graded in 1856 to the common level of benefices, one of the last canons being no less a person than Charles Kingsley. The misfortune of Middleham was that, except for Mr. Dean, there was no endowment. Still the historical interest should have saved it; and colleges of clergy being so exactly what are wanted for grappling with the irreligion of large populations, it is pitiful that the very idea of such places should be out of mind to-day; for there are ample means to endow them if plutocrats could only be persuaded that it is wiser to spend money on men than on things, even though libraries and organs may last a little longer than the ordinary human being. The visitor to Middleham will find few traces of Richard's foundation, for an Early Georgian dean, Luke Cotes by name, pulled down all the interior fittings of the church, which resembled those of the ordinary college chapel, and filled the building with the large square pews of the period. These have now yielded place to others in more modern taste, and as some reminder of the departed glories the singers sit in canopied stalls.

From an interesting collection of documents relating to the Collegiate Church of Middleham, made for the Camden Society (1847) by the Rev. William Atthill, Canon and Sub-dean, I quote a reference to another eighteenth-century dean, the Very Rev. Robert Boucher Nickolls, LL.D. (installed 1786), consisting of an entry by him in the parish register:

Burials, October 29th, 1792.

I enter under the head of burials as spiritually dead the names of

JOHN SADLER,

Clerk to Mr. John Breare, Attorney-at-law, of this place; and

CHRISTOPHER FELTON,

Clerk to Mr. Luke Yarker, Attorney-at-law, of this place; first, for irreverent behaviour in church a second time, after public reproof on a former occasion of the same sort; and, secondly, when mildly admonished by me not to repeat the same, they both made use of the most scandalous and insolent words concerning myself, for which I thought proper to pass a public censure upon them after sermon (though they were wilfully absent), in the face of the congregation; and enter the mention of the same in this book, that the names of those insolent young men may go down to posterity as void of all reverence to God and his ministers. Witness my hand,

Witness: ROGB DAWSON, Reg".

ROBT B. NICKOLLS, Dean.

Perhaps the pages of CORNHILL are a shorter cut to posterity than the Middleham register, or even the publications of the Camden Society.

URBANUS SYLVAN.

by the bugle-call, by the hurrah on the field. Life and death, love and religion, what did they mean? What are we, when all is said and done, but the toys of a blind fate?

There is but one thing sure in the uncertainty, he told himself, but one staff in the wilderness, one anchor in the turmoil-duty.

The damp-stained wall at his side was starred with memorials. He began to contemplate them, idly at first, then with an enkindling interest. Here was an old stone slab commemorating, in halfobliterated words, some son of a Dorset house who had died for the country in far Peninsular days. In the twentieth year of his age. A young existence, to be thus cut short! Yet, had he lived, and given life, his own sons would now be well-nigh forgotten. Under this was a black-marble tablet. The blood rushed to his face as he read, and then ebbed, leaving him cold:

TO THE MEMORY OF CAPTAIN HENRY ENGLISH, OF HER MAJESTY'S INDIAN STAFF CORPS, KILLED ON SERVICE IN THE PAMIRS. AGED 28.

Thus ran the sober inscription; followed the text, more triumphant than sorrowful:

He that loseth his life shall find it.

And then the words:

THIS TABLET WAS ERECTED BY HIS MOTHER.

Behind him, by just turning his head, he could see another memorial. A plate of flaming brass, this one; large, for it had to hold many names, and very new. It was scored in vermilion tribute to those yeomen-gentlemen and peasant-who, at the first breath of disaster, had hurried overseas from the peaceful district to uphold the mother country in a point of honour and had found quick honour themselves. In a little while these blood-red letters, too, would fade, but not so quickly as the memory of grief in the hearts of those who had sent their lads off with such tears, such acclamations. Bethune thought to himself, with a bitter smile, that there was not one of the churches dotted all over the wide English land where some such brand-new memorial had not been nailed this last year, and how, Sunday after Sunday, the eyes of the congregation would sweep past it, with ever-growing dulness of custom, until the record came to mean no more than the grey stones of the walls themselves. No less quickly than England, the moment of peril past, forgets those who rose to her call and fell for her name, does the thought of the brother, the comrade, the son, pass from the home circle!

hough it is with the defence of the individual that these notes concern themselves.

Anyone who would compare the defensive methods of fishes with those of terrestrial animals should first form some idea of the different physical conditions and the peculiar environment in which they pass their lives. These include the dim light, diffused only from above, the aids to ambush in the shape of gloomy rock-pools, parti-coloured ground, clouds of sand and curtains of seaweed, and the operation of tides, currents, and, in shallow water, sudden squalls, helpful or hindering according to the point of view. Then, as regards the fishes themselves, there are the gregarious and the solitary, the stationary and the migratory, those which burrow in the sand and those which hide among the rocks. Not one of these conditions, physical or biological, but has its direct influence on the animal's choice of defensive weapons when hard pressed.

