homeric epithet, dedicated by long custom to its service, is “trashy." Our indigenous novel, taken in the bulk, contains little art and no science. Its art, moreover, is well-worn—a feeble echo of Rousseau, with insular decorum stifling his too Gallic accents and reducing him to respectable inanity. It is a sentimental prude, who would shriek, and perhaps faint, at the very mention, by bold Mr. Meredith, of "skeleton-anatomy." Delighting in the “love-season, that carnival of egoism,” our British Miss closes her record discreetly when the wedding-bells strike up, and she is to use her own favorite expression-"led to the altar" by the hero whom she has chased and drawn on, from cover to cover, through a thousand pages.

When the French satirist wanders in the forest of Mudie and glances at these strange, impossible creatures, he feels an overpowering sense of wonder and amusement, which tempts him to exaggerate the less desirable qualities of his own fiction in the hope of giving a redoubled shock; for there is nothing he so contemns as Rousseau turned Puritan. The 'everlasting pantomime" of rose-pink virtue squinting across pages of its Prayer-book at vice, while it gambols within the measure of police-morality, is very laughable to him.

the

Heartily would he agree with Mr. Meredith that not in such a fashion can Art be raised "on a level with History, to an interest surpassing the narrative of public deeds as vividly as a man's heart and brain in their union excel his plain lines of action." Carlyle insisted that History, were it written as it ought to be, would read like a Bible. Mr. Meredith has ventured to demand the like seriousness, and to prophesy the same result, if the Novel is not to sink degraded "in the thick midst of poniarded, slit-throat, rope-dependent figures, placarded across the bosom, Disillusioned, Infidel, Agnostic, Miserrimus." Yet we have gone no further on the path of deliverance than our eight hundred sentimental wax-work stories, appearing and disappearing as the year goes round, on this stage of "everlasting pantomime." Is it so much as a commencement? Or should we not send for the "6 common hangman," if his hand be not entirely out, and bid him make an auto da fé in front of Mudie's, with the feminine public looking on, agonized and much sobbing, but learning in this wholesome manner their first profitable reading-lesson?

But Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot-do we mean to cail these mere artists in wax? Assuredly not Thackeray, nor the first George Eliot-not the creator of Becky Sharp, nor the excelling heart and brain to which one stands indebted for the idyl of Silas Marner," and the woodland tragedy of "Adam Bede." Dickens, again, is by profession both clown and pantaloon, but he is quaint, affectionate, pitiful, the genius of oddity personified, no less than the stage-struck sentimentalist; he is Smollett redivivus, and rugged as the old Scotch surgeon was, both he and his imitator display a manliness beyond the reach of Rousseau. Yet mere sentiment, even in Dickens, is a fault, and never a virtue. The line of advance in English literature lies through Thackeray and George Eliot. Your Dickens may be popular, lovable, unforgotten. Something, however, there is which forbids us to name him classic. Is it the want of thought, of philosophy? He cries and laughs in quick succession; but he writes the comedy of the footlights, and is unequal to the deeper, more subdued, yet infinitely more piercing, comedy of life. His strong point, if we may venture on the expression, is pathetic burlesque. He will always fascinate those who are touched by transpontine melodrama played in a full house, not the student or man of the world, but the unlearned crowd.

How different has been the fate of Thackeray! That mighty artist has struck into life and plucked from it quivering figures with the blood in them; not lovely, nor high-toned and noble for the most part; only as true as he dared to make them. And George Eliot, the close student of Thackeray, not quite free from obligations to Balzac, and as far-seeing in rustic village ways as the satirist of "Vanity Fair" was in Pall Mall and Russell Square-we are speaking of fifty years ago-brought her large genius to the presentation of those country folk in whose aboriginal, uneducated passions and family pride, the world suddenly recognized a chapter of existence that it had never been

