ANDROCLES

A SLAVE named Androcles once escaped from his master and fled to the forest. As he was wandering about there he came upon a Lion lying down moaning and groaning. At first he turned to flee, but finding that the Lion did not pursue him, he turned back and went up to him. As he came near, the Lion put out his paw, which was all swollen and bleeding, and Androcles found that a huge thorn had got into it, and was causing all the pain. He pulled out the thorn and bound up the paw of the Lion, who was soon able to rise and lick the hand of Androcles like a dog. Then the Lion took Androcles to his cave, and every day used to bring him meat from which to live. But shortly afterwards both Androcles and the Lion were captured, and the Slave was sentenced to be thrown to the Lion, after the latter had been kept without food for several days. The Emperor and all his Court came to see the spectacle, and Androcles was led out into the middle of the arena. Soon the Lion was let loose from his den, and rushed bounding and roaring towards his victim. But as soon as he came near to Androcles he recognized his friend, and fawned upon him, and licked his hands like a friendly dog. The Emperor, surprised at this, summoned Androcles to him, who told him the whole story. Whereupon the Slave was pardoned and freed, and the Lion let loose to his native forest.

Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.

THE BALD MAN AND THE FLY

THERE was once a Bald Man who sat down after work on a hot summer's day. A Fly came up and kept buzzing about his bald pate, and stinging him from time to time. The Man aimed a blow at his little enemy, but—whack — his palm came on his head instead; again the Fly tormented him, but this time the Man was wiser and said:

"You will only injure yourself if you take notice of despicable enemies."

THE FOX AND THE MASK

A Fox had by some means got into the store-room of a theater. Suddenly he observed a face glaring down on him, and began to be very frightened; but looking more closely he found it was only a Mask, such as actors use to put over their faces. "Ah," said the Fox, "you look very fine; it is a pity you have not got any brains."

Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth.

THE JAY AND THE PEACOCK

A JAY venturing into a yard where Peacocks used to walk, found there a number of feathers which had fallen from the Peacocks when they were moulting. He tied them all to his tail and strutted down towards the Peacocks. When he came near them they soon discovered the cheat, and striding up to him pecked at him and plucked away his borrowed plumes. So the Jay could do no better than go back to the other Jays, who had watched his behavior from a distance; but they were equally annoyed with him, and told him:

"It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds."

THE TWO CRABS

ONE fine day two Crabs came out from their home to take a stroll on the sand. "Child," said the mother, "you are walking very ungracefully; you should accustom yourself to walking straight forward without twisting from side to side."

"Pray, mother," said the young one, "do but set the example yourself, and I will follow you."

Example is the best precept.

JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ

JEAN LOUIS RUDOLPHE AGASSIZ. Born in Motier, near Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland, May 28, 1807; was distinguished in early youth and manhood for his natural history studies. When forty years old, he was appointed Professor of Geology and Zoology in Harvard University, where he laid the foundation of the Museum of Natural History. He had a boundless enthusiasm in his calling, which he imparted to others. "The Structure of Animal Life," "Principles of Zoology," and "Scientific Results of a Journey in Brazil" were but a portion of his writings in English. Dying at Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 14, 1873, his grave is shadowed by pines sent from Switzerland, and is marked by a boulder from the Aar glacier. (By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, the publishers.)

(From "GEOLOGICAL SKETCHES")

MOUNTAINS AND THEIR ORIGIN

A CHAPTER on mountains will not be an inappropriate introduction to that part of the world's history on which we are now entering, when the great inequalities of the earth's surface began to make their appearance; and before giving any special account of the geological succession in Europe, I will say something of the formation of mountains in general, and of the men whose investigations first gave us the clue to the intricacies of their structure. It has been the work of the nineteenth century to decipher the history of the mountains, to smooth out these wrinkles in the crust of the earth, to show that there was a time when they did not exist, to decide at least comparatively upon their age, and to detect the forces which have produced them.

