English expedition.

They of course have the first right; we shall have to be content with what they leave us. In February-March, 1912, the Fram will return to fetch us. We shall first call at Lyttelton, New Zealand, in order to telegraph, and then proceed to San Francisco to continue the work thus interrupted, and, as I hope, with an equipment adequate for an expedition of the kind.

Amundsen's position was therefore as follows:-After Cook's and Peary's return the interest for his North Polar expedition ceased; the support he had been promised from America, his last hope, was withdrawn, and the Norwegian Parliament refused to give him the additional grant required. No other resources were left. If nothing were done, the money of his supporters would be wasted. He had therefore either to give up the whole undertaking, on the preparation of which he had spent some years of his life, or to do something intended to rouse the interest of the public at large in order to put himself in a position to raise the money still wanting. He chose the latter course, and, fearing that we might advise him not to go to the Antarctic, and considering it his duty to take the responsibility on himself alone, he decided not to tell any of us who had assisted him with the preparations for the North Polar expedition about his new decision. And in this he was perhaps right. As for myself, I must admit that if I had known of his plan beforehand I might possibly have warned him against going South, for fear that it would be too hard a strain upon a man first to go on a trying South Polar expedition and then straight away to a drift voyage across the North Polar Basin calculated to last at least five or six years. I have never heard of any plan approaching it, and although my opinion is that Amundsen, if anybody, is the very man to carry out such a gigantic

task, I should not have cared to have taken the responsibility of encouraging him.

As regards the question whether Amundsen had a right to enter into a field of research which had already been the territory of the exploration of others, I am certain that the President of the Royal Geographical Society expressed the feeling of the British nation when he said that no explorer obtains any vested right merely by exploration, and that all foreign competition on the Antarctic continent should be welcomed wherever it appeared. This is in full accordance with the canon of the scientific world universally recognized in all scientific research.

sue.

Our aim is to increase our knowledge, and the object of geographical expeditions such as these is the exploration of the still unknown parts of our globe. If one expedition penetrates into an unknown region, it is well; if two penetrate into it, it is still better. To us the individuals, or whoever may come first, are only of passing interest; the main thing is to obtain as full. and reliable information as possible about the unknown regions.

It must also be remembered that the bases of operations of Scott and Amundsen lie far apart, there being about the same distance between them as between Spitzbergen and Franz Joseph Land. I am certain that not even the keenest monopolist would venture to suggest that it would be unfair to go to Franz Joseph Land on an expedition in quest of the North Pole, because another expedition with the same object in view was already on its way to Spitzbergen.

It is beyond doubt that such an excellent explorer as Captain Scott, with his carefully equipped expedition, will return with results of very high scientific value; but, on the other hand, Captain Amundsen, by journeying through another region, will most cer

The French Government will have to walk very delicately if they mean to avoid an expensive, long, and harassing campaign in Morocco on the one hand, and new diplomatic worries in Europe on the other. The news from Fez is slender and exasperatingly contradictory. It might be reasonably said that there is no need for France to send an expedition to Fez to protect her nationals; yet it cannot be proved that her nationals are not in want of protection. They may or may not be. All that is certain is that the Sultan, Mulai Hafid, has asked for French help and that the French Government have sent a flying column. This act is in itself perfectly defensible and, we think, in the circumstances necessary. By the Act of Algeciras France and Spain were recognized as having special interests in Morocco, and, by the permission to police certain seaboard towns, were practically appointed the custodians of public order in Morocco on behalf of Europe. The Sultan is, no doubt, a very bad Sultan, but he is not many degrees worse than any other possible Sultan; and if he were deposed there would be temporary chaos at Fez, very likely a massacre of his hated dependents, and Morocco generally would fall into a worse state than ever. It is, therefore, an axiom of French policy to support the reigning Sultan. We cannot see any excuse for the frequent misunderstanding of this policy, which is simple and obvious. There is no question of interfering with and manipulating unnecessarily Moorish affairs. When Abdul-Aziz was Sultan, he had French support; when he was deposed by the clear will of his people, French support was transferred to the new Sultan, his brother, Mulai Hafid. If France and Spain did not use the reigning Sultan

as the instrument of such law and order as can be maintained in Morocco, Germany would be justified in saying that they were not good custodians on behalf of Europe; that the Algeciras Act was a failure and that it must be reversed. France, in brief, is faced by a most difficult dilemma. She must do something, but she must not do too much; she must show that she is not an indifferent custodian, yet she must not provoke German jealousy or let herself be drawn by half-unconscious stages into a profitless and hazardous military adventure. It is quite impossible to define the limits of legitimate action in such a difficult case. France must be guided by circumstances, but we hope sincerely for her sake that she will think twice, and even thrice, before committing herself to a campaign in Morocco of which no one could foresee the end.

The military facts at present are these. The Sultan is loosely besieged by rebellious tribes at Fez, where he has not enough ammunition to hold out long if the siege should be seriously pressed. Nor can he reckon on the loyalty of his garrison. Colonel Mangin, of the French Military Mission at Fez, no doubt gives the Sultan excellent advice, but it is not always accepted. Major Brémond, who, with his mahalla, had been posted several miles north of Fez, has returned to Fez without getting the food supplies from Alcazar which he had been awaiting. This is the situation which France is trying to turn in favor of the Sultan. A flying column of some thousands of men under Colonel Brulard, has been despatched from the coast towards Fez, and this column will be followed by a harka of natives, which may, or may not, be of some use, probably not. The lines of com

munication between Rabat and Fez will be kept open by the French-this alone will require a considerable number of troops-and there will, of course, always be a force available on the Algerian frontier, though the French are under a self-denying ordinance not to advance from this quarter unless it is absolutely necessary to do so.

