classed as offering great inducements to the stranger sportsman, who wishes to make his time, as it is probably short, at least a merry one. Quail, ruffed grouse, and rabbits remain; of the last there are two sorts, though both are really hares-a large longlegged brute that lives mostly in wooded swamps and belongs to the North, and a smaller, more edible animal that is found mostly in the South. The latter is far more numerous, lives generally in open fields, and is to the sportsman what the hare is in England. I might add that he is the original of the famous "Brer Rabbit" of Uncle Remus. The ruffed grouse, colloquially called pheasant in the South and partridge in the North, is a fine bird. Though it is indigenous to almost the whole area in question, it is thick enough scarcely anywhere to offer great inducements to the sportsman. It is distinctly a woodland bird, shy as well as scarce, and is greatly addicted to tree-tops when flushed. It is found in the greatest numbers, of course, in the backwoods and in wild mountain chains, but is at the same time quite compatible with the oldest settlements and the highest civilisation so long as there is a fair abundance of timber. Just, however, as the bad habits and the comparative scarcity of the ruffed grouse prevent its being ranked for a moment with the quail or the wild duck on the American game-list, so its exclusively woodland habits prevent its being in the eyes of the farmer such an obvious subject for protection as the former.

The quail alone remains, but the position of the quail makes it of preeminent importance above all other birds in considering the prospects of American sport. Though I have spoken of it and with accuracy as a Southern bird, it is found in numbers sufficient for moderate sport in several districts from Pennsylvania to Connecticut. Upon farms north of Maryland game is exceedingly scarce, still, this sprinkling of quail here and there,

with a thin distribution of ruffed grouse and rabbits, and of the migratory game-birds in their season, is sufficient in many places to arouse the jealousy of the farmers as to trespass. For several years there has been a great deal of friction in this respect. But though locally interesting, and interesting, too, as a social question, it is hardly to the scanty preserves of Pennsylvania or Connecticut, that the Eastern sportsman of moderate or still more ample means looks, or will in the future look. With the northern boundary of Maryland the quailgrounds of the Atlantic States may be said to begin in real earnest. If any one will take a map of the United States they will see that this boundary embraces some, including the capital, and approaches comparatively near to, all the greater seats of wealth and population in older America. Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, and Tennessee, without going West or South, make an immense available shooting-ground for the local sportsman and those of the Atlantic cities. With an average existence of nearly two centuries, these great and long-settled districts are still to-day well stocked with what I have ventured to call the finest game-bird in the world. Nor is there any reason why they should not remain so for all time.

Local sportsmen have hitherto had this fine field pretty much to themselves. Of late years, however, the Northerners have begun to realise that in a few hours and at slight expense they can be on the best of shootinggrounds, and are beginning sensibly to swell the local ranks. With anything like care there is not merely room for all those that now take the field, but for ten times their number, in those accessible States alone that I have mentioned. It is becoming quite evident that the future of the chief domestic game-bird of America may be safely left in the hands of the farmers.

To any one who remembers the free

and easy ideas as to shooting prevalent ten or fifteen years ago, when, generally speaking, even to ask permission was an act of courtesy, the difference of late years is very striking. Land close to towns was always, more or less and after a fashion, preserved, but that mattered little. Nowadays whole neighbourhoods remote from city and railroad, where the perfect stranger a few years ago might have roamed with dogs and gun unquestioned, are often banded together in a kind of gamepreserving federation impregnable to the stranger, and exceedingly inconvenient even for the well known and popular resident. The whole rural air is impregnated with what may fairly be called a novel sensation of proprietorship in game.

There are still, it is true, immense districts very little affected as yet by it, where friction is hardly yet possible. There are at the same time large areas where the extent of shooting and amount of game is far greater than any possible demand could for the present require, in which the farmers seem to have anticipated future probabilities and ostentatiously proclaimed their lands as sacred. Even popular landowners who are sportsmen, and who a few years since would have shot over the whole country as a matter of neighbourly right, have now to be most circumspect and diplomatic, and find a good deal of land locked up even from them. The odd part of all this is that the farmer has no idea of shooting his birds himself, nor, as a general thing, of reserving them for immediate friends or relatives. It is simply an assertion of a right, badly needed in some parts, very reasonable in others, ridiculous here and there-a good sign, however, for the future of American sport. There is no tenant-class in America to intrude between landowner and sportsman, and irritate both; and the question of preserving game is now in an interesting stage of transition, and will no doubt terminate before long in financial agreements satisfactory to all parties.

No. 347-VOL. LVIII.

