and manned by an exhausted crew, was driven a wreck upon the ironbound coast. Around the Faroe Isles, the Orkneys, and the islands off the western shores of Scotland were strewn the timbers of the once mighty galleons of Spain. Their rich cargoes had perished in the waves; most of the sailors had met with a watery grave; whilst the few who had struggled to the shore were murdered in cold blood by the inhabitants, who dared not give them refuge. A small portion of the Armada had worked its way farther south; but the western coast of Ireland failed to prove itself a whit more kind than the sister kingdom. From the bays of Donegal to Bantry there was the same story of wreck, plunder, and wholesale slaughter. Had the Spaniards been victorious, the native Irish would gladly have welcomed them on their island; but fugitive and defeated, they showed them scant mercy, and handed them over to the English, who gave them no quarter. "The Irish," writes Sir George Carew, "were very doubtful before the victory was known to be her Majesty's; but when they saw the great distress and weakness that the enemy was in, they did not only put as many as they could to the sword, but were ready with all their forces to attend the deputy in any service. The ancient love between Ireland and Spain is broken." Orders had been issued by Sir Richard Bingham, the Governor of Connaught, that all Spanish seamen driven on shore should be brought to Galway, and scouts were despatched to explore the coast-line to carry out these instructions. Day after day haggard and famished Spaniards were marched into Galway to be hanged or shot, whilst the same fate awaited their fellows in the counties of Sligo, Mayo, Clare, and Kerry. As the towering hull of a crippled galleon was seen dashed against the rocks which form the fringe of that terrible western coast, the savage Irish leaped down upon the beach, clubbed the defenceless crew, and stole all that they could lay their greedy hands upon.

From the Irish State Papers we learn how merciless was the punishment dealt out to the unhappy Spaniard who found himself a castaway upon the shores of the Emerald Isle-shipwreck and slaughter are almost in every despatch forwarded to London at this time. Let us cull a few extracts.

"The miseries they sustained upon this coast," writes Sir George Carew," are to be pitied in any but Spaniards. Of those who came to the land by swimming, or enforced thereto by famine, very near 3,000 were slain, besides about 2,000 drowned between Lough Foyle and the Dingle." "That intelligence sent me from my brother George," writes Bingham to the Lord Deputy,2 "that the 700 Spaniards in State Papers, Ireland, Sept. 18, 1588. Ibid. Sept. 21, 1588.

Ulster were despatched; and this I dare assure your Lordship now, that in some fifteen or sixteen ships cast away on the coast of this province, which I can in mine own knowledge say to be so many, there hath perished at the least some 6,000 or 7,000 men, of which there have been put to the sword, first and last, by my brother George, and in Mayo, Thomond, and Galway, and executed, one way and another, about 700 or 800 or upwards." "At my late being at Sligo," writes Sir Geoffrey Fenton to Burghley, "I found both by view of eye and credible report that the number of ships and men perished upon these coasts was more than was advertised thither by the Lord Deputy and Council, for I numbered in one strand of less than five miles in length eleven hundred dead corpses of men which the sea had driven upon the shore since the time of the advertisement. The country people told me the like was in other places, though not of like number." The Lord Deputy made a journey from Dublin to the west coast, and he thus communicates his impressions to the Council 2:-" As I passed from Sligo," he writes, "having then gone 120 miles, I held on towards Bundroys, and so to Ballyshannon, the uttermost part of Connaught that way; and riding still along the sea-coast, I went to see the bay where some of those ships were wrecked, and where, as I heard, lay not long before twelve or thirteen hundred of the dead bodies. I rode along upon that strand near two miles (but left behind me a long mile and more), and then turned off from that shore; in both which places they said that had seen it there lay a great store of the timber of wrecked ships as was in that place which myself had viewed, being in mine opinion (having small skill or judgment therein) more than would have built five of the greatest ships that ever I saw, besides mighty great boats' cables, and other cordage answerable thereunto, and some such masts for bigness and length as, in mine own judgment, I never saw any two that could make the like." Well might the Lord Deputy exclaim, "God hath fought by shipwrecks, savages, and famine for her Majesty against the proud Spaniards !" Well might Medina Sidonia have warned his men to avoid Ireland, "for fear of the harm that may happen unto you upon that coast!"

Of the mighty fleet that had sailed forth from Lisbon, blessed by priest and prelate, to lay England low in the dust, and assert the supremacy of the Catholic faith, "only fifty-six ships escaped back to Spain, and they were so shaken by the English bullets and severe storms that some of them sank in the havens." Such was the end of 'State Papers, Ireland, Oct. 28, 1588. 2 Ibid. Dec. 31, 1588.

