there are generally plenty, nor have the dogs found or chased one. I can't think what has come of them all!" I could have told him, but I didn't.

M. G. WATKINS.

From Nature.

THE FLIGHT OF GULLS IN THE WAKE OF

STEAMERS.

Many persons have remarked the extraordinary power displayed by gulls of keeping pace with a steamer without any motion of their wings. A few days ago, I had a good opportunity of observing this during a voyage from Alexandria to Marseilles.

When the wind was blowing at right angles to the course of the vessel, having first gained some slight elevation, the gulls would glide downwards with expanded wings, making, during the descent, rapid progress in the same direction as the steamer. When quite near the water they would suddenly turn and face the wind, at the same time giving their bodies an upward incline, and the wind would lift tuem to their former elevation, after which the process would begin again. A wind blowing horizontally has the power of lifting, only because each stratum, so to speak, of air moves more rapidly than the stratum immediately below it. Consequently, as the bird rises, it has the inertia due to the fact that it has just emerged from the slower current below. Thus it may be compared to a kite, the inertia taking the place of the string. When gulls progress in this way, at right angles to the wind, the vessel does not in any way assist them, and, occasionally, when they are not following a steamer they may be seen employing the same method.

With a head-wind they advance with even greater ease. To understand how this is possible, some investigation of the air-currents behind the ship's stern

is necessary. If small pieces of paper are thrown overboard when a strong head-wind is blowing, they are seized by a tremendous down-draught, but, some few yards astern, they suddenly dart up again. In fact, as the vessel moves onward, the air rushes down to fill the vacuum, then rebounds off the surface of the sea, and forms an upcurrent. Placing himself in this upcurrent, the gull is lifted as if he were no heavier than a scrap of paper, then he glides downward and onward. But as the vessel moves on, the up-current advances, or, strictly speaking, point at which the up-current formed. At the end of his descent the gull finds himself in this, is again lifted, and the process is repeated.

e

is

When the wind was not a due headwind, but struck the vessel at a slight angle, now and then a gull would be seen apparently hovering motionless over the stern, of course really gliding onward with the vessel. Though I cannot speak with confidence of the explanation of this, the most wonderful of the methods employed, I wish to put forward what seems the probable explanation. The wind striking against the side of the vessel is deflected upwards, and it is this up-current which buoys up the gull as he floats over the stern. Though it may appear that his progress is perfectly uniform. I think it will be found that in advancing he descends slightly, that he often loses ground for a time, and that while losing ground he ascends. Thus the method in this case is really the same as in that last described. Unfortunately, I was not able to prove the existence of this up-current about twenty feet above the stern of the vessel. But there is good evidence of it in the fact that the gull remains suspended there without a motion of his wings. Without an up-current this would be an impossibility. It is to be hoped that good observers will give their attention to these very interesting phenomena.

F. W. HEADLEY.

of treasure and of gain,

Now condemned to wander ever, evermore to dip and lave

Black-stained sins, black deeds of old time,

in the crystal-crested wave.

Say, ye wraiths of Viking rovers, grim and dreaded buccaneers,

Whose vindictive quest of white sails still across mid-ocean steers, Tracking wreck and bringing wreckagesay, in mystic demon form,

Do ye plan and tread, commanding, every footprint of the storm?

never smiled in her father's face, Pricks through my heart while I walk apart where shadows brood in his sleeping-place.

Why would you give me that must live for weary years, to fade like dew, The gift to know earth's joy and woe, but not to go to the grave with you? Ma gilli mar, your way lies far by never a star that might light my feet, Yet had but I the gift to die, it's the same night that we two would meet.

NORA HOPPER.

IN KEDAR'S TENTS.1

the cause of Queen Christina, and very

SOWERS." CHAPTER VII.

IN A MOORISH GARDEN. "When love is not a blasphemy, it is a religion." There is, perhaps, a subtle significance in the fact that the greatest, the cruelest, the most barbarous civil war of modern days, if not of all time, has owed its outbreak and its long continuance to the influence of a woman. When Ferdinand VII. of Spain died in 1833, after a reign broken and disturbed by the passage of that human cyclone, Napoleon the Great, he bequeathed his kingdom, in defiance of the Salic Law, to his daughter Isabella. Ferdinand's brother Carlos, however, claimed the throne, under the very just contention that the Salic Law, by which women were excluded from the heritage of the crown, had never been legally abrogated.

