formity almost always associated with individual dwarfishness in a taller race. One only, that of the female, is sufficiently perfect for articulation. After due allow ance for some missing vertebræ, and for the intervertebral spaces, the skeleton measures from the crown of the head to the ground exactly 4 feet, or 1.218 metres. About half an inch more for the thickness of the skin of the head and soles of the feet would complete the height when alive. The other (male) skeleton was (judging by the length of the femur) about a quarter of an inch shorter.

ings of Hamy and Quatrefages), even further to the east, south of the Galla land, are still surviving, in scattered districts, communities of these small negroes, all much resembling each other in size, appearance, and habits, and dwelling mostly apart from their larger neighbors, by whom they are everywhere surrounded. Our information about them is still very scanty, and to obtain more would be a worthy object of ambition for the anthropological traveller. In many parts, espe cially at the west, they are obviously holding their own with difficulty, if not actually disappearing, and there is much about their condition of civilization, and the situations in which they are found, to induce us to look upon them, as in the case of the Bushmen in the south and the Negritos in the east, as remains of a population which occupied the land before the incoming of the present dominant races. If the account of the Nasamonians related by Herodotus is accepted as historical, the river they came to, "flowing from west to east," must have been the Niger, and the

The full-grown woman of whom Emin gives detailed dimensions is stated to be only 1 164 metres, or barely 3 feet 10 inches.* These heights are all unquestionably less than anything that has been yet obtained based upon such indisputable data. One very interesting and almost unexpected result of a careful examination of these skeletons is that they conform in the relative proportions of the head, trunk, and limbs, not to dwarfs, but to full-sized people of other races, and they are therefore strikingly unlike the stumpy, long-northward range of the dwarfish people far bodied, short-limbed, large-headed pygmies so graphically represented fighting with their lances against the cranes on ancient Greek vases.

The other characters of these skeletons are negroid to an intense degree, and quite accord with what has been stated of their external appearance. The form of the skull, too, has that sub-brachycephaly which has been shown by Hamy to characterize all the small negro populations of central Africa. It is quite unlike that of the Andamanese, quite unlike that of the Bushmen. They are obviously negroes of a special type, to which Hamy has given the appropriate term of Negrillo. They seem to have much the same relation to the larger, longer-headed African negroes that the small, round-headed Negritos of the Indian Ocean have to their larger, longer-headed Melanesian neighbors.

more extensive twenty-three centuries ago than it is at the present time.

This view opens a still larger question, and takes us back to the neighborhood of the south of India as the centre from which the whole of the great negro race spread, east over the African continent, and west over the islands of the Pacific, and to our little Andamanese fellow-subjects as probably the least modified descendants of the primitive members of the great branch of the human species characterized by their black skins and frizzly hair.

From Punch.

THE NEXT ARMADA.

A BRIEF CHAPTER FROM THE HISTORY OF
MACAULAY JUNIOR.

At all events, the fact now seems clearly demonstrated that at various spots across IN the City the agitation was fearful. the great African continent, within a few | None could doubt that the decisive crisis degrees north and south of the equator, was approaching. It was known, from extending from the Atlantic coast to near the second edition of the Times, that the the shores of the Albert Nyanza (30° E. long.), and perhaps, if some indications which time will not allow me to enter into now (but which will be found in the writ

In his letters Emin speaks of an Akka man as "3 feet 6 inches" high, though this does not profess to be a scientifically accurate observation, as does the above. He says of this man that his whole body was covered by thick, stiff hair, almost like felt, as was the case with all the Akkas he had yet examined.

joint Armada, carrying everything before it, was continuing its victorious progress up the Channel. Plymouth had fallen without firing a shot. Portsmouth had speedily followed suit. The former had found itself, at the eleventh hour, unprovided with a single gun. The latter, at the crucial moment, discovered that it was still waiting the arrival of its ammunition.