* Ibid. Exam. of John Brown, mariner, Feb. 11, 1588.

the Invincible Armada, the first and only attempt, since the Conquest, to carry out the design, often threatened, and as often abandoned, of the invasion of England. Three hundred years have passed since Spanish bones lay whitening upon the western shore of Ireland, and since the dangerous northern seas played havoc with Spanish galleons and galleasses; yet more than once plans for the subjection of our island have been brought forward by the foreigner, to the no little consternation of the timorous within our midst. At one time we dreaded a Dutch invasion, at another a French invasion; whilst there are some who, even at the present day, fear that our unprotected east coast may fall a prey to the greed of aggressive but impoverished Germany. Yet all such dismal forebodings have never been, and we are sure never will be, realised. Whoever be the enemy who builds his fleet and collects his forces for the conquest of England, he will find that history repeats itself with a terrible monotony; for assuredly the same punishment, varied perhaps in its details, but not the less deterrent and complete, will be dealt out to him as, in the days of Howard and of Drake, was dealt out to the Spaniard.

ALEX. CHARLES EWALD.

87

A

SOME ANIMAL BIOGRAPHIES

AND THEIR LESSONS.

PART I.

LLUSION has already been made in these pages to that most fundamental proposition of modern biology which maintains. that "Community in development reveals community of descent." It has also been shown at length, that, in the eyes of modern naturalists, the development of an animal or plant is regarded as affording a clue to the manner of its evolution or descent from pre-existing forms. The formation of a living being to-day, in other words, repeats for us the formation of its race and species in time past. So that, once again to quote Darwin's words, "We can understand how it is that, in the eyes of most naturalists, the structure of the embryo is even more important for classification than that of the adult." Or, again, "embryology (or development) rises greatly in interest, when we look at the embryo as a picture, more or less obscured, of the progenitor, either in its adult or larval state, of all the members of the same great class." Second to none in interest, in the eyes of modern biologists, are the phenomena presented to them in the formation of the animal or the plant frame. In former years, the mystery of development was great indeed. There could be offered in the past decade of biology no reason-appealing sufficiently to the rational intellect as explanatory of the events in question-why a frog in its development should appear first as a gill-breathing fish, later on as a tailed newt-like creature, and ultimately as a tailless lung-breathing amphibian. Nor could natural historians in the past venture to account in more lucid fashion for the curious changes which a butterfly or beetle undergoes in its progress from the days of its youth towards the adult form, and from the stage of the crawling grub, through that of the quiescent chrysalis, to the full-fledged "imago" with its wings. Kirby and Spence summed up and dismissed such matters in a manner-unfortunately for the free play of intellectual vigour, not quite extinct in these latter days—which said much, perhaps, for faith, but little or nothing for reason and science. These famous entomologists held that insects passed

through a metamorphosis because "such is the will of the Creator"; and they supplement this "confession of faith" with an attempt at a scientific explanation by the further assertion that, insects being voracious in their feeding-habits, especially in earlier life, perform an important function in the economy of Nature in that they remove from the earth's surface "superabundant and decaying animal and vegetable matter." A further reason for this providential arrangement was given in the fact, that, as "unusual powers of multiplication" were indispensable for recruiting the ranks of the insect scavengers, and as nutrition and reproduction are incompatible functions, the removal of decaying matter during the youthful stages of the insect's life was to be regarded as a convenient subdivision of its labours, seeing that its adult existence is spent in the work of reproducing its race. But it might easily be shown that, whilst a goodly number of larval insects do feed upon carrion, a large proportion of the class does not exhibit any such habit; and it might reasonably enough be maintained that the argument of Kirby and Spence is open to the serious objection that, in its character, it tends to illustrate the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Decaying matter exists, therefore insects were designed to pass through a metamorphosis, and were gifted with voracity of disposition that they might remove the said matter from the earth's surface a proposition vitiated in its exactitude by the fact just mentioned that many insects do not eat such matter; and also by the further facts that many do not undergo a metamorphosis at all; that many voracious caterpillars, instead of eating decaying matter, destroy our trees and flowers; and that many of Nature's scavengers of higher and lower rank than the insects do not pass through a series of changes in development, but grow, nourish themselves in the exercise of their sanitary work, and likewise, at the same time, and as adult forms, reproduce their species and continue their race in time. Clearly, then, the explanation of Kirby and Spence affords no satisfaction to the contemplative mind in the natural anxiety and desire to discover the causes of things. At its very best, such explanation leaves "the reason why" untouched; and conversely, it can well be understood how any other system of thought, which presents a more satisfactory method of accounting for the facts in question, should find ready acceptance as expanding and enlarging the thoughts of men.

In a former paper1 we discussed the meaning of the remarkable likenesses which can be readily proved as matters of fact and obser

'See article, "Animal Development and what it Teaches," Gentleman's Magazine for January 1880.