But while I speak of the reconstructive labors of the geologist with so much confidence, because to my mind they reveal an intelligible coherence in the whole physical history of the world, yet I am well aware that there are many and wide gaps in our knowledge to be filled up. All the attempts to represent the appearance of the earth in past periods by means of geological maps are, of course, but approximations of the truth, and will

compare with those of future times when the phenomena are better understood, much as our present geographical maps, the result of repeated surveys and of the most accurate measurements, compare with those of the ancients.

Homer's world was a flat expanse, surrounded by ocean, of which Greece was the center. Asia Minor, the Egean Islands, Egypt, part of Italy and Sicily, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea filled out and completed his map.

Hecatæus, the Greek historian and geographer, who lived more than five hundred years before Christ, had not enlarged it much. He was, to be sure, a voyager on the Mediterranean, and had an idea of the extent of Italy. Acquaintance with Phoenician merchants also had enlarged his knowledge of the world; Sardinia, Corsica, and Spain were known to him, and he was familiar with the Black and Red Seas; though an indentation on his map in the neighborhood of the Caspian would seem to indicate that he was aware of the existence of this sea also, it is not otherwise marked.

Herodotus makes a considerable advance beyond his predecessors. The Caspian Sea has a place on his map; Asia is sketched out, including the Persian Gulf, with the large rivers pouring into it; and the course of the Ganges is traced, though he makes it flow east and empty into the Pacific, instead of turning southward and emptying into the Indian Ocean.

Eratosthenes, two centuries before Christ, is the first geographer who makes some attempt to determine the trend to the land and water, presenting a suggestion that the earth is broader in one direction than in the other. In his map he adds also the geographical results derived from the expeditions of Alexander the Great.

Ptolemy, who flourished in Alexandria in the reign of Hadrian, is the next geographer of eminence, and he shows us something of Africa; for, in his time, the Phoenicians, in their commercial expeditions, had sailed far to the south, had reached the termination of Africa, with ocean lying all around it, and had seen the sun to the north of them. This last assertion, however, Ptolemy does not credit, and he is as skeptical of the open ocean surrounding the extremity of Africa as modern geographers and explorers have been of the existence of Kane's open Arctic Sea.

He believes that what the Phoenician traders took to be the broad ocean must be part of an inland sea, corresponding to the Mediterranean, with which he was so familiar. His map includes also England, Ireland, and Scotland; and his Ultima Thule is, no doubt, the Hebrides of our days.

Our present notions of the past periods of the world's history probably bear about the same relation to the truth that these ancient geographical maps bear to the modern ones. But this should not discourage us, for, after all, those maps were in the main true as far as they went; and as the ancient geographers were laying the foundation for all our modern knowledge of the present conformation of the globe, so are the geologists of the nineteenth century preparing the ground for future investigators, whose work will be as far in advance of theirs as are the delineations of Carl Ritter, the great master of physical geography in our age, in advance of the map drawn by the old Alexandrian geographer. We shall have our geological explorers and discoverers in the lands and seas of past times, as we have had in those of the present, our Columbuses, our Captain Cooks, our Livingstones in geology, as we have had in geography. There are undiscovered continents and rivers and inland seas in the past world to exercise the ingenuity, courage, and perseverance of men, after they shall have solved all the problems, sounded all the depths, and scaled all the heights of the present surface of the earth.

What has been done thus far is chiefly to classify the inequalities of the earth's surface, and to detect the different causes which have produced them. Foldings of the earth's crust, low hills, extensive plains, mountain-chains, and narrow valleys, broad table-lands and wide valleys, local chimneys or volcanoes, river beds, lake basins, inland seas, such are some of the phenomena which, disconnected as they seem at first glance, have nevertheless been brought under certain principles, and explained according to definite physical laws.

Formerly men looked upon the earth as a unit in time, as the result of one creative act, with all its outlines established from the beginning. It has been the work of modern science to show that its inequalities are not contemporaneous or simultaneous, but successive, including a law of growth, that heat and cold, and