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the age of which we have been speaking, although there were many flesh-eaters which stood in their stead; so that the weaker herbivorous animals had their enemies then as now. After the close of this period, in what we may call here the Fourth Age-the present geological age -in the deposits of which vestiges of man are for the first time met with, these beasts of prey also made their appearance. Europe, even in England, was at one time infested with bears and hyenas, by the side of which the modern bear and hyena would appear as pigmies. The remains of these beasts have been found in caves which had been their dens, and which, when discovered, were thickly strewn with the bones of the animals on which they had feasted.*

This brief account is intended merely to give you some idea of the various strange and often frightful animals which have lived on the earth and have, fortunately for us, ceased to exist-to interest you in the subject. If you will turn over the pages of the article MAMMALIA† in the Encyclopædia you will find, together with many pictures of the remains of extinct animals, many interesting facts relating to them, which we have necessarily passed unnoticed.

SOMETHING ABOUT NURSERY RHYMES

The greater number of those rhymes which are know as the Mother Goose Melodies, are, as every one knows, mere jingles of words, which, if they ever had any point or meaning, have lost it irrecoverably. But now and then we come across something in this medley of nonsense, of which most children, and most of all old children, have a delicious recollection, to remind us that these rhymes are not a modern invention, but that they have been repeated to children generation after generation, and that some of them at least have a very respectable antiquity. They contain many allusions to old customs, to old superstitions, and to stories once current among our ancestors, but which are now to be found only in the books of scholars who have made a study of ancient fables and popular legends.

"Cave Beasts," E. B., Vol. II. 336,337. "Mammalia," E. B., Vol. XV. 347.

The Man in the Moon, for example, who has not heard how he

Came down too soon,

Inquiring the way to Norwich? But how many persons nowadays ever hear more of him? "Mother Goose" did not invent the Man in the Moon. She simply alluded to a story which in her day was well known to everybody,— the story, once widely current in both England and Germany, of a man who, for some terrible crime, which some said was theft and others said was Sabbathbreaking, was banished to the moon, where he must remain to all eternity, and whom anybody can still see, who looks for him.

Of course this story was started to account for the dark spots on the moon's face. There were other ways in which these spots were accounted for, An old Icelandic book, called the Edda, contains a story about Mani, the Moon, which is, in substance, this:

Mani, it is said, once stole from the earth two children, a boy and a girl, named Hjuki and Bil. They had been drawing water from the spring Byrgir, and were carrying it in a bucket suspended from a pole, which rested on their shoulders. Mani placed these two children in a conspicuous place in the heavens, where they could be seen by all men. This undoubtedly refers to the spots on the moon, and it is said that to this day the Swedish peasants point to two of these spots as a boy and a girl carrying a bucket of water between them.

Now, "Mother Goose" had heard this story, undoubtedly, and that is how she came to make up the rhyme about Jack and Jill. She changed the name Hjuki into Jack and turned Bil into Jill, so that it would not seem to be a boy's name; and the story about the mishap that befell the children was easily invented. We can, in fact, see the accident occur every month, if we will watch the moon; for as the moon wanes its spots successively disappear: "Jack falls down and Jill comes tumbling after."

Another venerable, if not a very dignified, personage met with in the pages of "Mother Goose" is "Tom, the Piper's Son." So long as Tom is presented to us only as a pig-stealer, there is nothing about him that is particularly attractive. But when we are told of his wonderful power as a musician, that he

-played with such skill

even the trees to dance, was simply the That those who heard him could never keep wind. It is this musician who still plays still,

although

-the only tune that he could play Was "Over the Hills and Far Away," we begin to get interested. We recall to mind another famous piper, the Pied Piper of Hamelin. He, too, played with marvelous skill, and was able to draw after him by means of his enchanting pipe whatever listening creatures he chose to attract, whether mice or children. He, too, was a villainous thief, and he stole away the little ones of the good people of Hamelin, disappearing with them forever in the Koppelberg hill.

There have been other musicians equally powerful. When the Greek Orpheus tuned his lyre, not only did the beasts of the forests come to listen, but even the rocks and the trees danced.

A very curious and very complete explanation has been found for this Grecian fable. The name Orpheus is the same word as the Hindoo arbhu or ribhu. The Ribhus, in Hindoo legend, were cunning artificers. They built the chariot of the god Indra. Numerous traits reveal their true character. They were originally simply the winds. In German and English fairy tales they appear as alben or elves, cunning and unseen workers of mischief, which, as we can see now, although we should hardly have guessed it, had we not the key furnished by their names, were at first simply the winds, like their relatives the Ribhus. The same key unlocks the mystery of the fable of Orpheus and the musicians of his class.

The original musician who moved

QUESTION DEPARTMENT

"Over the Hills and Far Away."

THE SOLAR DAY

Nine persons out of ten-yes, nine hundred and ninety-nine persons out of every thousand-if asked how long it takes the earth to turn once on its axis, would answer, twenty-four hours; and to the question, how many times does it turn on its axis in the course of the year, the answer would be, three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter times.

Both answers are wrong. It requires but twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes for the earth to make one complete turn, and it makes three hundred and sixtysix and a quarter turns during the year.

The error springs from a wrong idea of what is meant by a day. The day is not, as is commonly supposed, the time required by the earth to make one turn on its axis, but the interval between two successive passages of the sun across the meridian-that is to say, the time which elapses after the sun is seen exactly south at noon before it is again seen in that position.

Now, in consequence of the earth's revolution in its orbit, or path around the sun, the sun has the appearance of moving in the heavens very slowly toward the east. At noon to-morrow the sun will be a short distance to the east of the point in the heavens at which it is at noon to-day, so that when the earth has made one complete turn it will still have to turn four minutes longer before the sun can again be seen exactly south.

OF THE HOME UNIVERSITY LEAGUE

HE questions for December are answered in Vol. XIV. of the Encyclopædia Britannica. An unusually large proportion relate to persons, and this

fact will render them specially interest

December 2. What points of resemblance in character and career do Kosciusko and La Fayette present? 142, 201

December 3. What are the obligations of mathematicians to Laplace, Lagrange and Le

ing, as the current of popular inquiry gendre, probably the most illustrious triad of

is everywhere setting in that direction.

now.

contemporaries the world has ever seen in this realm of knowledge? 301, 207, 413

183

December 4. What is known of the Kurds, whose name has come into such wide notoriety 155 through the Armenian massacres?

December 1. Where are the finest laces made, and how does the machine-made product compare with hand-made laces?

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December 24. Which of the natural sciences owes to Linnæus its advance from a state of chaotic conjecture to the dignity of exhibiting accurate classification with exact nomenclature? 671

December 25. What points of accidental resemblance are observed on comparing Lamaism with Catholicism? 226

December 26. What were the fortunes of those German invaders who left on the people of Northern Italy an imprint sharply distinguishing them, even after the lapse of centuries, from the swarthy southern Italians descended, for the most part, from Rome's Asiatic and African slaves? 813

December 27. What place has been assigned to John Knox among those reformers who gave direction to the religious thought of their century? 130.

December 28. What facts and figures with reference to London's greatness serve to illustrate, in part, England's commercial and political system, the most stupendous with which history has to do? S18, 1019

December 29. What are the chief incidents in the life of Keats, whose poems, ignored upon first publication, have in our day been lifted by the consensus of critics to equal rank with those of Coleridge and Shelley?

22

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[See Special Announcement, Prize Essay Contest, page 702.]

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