shown how to read until she rehearsed it. In "Middlemarch" her partial dissection of motives, her reliance upon "environment" to explain character, and her "physiology of the soul," may be fairly compared with Balzac's mechanical fatalism; except that where the French author beheld only a conflict of individualities, an unchecked and undiluted passion for self, the Agnostic English lady, mindful of her. Christian bringing up, could still discern the beauty of sacrifice and the struggle towards perfection. Her profound sadness touched, as with pensive evening light, the vast battlefield over which she gazed tenderly, yet despairing of an immortal issue. She could have analyzed tears, with the chemist who sought for the Absolute; but her own eyes were dimmed while she steeled herself to the operation. George Eliot was a repentant Realist, for she could not be satisfied with the melancholy facts of existence; she lamented the lost spiritual kingdoms, even while she denied that they had ever been, outside the pious imagination

of believers. She borrowed her art from Christianity; and, so long as it was not overborne by her science, she wrote what will hardly die before the English language itself.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

THE LIGHT OF THE FUTURE.

D. ISAACHsen.

Nordisk Tidskrift för Vetenskap, Konst, och Industri, Femte Häftet, Stockholm.

N private life, Petroleum may long hold a place, and Gas has

restaurants, theatres, etc., but in the last decennial they have both had a dangerours rival in the Electric Light, and the prospects are that they both will be driven to the wall, because electrical light is a much more rational light than either. The main advantage that gas has is, that it in most cases is the cheaper of the two, and that is, at present, a great factor in the competition.

The gas industry is now about one hundred years old, while electrical lighting, as an industry, is scarcely a decade old; the progress in building dynamos, for instance, has been so The great and fast that the possible limit is almost reached. next aim will be to make them cheaper.

The question as to which lighting material is the more economical cannot be answered in a general way. It depends upon many circumstances, and the answer will be different in different places. We may, however, put the question in an abstract form and ask, which lighting material gives the greatest amount of light for the least amount of energy spent; and this question may be answered in a general way, thus giving us a comparative table of the theoretical perfectness of the different lighting materials. Employing one horse-power and measuring the light produced with that of a spermaceti candle under certain definite circumstances and dimensions, we get the following table:

8,7 9

แ

13

248 1492

Electrical Current, Arc Lamp Electrical light, as will be seen, is the most powerful. Why, then, do we not use that light exclusively? Because electrical energy is dearer, and in the long run electrical lighting will prove dearer than any other light.

All our lighting methods consist in heating a body to a higher temperature. When a degree of over 500° C, has been reached, the vibrations produced by the heat become visible to our eye as light, red or dark rays. With increasing temperature, we finally reach a white light; but what a great amount of energy has not been spent, and lost! Certainly our lighting methods are very primitive, and it would seem that the electrical light would easily attain supremacy. Of all the energy consumed in a gas flame we get only one per cent. returned in the form of light, the ninety-nine per cent. being lost as regards light. The electric arc light stands higher in this respect. Still it only gives us ten per cent. back in the form of light, of all energy spent. Surely we cannot be proud of our lighting methods.

Is there no remedy for this? Can we not escape the waste of so much energy? No, we cannot. We can get about forty times more use out of the energy exerted, and no more; but the method employed to get that result is impracticable for ordinary lighting. It is, however, possible that the problem may be solved satisfactorily some day. We know that the lightning bugs produce light without the waste of heat, and some day we may find out their secret At present we know only our own ignorance in the matter. We get light in the way in which the Gaucho gets meat. He butchers an ox to get one beefsteak, and lets the balance lie to rot.

The electrical light is produced by glowing while all other light is the result of combustion, In that lies their difference and the advantage of the one over the other. In the combustion is consumed much oxygen and man is thus robbed of a

large part of his main support. But in the glow lamp, the wire is inclosed in a vacuum and protected from combustion. There is here no continuous conduct of fresh air and no giving out of heated air and products of combustion. Hence the electrical light does not compete with man and does not rob him of his best nourishment and overload the air with foul and unhealthy gases. The difference, as regards influence upon the air in a chamber, of our ordinary lighting substances and electrical light will be seen from this table. In it will be found the number of heat units and the quantity of products of combustion developed when a room is lighted for one hour with 100 lights. Where no figure appears I have not had the exact data in my possession.