When these facts, mysteriously whispered | tion to his fighting power in any pending at first with bated breath, became, later in action. Nor was he sure of his own ship. the day, authenticated by the appearance Her Majesty's ironclad Blunderer, which of succeeding editions of the morning carried his flag, was armed with four of papers, the public excitement knew no the famous 43-ton Collingwood exploding bounds. A hideous panic seized the guns, and though hard pressed in the Stock Exchange. "Goschens" went down recent engagement, he had not thought to sixty at a single leap. Five well-known it wise to give the order to fire. Such stockbrokers went off their heads, and was the position of the British admiral at were removed in cabs by the police in the commencement of that fatal afternoon violent hysterics. The lord mayor ap- which saw the last blow struck for the peared on the steps of the Mansion House, preservation of the empire. The fight and endeavored to quell the riot. He was commenced by a general attack of the at once recognized by the mob, and pelted enemy. But it did not last long. In a with pass-books. But things assumed a very few minutes seven of the British most threatening aspect at the Admiralty. ironclads, including that of the admiral, A vast multitude had assembled at White- were blown up by the explosion of their hall, and rendered Parliament Street im- own guns. The rest found that they were passable. There was an angry howl at supplied with the wrong-sized ammunition, the Board. The police took the pre- and were rapidly put hors de combat. cautionary measure of closing the gates. Within a quarter of an hour of the firing The first lord appeared inside the enclos- of the first shot the action was over, and ure, and his presence was the signal for the last remnant of the British fleet had an ominous roar. He was deathly pale practically disappeared. That evening and trembling, but he managed to scram- the advance despatch boats of the joint ble up the balustrade, and gazed feebly Armada anchored off Gravesend, and one down on the raving thousands below. hundred and twenty thousand men were He was understood to say that when next landed on the Kentish coast between MarParliament met it would be asked to ap- gate and Whitstable. When the news of point another committee to inquire into the disaster appeared in the evening pathe naval administration of the country. pers, the panic, which had been gathering His speech was cut short by execrations, strength as the day progressed, culminated and he hastily withdrew. Ten minutes in fever-heat. Everybody was in the later it was understood that he had es- streets asking, with staring eyeballs, for caped by the back way over the palings the latest news. Gradually it became into the Park, and was hiding himself known that seventy-five thousand of the from the fury of the mob in an unfre- enemy were advancing on the capital by quented slum in Pimlico. But while these way of Aldershot, and that the general in events were transpiring in the metropolis command at the camp, who had 1,371 men of the empire, still graver issues were of all arms under him, all told, had rebeing arrived at on that "silver streak," ceived orders to oppose them, and this which, up to now, had popularly, but erro-announcement seemed to restore in some neously, been regarded as its sure defence. What had been left of the British Channel fleet after its first disastrous encounter with the joint Armada off the Lizard had rallied, and was now awaiting the attack of the again on-pressing and advancing enemy, in what promised to be a decisive encounter for the possession of the mouth of the Thames, in the immediate neighborhood of Herne Bay. The admiral, in his hasty retreat, had collected about the shattered remnant of his forces some auxiliary adjuncts. He had been joined by her Majesty's ironclads, Styx and Megatherium, and by the belted cruiser, Daffodil; but owing to the fact that these vessels, not possessing any guns, had had to put to sea without their armaments, the recent arrivals could scarcely be counted on by him as an addi

measure the public confidence. Mean time a quite phenomenal activity prevailed at the War Office, and the horses of the General Omnibus Company were at once requisitioned for the service of the Royal Artillery. The Duke of Cambridge, on hearing of the catastrophe, had appealed to the authorities instantly for the eleven thousand men he had recently insisted on. With that force, he said, even at the eleventh hour, he would guarantee the safety of the country. Mr. Whiteley forthwith undertook to furnish them within twenty-four hours. His offer was accepted with enthusiasm. It was known too that Lord Wolseley had already started with a miscellaneous force of volunteers, Guards, and policemen, hurriedly collected, for Sydenham, with the intention of taking up a defensive position among the

antediluvian animals, and there waiting the | and snails. When the chaffinch says course of events. The authorities were "weet, weet," it is an infallible sign of fairly on their mettle. They instantly rain. As the rain draws nearer peacocks supplied three volunteer regiments with rifles of an obsolete and antiquated pattern. Nor was this all. They telegraphed to Woolwich to expedite the selection of a model for the new magazine rifle, and marked their communication "urgent." Matters, meanwhile, at headquarters were not less vigorously pushed forward. Inquiries were made for Mr. Stanhope's plan of "defending the Thames." Every pigeon-hole was examined, but it could not be found. Still, the department did not despair. They despatched a third-class War Office clerk to Greenwich to report on the situation and say what he thought of it. When, however, it transpired the next morning that, spite of all the efforts to stay their advance, fifty thousand of the enemy had taken possession of the Bank of England, seized the lord mayor and aldermen as hostages, and were prepared to treat with the government, with a view to evacuation, on the cession of Margate, Canada, India, Gibraltar, Malta, Australia, and Madame Tussaud's waxwork collection, together with a preliminary payment of fifteen milliards, Englishmen began soberly to recognize that what they had so long regarded as an impossible vision had really come about, and that the "next Armada" was an unhappily accomplished fact.

From St. James's Gazette. NATURE'S WEATHER-PROPHETS.

cry and frogs croak clamorously from the ditches. These are signs which almost every one has heard who lives in the country; though one of the surest ways of predicting weather changes is by observing the habits of snails. Snails never drink, but imbibe moisture during rain and exude it afterwards. They are seldom seen abroad except before rain, when they commence climbing trees and getting upon the leaves. The tree snail is so sensitive to weather that it will commence to climb two days before the rain comes. If the downpour is to be prolonged, the snail seeks the under part of a leaf; but if a short or light rain is coming, it stays on the outside. There is another species which is yellow before rain and bluish after it. Others indicate change by dents, and protuberances resembling tubercles. These begin to show themselves ten days before rain, and when it comes the pores of the tubercles open and draw in the moisture. In others, again, deep indentations, beginning at the head between the horns and ending with the jointure of the tail, appear a few days before a storm. One of the simplest of nature's barometers is a spider's web. When there is a prospect of wind or rain, the spider shortens the filaments by which its web is sustained and leaves it in this state as long as the weather is variable. If it elongates its threads, it is a sign of fine calm weather, the duration of which may be judged by the length to which the threads are let out. If the spider remains inactive, it is a sign of rain; if it keeps at work during rain, the downpour will not last long, and will be followed by fine weather. Observation has taught that the spider makes changes in its web every twenty-four

in the evening, just before sunset, the night will be clear and beautiful.

