make it seem a desirable subject for domestication. We note, however, that even in this primitive condition the creature has certain physical and mental qualities which have been the basis of its adoption by man as well as of the wide changes which it has undergone at his hands.

It is a characteristic of all the doves that their young are born in a very immature state, and for some time after they come from the egg they have to be supplied with food which has been partly digested in the crop or upper part of the stomach of the parent. For the proper rearing of the brood there is required the assiduous care of both parents. Therefore quite naturally we find among these birds that the pairing habit is well developed, and as they rear several broods each season that the mating is for life. Although there are a number of birds in various orders which are accustomed to the monogamic habit, it happens that the pigeon is the only animal which man has ever won to true domestication in which the sexes can be thus permanently united. In the dovecote, however many birds it may contain, the breeder can be always sure as to the parentage of the young which he is rearing. This affords an admirable basis for the practice of his art, which is still further favored by the fact that pigeons reproduce rapidly, and the progeny are ready to mate in a few months after they come into the world. Thus the species affords really ideal conditions for that process of selection on which the improvement of all domesticated animals intimately depends.

Selective breeding of pigeons began in India, as the records seem to show, more than two thousand years ago. Though other animals have been brought to domestication at much earlier times, this appears to have been the first of them to be subjected to deliberate efforts on the part of their masters, which were intended to bring about in a methodical way certain changes in their forms and habits. The most curious part of this great endeavor which has been applied to breeding pigeons is found in the fact that the ends sought have no utility, but afford satisfaction from the point of view of pure diver

sion or the gratification of taste. We are well accustomed to the action of such motives upon our flowering plants of the garden, but the pigeon is the only animal where fancy has labored for thousands of years for its gratification. The breeders of pigeons, from remote antiquity to the present day, appear to have had no definite purpose in all their pains. They have taken the chance variations in form and habit and endeavored to extend these sports of nature by a careful system of mating those in which the singular features were most evident. Thus the fan-tail breed has been developed until the creatures display their unornamental tail feathers with all the dignity with which a peacock shows his marvellous decorations. The pouters have in some unaccountable way learned to take air into their crop, and the habit has been developed by selection until the bird destroys all trace of his original shapeliness, though he seems to take pride in his diseased appearance. The tumbler, probably derived from some ancestor afflicted with a disease of an epileptic character, manages to go through his convulsions in the air without serious consequences and apparently with some pleasure to himself. There are over two hundred less conspicuous varieties, of which only one deserves notice, and this for the reason that it has some possible utility to man and is now much attended to. known as the carrier pigeon.

This is

In early time, before the invention of the railway and telegraph, some ingenious breeder of pigeons, observing the constant way in which these creatures returned to the place where they were bred, invented the plan of using them to convey information. This service was found convenient not only for ordinary correspondence, but was exceedingly valuable where a place was beleaguered by an enemy. In such cases carrier pigeons could often be used to convey information across the otherwise impassable lines. Even in modern times, as, for instance, during the last siege of Paris, these swift and sure flying birds proved of great use in keeping up communications between the people of the invested town and the French armies in the field. Letters in cipher, sometimes

photographed down until the characters were microscopically fine, were made into packages of small weight in order not to impede the flight of the bird, carefully affixed to its body, and thus sent away. Very generally these curious shipments came to the hands of those for whom they were destined. The birds can be trusted to fly at night; they retain for a long time the memory of their home and spare no pains to return to it.

It must be regarded as unfortunate that the experiments which have been made on pigeons have been limited to their features of form, color, and slight peculiarities in their habits. If the breeders had sought to modify the intellectual parts with anything like the insistence which they have given to the development of these bodily peculiarities, we might now have a most valuable store of knowledge as to the limitations of animal minds. The facts gained in the breeding of the carriers show clearly that certain of the instincts of these birds can be readily modified. There is every reason to suppose that their mental capacities in other directions have something of the same pliability.

Although some of the free-flying or tree birds have been kept for their beauty alone, the greater part of them have commended themselves to man because of their voices. It is hardly necessary to tell the reader that the birds of all animals are most provided with means of expression through the voice. There is hardly a species which has not a greater range of notes or calls than the most vocal of our wild mammals, and many varieties are impelled to tuneful expression in the measure in which no other creatures, not even man, exhibits. In most cases these utterances are pleasing to the human ear, for they have the quality which we term musical. Therefore it is not surprising that the most of our captive birds have been chosen for their song.

It seems clear that the song of birds, like their calls-the two shade indefinitely into each other-expressed a sympathetic emotional consciousness of the actions going on about them, particularly of the life of their kind. In gen

eral these utterances are directed toward kindred of their own species. In many cases, however, as among the imitative birds, the sounds which they utter indicate a curiously keen interest in the actions of their masters or other human affairs. The mocking-birds and some other species will, with great assiduity, endeavor to copy any sound which they happen to hear. I well remember watching a mocking-bird which was listening with rapt attention to the noise produced by a man sharpening a saw with a file. The poor bird would hearken with great attention until he thought he had caught the note and then endeavor to reproduce it. As may be imagined, the measure of his success was small. He was fully conscious of his failure, and would beat himself about the cage in evident chagrin, returning again and again to try the hopeless task.

Wherever the vocal organs of caged birds permit them to imitate human speech they are apt to devote a large part of their labor to this task, paying little attention to other less meaningful sounds. It appears to me that they perceive in a way the sympathetic character of language and therefore take a peculiar pleasure in copying it. It is hardly to be believed that they ever get a sense of the connotative value of words, but it is not to be doubted that they sometimes attain to a certain appreciation of the denotation of simpler phrases. In this task they do not exhibit as much sagacity as the dog, a creature which learns to understand the purport of rather complicated sentences. Nevertheless their capacity for imitating speech is a fascinating peculiarity, one which has greatly endeared them to bird fanciers.