1,43 m3 1.04 kg. For a better understanding of these figures look at this illustration. An ordinary gas flame using 140 liters of gas per hour will give the light of about 9 candles in that time and throw off 115 liters carbonic acid in the same time. A grown person at rest breathes out about 17 liters carbonic acid per hour. In other words that gas flame will in one hour throw off as much carbonic acid as 7 grown persons do and will require additional 225 cubic meters pure air, that the atmosphere in the room may remain sound.

Gas develops other hurtful products besides carbonic acid and ruins all kinds of wall decorations, books, etc. The difficulties as regards the ventilation of gas-heated rooms are many and great. It is not hard to discover the main difficulties attending the use of gas, and we readily recognize all the disadvantages attending its use.

Now, as regards the electrical light. There will be but few difficulties in ventilating a hall lighted by electricity, because it developes so little heat and no carbonic acid. In a certain large bank in London which employes 1,200 people in its offices, the electrical light was substituted for gas. Almost instantly the sick list was reduced so materially, that the gain in labor paid for the extra expense of keeping the electrical light. Similar favorable results have been obtained elsewhere in workhouses and offices. The sanitary conditions have now become a prominent factor in case of the electrical light against gas. Still the expenses of using it are great. In America the difference of price between gas and electrical light is sometimes so small, that it becomes advantageous to use the latter.

Two questions have lately created much discussion and newspaper writing, namely, the danger of fire created by the electrical light and the danger which lies in the wires to human life.

As regards the first question there is no doubt, that absolute security does not exist. But a well built conduit, properly arranged, is less dangerous than gas. Thus far the troubles have arisen from inexperience with the new agent, but experience is fast being acquired and in many places the law compels the lighting of theatres by electricity, a proof that engineers consider it less dangerous than gas. In Berlin every theater or other public place of entertainment, seating more than 800 persons, must, from January next, introduce electrical light. On the other subject, the discussion has been extremely hot and senseless, and statistics prove that the number of persons. killed by electrical currents is entirely out of proportion to that of those who lost their lives by other accidents. In course of time we shall no more fear electrical wires than the dangers that lurk in gas meters and express trains.

THE EFFECT OF SMOKELESS POWDER ON THE WARS OF THE FUTURE.

IN

W. W. KNollys.

United Service Magazine, London, October.

Abso

N some of the descriptions of the so-called smokeless powder which have been given to the public, imagination and ignorance appear to have struggled for the mastery. It was asserted that men would be struck down by adversaries whose position was unseen, and whose weapons noiselessly smote with a death wound. A little reflection might have shown those who accepted these blood-curdling statements that an explosion without noise was impossible, and that, therefore, silent powder had not, and never could be, invented. lutely smokeless, too, the new powder is not, but it is invisible at very short distances, and is quickly dissipated. A complete revolution in the art of war will not be caused by it, but, nevertheless, some modifications will be caused by its introduction. It has occurred to me that as I was present last autumn at the grand military manœuvres at Cambray, at which smokeless powder was used, an account of my observations and deductions might not be unprofitable to the military student.

This new powder was not adopted by the French (so I have been assured by the French military attaché in London) because of its smokelessness, but simply on account of its superior ballistic properties. The smokelessness is, therefore, at most a secondary consideration. The smokelessness is not absolute, and the same may, I believe, be said of the so-called smokeless powder of other armies-but for a dense cloud which hangs, is substituted a light filmy vapor, rapidly dissipated. If a single man fires in an average state of the atmosphere, the smoke of the discharge could not be seen at forty yards; or, in the case of a volley by twenty-four men, at eighty yards. When at Cambray looking at artillery firing at-say eighteen hundred yards-I could see no smoke, and I dare say none would have been visible at a tenth of that distance. There was, however, a clearly visible electric-light-looking flash, and I observed that with guns, and to a less extent with rifles, a cloud of dust, when the ground was dry and bare, arose at each discharge. This cloud was caused by some of the gas, after quitting the muzzle, striking violently downward. Artillery officers should, therefore, in preference seek for ground moist and covered with thick grass when possible. As for the infantry, they have little choice. The clouds referred to were soon dissipated, and were by no means so visible at a distance as black powder smoke.