On the whole, we think the danger of France getting at loggerheads again with Germany about Morocco is less than the danger of becoming involved by insensible stages in a large military undertaking. which France acts in Morocco is not derived solely from the Act of Algeciras. There was also the FrancoGerman arrangement of September, 1909, by which Germany abandoned her pre-Algeciras policy of sticking pins into France, and frankly admitted that it was for the good of Europe that France should take the chief part in supervising Morocco. We fancy that Germany has no desire to return to the pre-Algeciras policy. She found that it did not serve the purpose she had imagined; that it brought her an inconvenient amount of unpopularity in Europe, and that it would, therefore, be wise to drop it. We may even surmise that her present policy is the exact reverse. She knows that a France fixing all her attention on affairs in Morocco would be a quiet, uncritical France, without the leisure or the heart to watch the doings of her neighbors very closely. It was characteristic of Bismarck to purchase immunity from foreign criticism for some of his plans by marked conciliation in respect of other plans where the German will might have been expected to clash with foreign ambitions. Thus in 1878 he encouraged France to occupy herself with Tunis, and later he was anxious that Great Britain should be The Spectator.

The sanction under

allowed to plunge her hands deeply into Egyptian affairs.

Remembering those facts, we hazard the suggestion that Germany having abandoned her old policy has done so definitely. If this be so, France should be particularly careful not to rush excitedly along a path which is made attractively easy for her. "Peaceful penetration" is a comforting phrase. But it is to be remembered that the most peaceful of penetrators often have to be protected by armed force. Nor would it be wise to back the Sultan through thick and thin, however great his foolishness or his need of aid. To help him to pull his chestnuts out of the fire at a critical moment is one thing, but to make his policy deliberately identical with French policy is quite another. No Sultan who depends habitually on foreign support can be expected to sit securely on the throne of Morocco, so that a thick-andthin support of Mulai Hafid would mean keeping an army of occupation indefinitely in the country. Morocco. again, is a difficult field for military operations, and if a jehad were preached against the foreigner tens of thousands of Frenchmen would soon be engaged in a war of extremely doubtful prospect. Such a campaign

would react most injuriously on the condition of the French army at home, for a modern Continental army is a delicate machine easily thrown out of gear by the drain of a foreign expedition. So far, as we have said, France has done nothing but what her obligations to her own people and to Europe required her to do, but at any moment

by a serious French reverse, for example-she might be brought face to face with the question how much farther she is to go, and then will be the occasion for prudence and restraint.

A country vicar in rearranging his greenhouse found, in the space between two boxes, hundreds and almost thousands of neat round snippets of rose leaves arranged in a beautiful order that he seemed to regard as fortuitous, for he sent them to someone who might know about them, asking whether this was the work of mice. Only once, and that many years ago, the writer saw the leaf-cutting bee at work snipping out these neat ellipses and circles. Every year and in almost every garden that has a rose tree, the snippets vanish while we are not looking, and the holes remain in earnest of the insect's industry. Once again, the bee was seen flying across the garden with the leaf coin held between her legs. She was traced to a neighboring wall, into a hole of which she quickly dragged her treasure. All this and more could be seen on almost any summer afternoon by anyone who went into the garden with the same determination to see higher beings that he has to see the flowers. In this magnum opus of the bee, exhumed by our country vicar, we can see the exact respective use of the elliptical and the circular bits of leaf, and perhaps see, as former observers have persuaded themselves they did, why the bee chooses always leaves that have notched edges.

To a Surrey garden there comes every year a bee that nests in a hole in a larch post. It brings from a pine wood bits of resin which it masses in the sun on the top of its post. When the sun has hardened it, softened it, mellowed it, or otherwise exactly fitted it to the bee's needs, it takes it into the hole. Then there is the insect described by White in these words:-"It is very pleasant to see with what address it strips off the pubes, running

from the top to the bottom of a branch (of the Garden Campion) and shaving it bare with the dexterity of a hoop shaver; when it has got a vast bundle, almost as large as itself, it flies away, holding it secure between its chin and forelegs." Literature and life abound with such scraps of inevitable observation, but England has not bred an investigator who will give to the world a true and sympathetic account of our wilder insects at home. Perhaps it needs more humbleness of mind than we are commonly capable of. The picture arises of a man down on his knees in the garden watching for something to happen in the burrow of a mole cricket. He is more apt to wonder what he looks like than to look at things from the mole cricket's point of view, and then he is not likely to stay down long enough to see much of importance. He will take the insect indoors and dissect it under the microscope, and tell you all about it in that way.

Two books just published by the Librarie Ch. Delagrave, "La Vie des Insectes" and "Mœurs des Insectes," contain a very rich selection from the works of that prince of observers, M. J. H. Fabre. Here is a monument of thorough-going, ungrudging industry, conferring its own greatness on its subject, however small the world may count it. The naturalist pays the truest tribute to the instinct or skill of the insect by matching his own reason and resources against them, and holding up the result to the laughter of the reader.

For the purposes of his classic observation on the way in which the Cerceris paralyzes her prey, he needed a few beetles of one particular species preyed upon by that wasp. He says:"Vine fields of Lucerne, corn fields,