Exposed as the class is, speaking generally, to the attacks of many and varied enemies, not all fishes have the same risks to run in life. The sharks and rays have obviously less to fear than the herring and the mackerel. The fishes which live on the bottom can clearly disregard the attacks of such marauding fowl as the gull and gannet, while even the cormorant and diver do not as a rule seek their prey far beneath the surface water. The typical grounddwellers of our seas, moreover, the flatfish, are so formed that, save when extremely small, they would in all probability choke any fowl so ill-advised as to try to swallow them whole. Yet these sand-dwelling flatfish have enemies of their own which the surface-dwellers can afford to overlook, and these are the rays, which dig them out of their burrows with their pointed snouts and snap them up in their sharp teeth before they have time to alight again. The only chance of safety for a plaice or dab thus dislodged would be to swim above its enemy until the latter tired of the chase, much as an educated old rook will sometimes avoid a falcon by soaring higher and higher above it in the blue sky, the hawk being unable to strike its enemy except from above.

The simplest equipment for defence that we know consists in some form of protective armour. Both in stern warfare and at play man has adopted such aids to safety, and the helmet of the fencer, the pad and glove of the cricketer, or the more complete investment of the American footballer, are but the modern travesty of the old armour worn by knights on the field or in the tourney. Among fishes such armour is not common. In the mammals we

by stone the great foundations planned by the brains of Lawrences, cemented by the blood of Nicholsons.

...

And yet, this Rosamond Gerardine, who had borne the name of English, could not be dismissed merely as one who, light-natured, had found it easy and profitable to forget. Sphinx, she had haunted his thoughts that Indian night as he had walked back from her palace, carrying with him her image, white and stately in the flash of her diamonds and the green fires of her emeralds . . . the great lady, who knew the value of her smiles and gave the largess but with condescension. Sphinx she was even more to him now, whether hurrying from her walk to receive him, wide-eyed in the firelight, with the bloom of a girl on her cheek and an exquisite gracious timidity; or wan in her black robes-widow, indeed, it seemed— drinking in with speechless tenderness of sorrow every memory of the lost friend, as if no Sir Arthur Gerardine had ever stepped between her and her beloved.

Was this attitude but a phase of a sick woman's fancy, to be dropped when the mood had passed? Was not, in truth, Lady Gerardine in this freakish humour as false to Sir Arthur, who had given her affluence and position, as she had been to him who had given her his love and faith? Deep down under his consciousness there was a little angry grudge against her that she should not have accompanied them this morning. Were she now sincere, she would have felt the same desire as he himself to pray where the walls heralded Harry English's name. Bethune did not know, so little do even the most straightforward know themselves, that had she knelt by his side to-day it would have been perilously sweet to him that had her footsteps gone with his along the frosted roads between the brown hedges, that way, to him, would have remained in fragrance as with a memory of flowers.

'Didn't you think,' asked Baby, that Mr. Smith-his name is Algernon Vandeleur Smith, he's the curate didn't you think his eyes would drop out of his head? They make me feel quite ill!' They were walking down the flagged churchyard path, and Baby was stamping her small cold feet. She was talking in a high irate voice, regardless of hearers. 'Did you ever listen to such a sermon ?

She opened her bright eyes very wide and made a fish-like mouth in imitation of the Reverend Algernon: And now, brethren, shortly, briefly, and in a few words, not wishing to detain you longer, I will endeavour to set before you with conciseness and

r use in the water only under natural conditions. No one is going make me believe either that Nature originally designed the eever to aim its stab out of water, or that inherited experience of andling by man has been sufficiently cumulative for the fish to equire any such instinct in self-defence. The actual venom-sac, ke that of snakes, though absent in the weever, occurs in a deadly ttle fish found in Sydney Harbour, and there known as the fortescue.' It is difficult to conceive of either the fortescue or veever as having many natural enemies, but the latter, at any rate, ufficiently resembles the dragonet and bullhead, both of them avourite articles of food with some larger fishes, to benefit coniderably by its defensive weapons.

After all, however, the simplest form of self-defence is retreat. Protective armour is very well as far as it goes. Bluff, as the Americans call the art of imposing on the enemy's credulity, is at imes even better. But best of all for the weaker and defence, after all, belongs to the weaker—is a judicious and timely retreat— the sooner the better:

He who fights and runs away
Lives to fight another day;

but he who runs away first, without stopping to strike a blow, has a still better chance for the future. Such is the method adopted with some success by the launce and sand-eel, the rabbits of the sea, which burrow in the sand with great expedition on the approach of danger. Even when the fisherman is hungry for the best bait that swims, it takes a strong fork and a quick hand to dislodge these little cave-dwellers from their lair. I doubt whether any of the larger fishes which prey on the sand-eels when they catch them would be able to dig fast enough, the rays alone, which hunt, as a matter of fact, after larger fish, having shovel-shaped snouts sufficiently pointed for the purpose. The flatfish also find safety in the sand, though they rarely submerge their head, trusting to their protective colouring, about which something has yet to be said, to dupe their watchful enemies.

There is the flight that seeks safety in distance from the pursuer, and there is the instinct that prompts the small boy, when threatened by a bully, to run for protection to a bigger fellow. This habit, which I do not remember to have noticed in either birds or reptiles, is seen in the pilot-fish, which cowers beside the shark, and in the little Fierasfer, which swims secure under the protecting bell of a medusa, not by any means as a noxious parasite, but rather as a