As to the probable effect of smokeless powder in war, fortress guns will still be easily localized with a field-glass, but if the attacking batteries be constructed at long range behind parapets, with low command and not indicated by freshly stirred earth, the enemy will be at first puzzled to localize them. At all times, too, field artillery, opening suddenly at various places and distances, would, with the aid of smokeless powder, be more difficult to reply to effectively than formerly. It is, however, in casemates that smokeless powder would be very valuable, as not substantially encumbering or vitiating the atmosphere inside.

Passing from fortresses to the open country, I will first consider how and to what extent the defenders of a position will be benefited by the use of smokeless powder. If they obtain cover behind a hedge, in a wood, or in shelter trenches, whose existence is not disclosed by newly excavated earth not covered by turf, grass, or bushes, they will be invisible at any distance, say, exceeding three hundred yards; hence they can fire at the enemy's distant artillery or advancing infantry without fear of a return, for he will be unable to even approximate to the situation of the line. The hostile fire must, therefore, be more or less random until some accident, such as a wounded man being blown by a shell out of the trench, a stricken man in his agony springing up, or a man incautiously raising his

head to see better. How demoralizing it will be for troops to hear the report of heavy firing, and the whistle of bullets, and to see their comrades dropping around them, without being able to see whence the firing comes, and consequently being unable to reply effectively! Again, the preliminary to an action is a careful reconnoissance of the enemy's position. This is sometimes effected by cavalry and horse-artillery driving in the enemy's advanced posts or parties, or causing them to fall back from fear of being cut off; or it is accomplished by pushing forward all three arms, and engaging the defenders to such an extent as to force them to discover their position, numbers, and distribution. Evidently the policy will be, for the defenders, absolute concealment of their troops till the enemy has approached to within effective range, when a fire will be opened on the reconnoitering parties from foes completely hidden, and armed with rifles whose discharge is attended with no betraying smoke. Hence not only will the advanced parties proceed with nervous caution, but even the main body will have to actually penetrate to within a few hundred yards of the first line to find out what position it really occupies. As may be easily imagined, the price to be paid for information will be very heavy. A skillful general will, moreover-thanks to smokeless powder-be able to play his antagonist all sorts of tricks. For instance, he may back up his position so that the two portions form a reëntering angle of, say, a hundred and twenty degrees. By, as it were accidentally, exposing a few men, he may induce the enemy to attack one face, weakly held, and to thus expose his flank to the other face where would be the real position. It will thus be very easy to keep the enemy in ignorance of where the greater part of the infantry are concealed till the assailants arrive within a hundred yards of the position. The artillery will less perfectly dissimulate their position on account of the bright white flash previously mentioned. Hence the artillery on both sides will no longer commence the action as heretofore; the defenders' artillery will evidently find their account in keeping silent and concealed until the enemy arrive within close range. The machine guns will follow the example of the artillery until the attackers' guns have been masked by their own infantry. It is perhaps a rash thing to say, but it seems to me that the preliminary artillery duel will be a thing of the past, and that the power of artillery is, if not killed, at all events much weakened by the adoption of smokeless powder. Ambushes, especially against cavalry, will be much more effective than formerly, and the danger of attacking the enemy in position will be increased enormously.

The experience of actual war will probably bring to light other effects of smokeless powder and modify preconceived theories. All I have attempted is to suggest some of the consequences likely to result from the adoption of the new powder. AMONG THE PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS OF BRITTANY.

Noth

ALPHEUS S. PACKARD.

American Naturalist, Philadelphia, October.

OT far from the Land's End of France, and adjoining the picturesque coast of Finisterre, a favorite resort not only of French, but also of English and American artists, lie the barren and almost treeless plains of Morbihan. Morbihan is Celtic for "The Little Sea," and the district is famous for its impressive and mysterious so-called Celtic or Druidical ruins. These remains are mounds, tombs, and monoliths, erected by a race whose remote descendants still occupy the soil, their farms, and dwellings, and hamlets bordering upon, and in part inclosing the tombs, and lines of stone pillars which keep silent watch over the region. The best known and most imposing of these series of pillars, or menhirs," are the great alignments of Carnac, which have for centuries excited the curiosity and interest of travelers and antiquarians.

Such monuments, if they ever existed in other parts of