face turned scarlet for a moment, his head drooped as with vicarious shame. Then by a supreme effort he lifted his eyes and looked Marion Carr fearlessly in the face.

'How should you know? You are a woman; you cannot know what horrible temptations there are in the world, even for us young lads. If there are those who have the strength to resist what is wrong, it is because they are more blessed than others in the influence of home. I think the remembrance of a mother's clinging love and a father's devotion must be incentives to good for the very worst of us. But when these incentives are wanting . . . Hans—his name is Hans-is almost a man. His father treats him like a puling schoolboy; allows him no pocket-money, and insists upon his giving an account of every spare half-hour. Hans will not stand it, and where his father fails is in intelligence. He has no common sense; he cannot see that-that there comes a time when a man can no longer pass his spare time with his little sisters in the schoolroom. He must go out and fight the devil and all his angels, and learn what degrades a man's best powers. He must keep his hands clean, else how shall he face his mother and his sisters? I have been twitted with the reproach that I cannot drink gallons of beer and have never been drunk . . . Cui bono? . . . Hans -last week he was missing from home for more than two hours. They sent to know if he was with me .. I could not find him. A spy had been set upon the poor fellow. He fell into the trap. His father, in a fit of coarse rage, thrashed him before the servants . It was horrible. He escaped from his room and came to me. My parents do not approve of our friendship. But they are good and just, and they see that some one must hold out a saving hand to the poor fellow, and so they allowed me to share my room with him till the following morning. But now even that poor comfort is denied him. His father has what I call the paltry official mind: he loves to show his authority. A sort of jealous rage possesses him. He seems to hate the idea of Hans having a friend . . . and he has forbidden him to have anything to do with me.'

The boy bit his lips. For a moment or two there was dead silence. 'Yesterday,' he continued with an effort, Hans' father received a letter from the school authorities. What will happen I dare not think. I called to see Hans this morning, but they told me that he had been punished again; his father had locked him up in his room. It is monstrous; no, it is worse than that-it is a stupid blunder. The boy is strong-willed and fearfully passionate. But I can touch his heart. If they would only let me try. . . But they shut me out. I can do nothing-only wait in fear.'

'It is a sad case.'

'If nothing happens, I will get my father to put in a word for me. If that fails I will go to the school authorities. If Hans could stay with me, six months, a year. Ach! my mother is so good; she would

not on a country but on a class, viz., the consumers of what is thought to be a particularly injuring article, it cannot therefore be placed on the same footing as other contributions in making up an account between the joint contributors to a common fund.

I did not know that there was anyone who thought the consumption of spirits beneficial till I read the enthusiastic praise of whisky in the evidence of Mr. Lough, the member for Islington, who actually told the Committee (p. 52) that he thought

The reduction of the tax would develop the well-being of the people, and if that were done, they would not resort any more to coarse stimulants or vices of any kind.

The question then narrows in itself to this, Does Ireland contribute too much to Imperial expenditure?

If we are to consider the taxes paid by different parts of the United Kingdom, we must also consider the assistance given to local expenditure. In the case of Ireland, this is very considerable.

According to the Death duties, which Mr. Gladstone considered the wisest test, Ireland's proportion would be th or

th.

But the whole amount contributed by Ireland to Imperial expenditure is under 2,000,000l. or only nd part.

Is this too much? This session (1897) we have made a grant towards Irish local expenditure which will probably amount to over 700,000l. If we were to relieve her to the extent of 1,200,000l. more she would contribute absolutely nothing.

But then we come to the plea that Ireland is a poor country compared with Great Britain. The taxation, however, is on the amount consumed. We do not impose this taxation. The people tax themselves. Moreover, the evidence shows that they take better tea and tobacco than our countrymen.

Lord Farrer put to Mr. Murray the remark that we have to consider not only whether the Irishman consumes the tea and tobacco, but whether he can afford to pay for it, and what was Mr. Murray's answer?

My informant told me that he had to supply the South of Ireland and the West of Ireland with a better class of tobacco than he supplied to the stupid Northerner or the ignorant Saxon.

The evidence also shows that the Irish drink a better class of tea than the English. If then the Irish can afford to drink rather more tea, smoke rather more tobacco, and consume rather more spirits, purchasing them moreover of rather better quality than that which the average Englishman allows himself, that does not look as if their circumstances were so very bad.