NATURE'S barometers are the only ones of which most country folk have any knowledge. These they may consult at all times, and they know them by heart. Almost all field-workers are "weather-hours, and that if such changes are made wise," and their conversation on this head has no town conventionalism about it. The farmer has been so beaten about by wind and weather that he himself is scarcely sensible to changing atmospheric conditions; but that does not prevent his observing its influence on the things about him. Before rain his dogs grow sleepy and dull; the cat constantly licks herself; geese gaggle in the pond, fowls and pigeons go early to roost, and the farmhorses grow restless. Abroad, the ants are all hurry and scurry, rushing hither and thither; spiders crowd on the wall; toads emerge from their holes; and the garden paths are everywhere covered with slugs

In Hampshire swans are believed to be hatched in thunderstorms; and it is said that those on the Thames have an instinctive prescience of floods; before heavy rains they raise their nests. This is characteristic of many birds, which add piles of material to their nests to prevent swamping. When rooks fly high and seem to imitate birds of prey by soaring, swooping, and falling, it is almost a certain sign of coming storm. Staying in the vicinity of the rookery, returning at midday, or coming to roost in groups, are also said to be omens to the like effect. Various prov

erbs would seem to indicate that the cry | bly listless against snowy, foul weather, of the owl, if heard in bad weather, fore- while, according to another author, their tells a change. The constant iteration of the green woodpecker's cry before a storm has given it the names of rain-bird, rainpie, and rain-fowl. Stormcock is a provincial name shared by this bird and the missel-thrush, the latter often singing through gales of wind and rain. Stormbird also is applied to the fieldfare. The abhorrence in which mariners hold the swallow-like storm-petrel is well known; its appearance is believed to denote wild weather. This little bird is the Mother Carey's chicken of sailors, and is also called storm-finch and water-witch. Herons, says an old author, flying up and down in the evening, as if doubtful where to rest, "presage some evill approaching weather" -a legend as old as Virgil, though probably devoid of foundation. Concerning gulls in general, children who live by the sea say, —

Sea-gull, sea-gull, sit on the sand:

early arrival and continued abode "foretells a liberal harvest." In Wiltshire the coming of the dotterel betokens frost and snow, and there is a proverb that the booming of the bittern will be followed by rain or worse. In Morayshire, when the wild geese go out to sea, they say the weather will be fine; but if towards the hill, stormy. The saw-like note of the great titmouse is said to foretell rain; that of the blue-tit cold. In the south of France so much store is set by the wisdom of the magpie, that if it builds its nest on the summit of a tree the country folk expect a season of calm; but if lower down, winds and tempests are sure to fol low. When a jackdaw is seen to stand on one of the vanes of the cathedral tower at Wells, it is said that rain is sure to follow within twenty-four hours. Wells must be a wet place! In Germany dwellers in the country lack faith in the skylark's song

It's never good weather while you're on the as announcing fine weather; but when the

land;

and fisher folk know that when the seamews fly out early and far to seaward fair weather may be expected. To Scotch shepherds the drumming of the snipe indicates dry weather and frost at night; and Gilbert White remarks that woodcocks have been observed to be remarka

lark and the cuckoo sing together they know that summer has come. The robin, buzzard, lapwing, starling, and a number of other birds are said to foretell weather changes; we have noticed that in nearly all the species named the various cries and calls are closely connected with the bird's food supply.

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. - In a late number of Scribner's Magazine is an article by Mr. R. L. Stevenson on Gentlemen," in which occurs the following passage: Napoleon, Byron, Lockhart, these were surely cads, and the two first cads of a rare water. I am not aware how far Mr. Stevenson's intimacy with these three distinguished men gave him special opportunities of forming an estimate of their character. The first two I myself never saw, but I knew the last well, if one may talk of knowing well a person forty years older than oneself. When I was a child (about 1841) my father went to live in Sussex Place, Regent's Park, exactly opposite to the house occupied by his intimate friend, Mr. Lockhart. From that time till 1852, when I sailed to join my regiment in India, I saw Mr. Lockhart, when I was at home, nearly every day, and my recollections of him are extremely vivid. Of his mere external advantages it is perhaps irrelevant to speak, though he was

one of the handsomest men of his day, with a remarkably intelligent countenance and finely shaped head. In his family life, of which I saw much, he was to his son, poor Walter, and his daughter, afterwards Mrs. Hope, the kindest and most indulgent parent.

To us children he was always good-natured, and we still have a copy of his "Spanish Ballads" which he gave us for the sake of the illustrations. In society his conversation and manner were a little cynical; but to old friends, like my father and a few others, he was always most cordial and, I might almost say, affectionate. As for the manners (which maketh man), Mr. Lockhart was of the old Scotch school, somewhat French in its ceremonious and formal politeness, but with a certain old-world charm which was very attrac tive. In a long and varied experience I cannot remember a more perfect gentleman than John Gibson Lockhart.