The remarkable way in which the art of hawking has disappeared from our civilization deserves more than a passing notice, though it appears to be inexplicable. It is evident that it was a tolerably ingrained habit, at least among the English-speaking people, for it has left a very deep impress upon the language. There are far more phrases derived from the custom than can be traced to any other of the sportsman's arts. At least, one of these collocations

equivalent to giving a person a strapping.

Whatever may have been the reason for abandoning this beautiful and in a way noble sport, its disuse must be deemed most unfortunate by all the students of animal intelligence, for it has deprived us of precious opportunities in the way of observations on the mental peculiarities which exist in a most interesting group of birds. In these days, when there is much humor for reviving the customs of our forefathers, it might be well for some persons of leisure to give their attention to restoring the arts of falconry. Enough of the practice and of the traditions is left to make it an easy task to reinstitute all the important parts of the custom. Moreover, those who essayed the matter would have access to a much greater range of rapacious birds than our forefathers, who had to content themselves with the limited number of wild species which inhabit the continent of Europe. Especially on our Western plains, where game birds abound and the country lies wide open, sportsmen would find an admirable field in which to follow the bird they flew. Not only would the restoration of hawking give us a sport much more skilful and refined than the fox chase, but it would reintroduce the cultivation of the only creature which, having once been brought to the service of man, has been permitted to return to its ancestral wild life.

of words which has escaped from the minds of grown people still holds a place among the boys of this country. When two lads are fighting we often hear the bystanders say, by way of encouragement to one of the contestants, "Give him Jesse." The use of this curious phrase prevails in all parts of the United States, but after much inquiry I have failed to find a trace of it preserved in England. There seems to be little doubt that these words are due to a custom of beating a hawk which failed to do its duty with the thongs or jesses by which it was attached to the wrist of the falconer. Giving another jesse thus came to be

VOL. XVIII.-53

M

Y acquaintance with Mr. Huxley began in 1876. We were fellowpassengers on the White Star Steamship Germanic from Liverpool to New York. It was not, I think, our first meeting, but I date from that voyage our real acquaintance and the friendship which followed. The friendship, cemented by some common interests and by a long-continued and close relationship between his family and mine, lasted without a break to the day of his death; and lasts still. It was in some respects so intimate that to write anything at all about him seems almost a breach of the confidence he gave me. On the other hand, to write nothing is to be untrue to him and to his memory -to the memory of one of the truest men who ever lived, one of the manliest, and in all points one of the noblest. I believe I should say the same thing if I had never known him, or known him but slightly, for I have known also many of his friends and some of his enemies, and from no one of them did I ever hear a word questioning his loyalty or truthfulness of nature. What may have been said in controversy does not count. Most men will say strong things when hard pushed, and Mr. Hux ley was all his life long in the thick of some conflict or other, and endured the usual hardships of conflicts very stoically.

These, or most of these, may nevertheless be passed over. The records of them are all in print. No doubt he will pass into history as a born fighter. The combative instinct was in him, but it was very far from being merely pugnacity. He fought for that which he thought to be true and right. On no other terms could you engage him in any conflict whatever. It is impossible to conceive of Huxley as a mercenary, as taking pay for anything in which his heart was not, as upholding an opinion in which he did not believe. His sincerity was often tested. He came into active life at a time when science was

very far from having achieved that position of independence which it has since won; and won in a very considerable degree by Huxley's help. You remember the fate which befell Colenso. That arithmetical bishop was persecuted because he could not accept as historical all that he found in the Pentateuch. Who accepts it all now? If you did not then believe in the Mosaic cosmogony, or in that theory of creation and of the ordering of the world to which Huxley, with great controversial adroitness, once gave the name Miltonic, you were anathema. When Darwin published the "Origin of Species" he was denounced from every orthodox pulpit in England as an infidel. That was in 1859, not two generations ago. Huxley, who had already made a name in science, took his stand at once by Darwin. He did not affirm

he was never much given to affirming anything except that two and two made four-that Darwin's hypothesis had been made out. It was enough for him that the theory of evolution or of natural selection, as it was first announced, had the probabilities on its side. It explained the hitherto unexplained origin of species more satisfactorily than any preceding theory. It gave, to say the least, a rational and not a merely mythological account of things, and for Huxley the use of the reason was the first condition of an approach to the truth. Until a more rational theory, better supported by facts, should be advanced he stood by this, and was content to work and that others should work on the lines Darwin had laid down. Darwin and Darwinism held the field. They hold it still. Twenty-one years later Huxley delivered, at the Royal Institution in London, a lecture on the coming of age of the Darwinian theory. He had very little to alter or modify.

It is because Huxley has been to such an extent identified with Darwinism that his achievements in original research have brought him less renown

than they should. He was its champion in the arena-ever ready to meet all comers. But all the time he was steadily pursuing his own scientific work. The records of it are to be found where the public never looks, in the journals of the Royal Society, in the transactions of the various scientific societies, which are published for the benefit of the world of science and not for newspaper readers in general. The Royal Society, of which he had long been the secretary, chose him its president and awarded him the Copley medal- the

blue ribbon of English science, and perhaps of European science also, for it was bestowed on Virchow, the German. The Royal Society, unlike the Royal Academy of Art, is a body which takes purely scientific views and awards its distinctions without regard to social qualifications. It scarcely recognizes even the merits of the immense work Huxley did in popularizing science. He might have gone on to the end lecturing in Jermyn Street, at the Royal School of Mines, and afterward in South Kensington, without eliciting much no