At the numerous recent meetings which have been held in Ireland, always excepting Ulster, the amount of these duties has been described as ruinous to Ireland. One noble friend of mine especially denounced the Tea duty as really so iniquitous as to justify rebellion. Now what do they amount to?

"For the father? Yes.' The lad's face was stern.

'The funeral

is on Friday. I came to tell you—you must not expect me, please, on Saturday. My father wishes me to go away. Forgive me for distressing you. I think you would have forgiven him. . . . He sinned, but he was my friend. I loved him, and would have saved him. . . .

And then Leo Wolmar went away.

KATHARINE BLYTH

RECENT SCIENCE

I

ONE of the chief problems that are now under discussion among geologists and physical geographers is undoubtedly the origin of mountains, plateaus, valleys, and oceanic depressions; in other words, the origin of the various forms assumed by the earth's surface. In fact, the problem is contemporaneous with the beginnings of science itself. Descartes and Newton paid attention to it, but it was only in the second part of this century that the detailed geological exploration of mountain regions could supply the necessary elements for a thoroughly scientific discussion of this vast problem.

Over wide areas of the earth's surface the sediments which had been deposited in past ages at the bottom of the ocean, or of interior seas, have retained up to the present time their nearly horizontal position. They now lie several hundreds or several thousands of feet above the level of the seas in which they were deposited; but they have not been much disturbed during this change of level. Their flat surfaces stretch over hundreds and thousands of miles, with but very slight dips towards this or that part of the horizon. This is the case in the wide plains of North and South America, Asia and Eastern Europe. As soon, however, as we enter a mountain region we find the same strata lifted up, bent in all directions, folded and contorted in the most fantastic ways, and the question necessarily arises, How did these disturbances originate? What were the agencies which produced the wonderful mountain scenery which man never ceases to admire ?

The answer which used to be given to this question some fifty years ago is well known. Chains of mountains were considered as immense rents in the earth's crust, through which masses of igneous molten rocks had been ejected from the interior, lifting up, bending, and folding the formerly horizontal strata. Running water has subsequently sculptured these broken and folded strata, scooping out of their fractures the valleys, the gorges, and the rock basins now filled up with lakes. A force acting from beneath, and the seat of which was in the igneous molten interior of the globe, has lifted up the mountains, violently bending and breaking the stratified rocks, while

in other parts of the earth's crust the same force has gently lifted up the plains and the plateaus without disturbing their strata, and it continues to produce the secular upheavals which are going on still in Scandinavia, Polar America, on the coasts of Chili, &c.

This theory of mountain building, which we owe to Hutton, was admirably and most poetically worked out by L. von Buch and by Humboldt as the theory of a reaction of the interior of the globe upon its surface;' and it embodied in a grand generalisation the origin of mountains and continents, the eruptions of the volcanoes, and the earthquakes. Elie de Beaumont completed it by showing that different chains of mountains were lifted up at different geological periods, and that during each period the rents in the earth's crust were produced in a different direction. And when Lyell and his followers had proved that no sudden upheavals took place, and that all changes in the earth's surface are accomplished by means of very slow processes, the current theories were modified accordingly, but their substance was retained. We were taught these theories in our youth, and they are still taught in most of our schools.

The wonderful variety of mountain structure which is offered by the North American continent, and was revealed by the extensive explorations of the American geologists, as well as the peculiarities of mountain architecture which became known after detailed geological surveys had been made in Great Britain and the Alps, entirely modified the current ideas as to the origin of mountains. The importance of erosion, both by the rivers and the sea waves, certainly was not overlooked even by the earliest geologists. Its full meaning, however, was only understood when the explorers of the American continent familiarised us with the stupendous scale upon which erosion was once at work on the Grand Plateau of the Colorado, and when A. Heim disclosed, on the other side, its full effects in the Alps.

The amount of erosion accomplished by the Colorado river and its tributaries in the great plateau of western North America was a revelation for geologists. The surface of the plateau being covered with Tertiary lacustrine deposits, and these deposits having remained intact on both banks of the 3,000 to 5,000 feet deep cañons which intersect the plateau, it was proved that the rivers had cut their beds through these deposits, as well as through thousands of feet of underlying hard rocks, since the Tertiary period. In certain places the horizontal strata of which the plateau is built up have been excavated, so as to produce a clert, 3,000 feet deep, running between two vertical walls which are separated from each other by the width only of the river. In other places the rocks are sculptured into separate mountains and ridges, from 3,000 to 5,000 feet high, by a network of eroded valleys the mountain scenery obtained in such