This was the spark that fell in a tinder made up of ambition, unscrupulous. ness, cruelty, bloodthirstiness, selfseeking, and jealousy-the morale, in a word, of the Spain of sixty years ago. Some sided with the Queen Regent Christina and rallied round the childqueen, because they saw that that way lay glory and promotion. Others flocked to the standard of Don Carlos, because they were poor and of no influ. ence at court. The Church, as a whole, raised its whispering voice for the Pretender; for the rest, patriotism nowhere, and ambition on every side. "For five years we have fought the Carlists, hunger, privation, politicians at Madrid! And the holy saints only know which has been the worst enemy," said General Vincente to Conyngham, when explaining above related details.

was

and the

the

And, indeed, the story of this war reads like a romance, for there came from neutral countries foreign legions, as in the olden days. From England

an army of ten thousand mercenaries landed in Spain prepared to fight for

1 Copyright, 1896, by Henry Seton Merriman.

services at the sum of thirteen pence a diem. After all, the value of a man's life is but the price of his daily hire.

"We did not pay them much," said General Vincente, with a deprecating little smile, "but they did not fight much. Their pay was generally in arrears, and they were usually in the rear as well. What will you, my dear Conyngham; you are a commercial people, you keep good soldiers in the shop window, and when a buyer comes you serve him with second-class goods from behind the counter."

He beamed on Conyngham with a pleasant air of benign connivance in a very legitimate commercial transaction.

This is no time or place to go into the history of the English legion in Spain, which, indeed, had quitted that country before Conyngham landed there, horrified by the barbarities of a cruel war, where prisoners received no quarter, and the soldiers on either side were left without pay or rations. In a halfhearted manner England went to the assistance of the queen regent of Spain, and one error in statesmanship led to many. It is always a mistake to strike gently.

"owes

"This country," said General Vincente, in his suavest manner, much to yours, my dear Conyngham; but it would have been better for us both had we owed you a little more.”

During the five years prior to Conyngham's arrival at Ronda the war had raged with unabated fury, swaying from the West to East Coast, as for

tune smiled or frowned on the Carlist

cause. At one time it almost appeared certain that the Christina forces were unable to stem the rising tide, which bade fair to spread over all Spain, so unfortunate were their generals, so futile the best endeavors of the bravest and most patient soldiers. General Vincente was not alone in his convic

tion that had the gallant Carlist leader Zumalacarreguy lived, he might have carried all before him. But this great leader at the height of his fame, beloved by all his soldiers, worshipped by

"Do all your countrymen take life thus gaily?" she asked Conyngham one day. "Surely it is a more serious affair than you think it."

Among the many leaders who had attempted in vain to overcome by skill and patriotism the thousand difficulties placed in their way by successive, unstable, insincere ministers of war, General Vincente occupied an honored place. This mild-mannered tactician enjoyed the enviable reputation of being alike inconquerable and incorruptible. His smiling presence on the battlefield was in itself worth half-adozen battalions, while at Madrid the dishonest politicians, who through these years of Spain's great trial systematically bartered their honor for immediate gain, dreaded and respected him.

During the days that followed his arrival at Ronda and release from the prison there, Frederick Conyngham learnt much from his host and little of him, for General Vincente had that in him without which no leader, no great man in any walk of life, can well dispense with an unsoundable depth.

Conyngham learnt also that the human heart is capable of rising at one bound above difficulties of race or custom, creed and spoken language. He walked with Estella in that quiet garden between high walls on the trim Moorish paths, and often the murmur of the running water, which ever graced the Moslem palaces, was the only break upon their silence; for this thing had come into the Englishman's life suddenly, leaving him dazed and uncertain. Estella, on the other hand, had a quiet savoir-faire that sat strangely on her young face. She was only nineteen, and yet had a certain air of authority, handed down to her from

"I have never found it very serious, señorita," he answered. "There is usually a smile in human affairs if one takes the trouble to look for it."

"Have you always found it so?"

He did not answer at once, pausing to lift the branch of a mimosa-tree that hung in yellow profusion across the pathway.

"Yes, señorita, I think so," he answered at length slowly. There was a sense of eternal restfulness in this old Moorish garden, which acted as a brake on the thoughts, and made conversation halt and drag in an Oriental way that Europeans rarely understand. "And yet you say you remember your father's death?"

"He made a joke to the doctor, señorita, and was not afraid." Estella smiled in a queer way, and then looked grave again.

"And you have always been poor, you say sometimes almost starving?" "Yes; always poor, deadly poor, señorita," answered Conyngham with a gay laugh. "And since I have been on my own resources frequently, well

very hungry! The appetite has been large and the resources have been small. But when I get into the Spanish army, they will, no doubt, make me a general, and all will be well."

He laughed again and slipped his hand into his jacket pocket.

"See here," he said; "your father's recommendation to General Espartero in a confidential letter."

But the envelope he produced was that pink one, which the man called Larralde had given him at Algeciras.

"No; it is not that," he said, searching in another pocket. "Ah! here it is, addressed to General Espartero, Duke of Vittoria."

He showed her the superscription, which she read with a little inclination of the head, as if in salutation of the great name written there, for the