Social jealousy between town and country have, no doubt, added immensely to the game-preserving movement that has so very widely taken hold of American farmers of late years. I have already shown that the mass of sportsmen nowadays come from the towns and villages. Every one familiar with rural America is also familiar with that peculiar want of sympathy, amounting almost to dislike that, speaking broadly, the farmer and the city-man have for one another. The term "countryman" in the mouth of the latter expresses a good deal of supercilious patronage. The agriculturist fully retaliates by the tone of voice in which he alludes to "them city fellahs." The townsman of the higher class is better dressed, better educated, wealthier probably, and better born than Farmer Homespun, substantial and respectable though the latter may be. No amount of republicanism will prevent two such different specimens from moving in two widely separate social spheres, that know practically very little about one another. The countryman knows all this of course: it certainly does not keep him awake at nights, but still there is a feeling of soreness lurking deep down in the rural breast at a social difference that is inevitable. Pride, in a country of political equality and without pronounced distinctions of class, would prevent much open expression being given to such slight and unavoidable grievances. Still, the gap that exists between the class in the towns from which sportsmen are mostly drawn and that over whose lands they mostly shoot, is quite wide enough to have a very great influence in the question of shooting-rights, and it is certainly responsible for a good deal of the game-preservation movement.

There are other and more substantial grounds, too, on which the farmer looks askance on the townsfolk. He is given to regarding the population of towns. as a combination of "rings" with the sole object of robbing him of his just profits. It is true he is in a defence

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less position, and is sometimes badly robbed by middlemen, but on this subject he is almost always unreasonable and illogical. He is prone to take the standard of agricultural labour as the standard of all labour, to miscalculate the reward due to brainwork, to ignore the expense of a high education; to regard the very moderate legal fees of provincial America, for instance, as extortionate, and to complain because a judge or a physician makes more than the two dollars a day earned by the bricklayer or the harvest-hand.

Leaving for a moment the question of private ownership and its attitude with regard to game, and turning towards the State laws as to close seasons, an immense stride has been made during the last decade. In Maryland or Virginia, for example, no respectable sportsman would now dream of shooting before the lawful commencement of the season, and if he did he would in all probability get himself into trouble. A dozen years ago few people paid any attention to such dates, while the masses knew nothing at all about them. The netting of quail, too, which in former days was quite a recognised pastime, has been completely stamped out. The illiterate turkey-hunter of the Alleghany spurs would ten or fifteen years ago have resented the bare idea of his comings and goings being anybody's business but his own. knows much better now. Even if, presuming on the isolation of his logcabin, he steals out with his old Kentucky rifle after a "gobbler" in August, he takes pains to impress on any neighbours he comes across that he is "jes' squr'l hunt'n."

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It speaks well for the law-abiding qualities and the good sense of the American people that all this has been accomplished with scarcely any legal precaution, without violence, and with a minimum of real ill-feeling. Respect for public opinion, or rather for local opinion, is very strong in the rural districts of all sections. Once let the idea take root that game should not be killed in close seasons, and let people recognise that the old backwoods liberty of action in the chase is no longer feasible, the laws will be generally respected without a particle of physical pressure. Nor does the preserver of game require any assistance at present other than the form, which varies according to districts, of declaring his lands closed to the sporting public. The reluctance to outrage the rights of property in any way is very strong where public opinion is the opinion of a landowning yeomanry.

Associations have been formed from time to time for the destruction of vermin, which in the quail-countries creates far more havoc among the game than the gun does. The funds collected by annual subscriptions are devoted to the payment by the head for all vermin destroyed in their district. Hawks, with which the whole country swarms, are more particularly marked out for destruction. What work such associations are doing at this moment I am in no position to say; but from personal experience I should be inclined to think that, admirable as their intention is, the results, for many reasons into which there is no space to enter, will be for a long time imperceptible.

A. G. BRADLEY.

THE student of social phenomena who considers that the modification of human beings by their environment follows the same general laws, and is, at least, as interesting and important as the evolution of inferior organisms by the same method, and who, believing that observation is the true parent of knowledge in both spheres, has furthermore kept his ears and eyes open, will not have failed to notice the appearance of a new variety of the class Homo within the last two decades.

This variety, as commonly happens among naturalists when similar dis coveries are made, has given rise to a dispute concerning its claim to the dignity of being deemed a new species; and philosophers have answered this question in accordance with the natural bent of their several minds.

Those

who lay stress on external characteristics deny the claim; on the other hand, those who adhere to more modern methods and are inclined to doubt the necessary identity of the essential with the external, are disposed to make an addition to those divisions of mankind which have been hitherto recognised.

It may be granted that the careless observer will not at once be able to distinguish the individuals who form the subject of this paper from the class Spinster, from which they have been evolved. If he content himself with noting only the "morphology of the specimen under notice, he will behold nothing but a plainly-dressed woman, clad in an ulster and unmistakably home-made hat or bonnet; but if he note her self-reliant bearing, her air of having some definite business to perform in a definite time, her general aspect of being ready to meet all emergencies, he will begin to see

he has here something differing considerably from the ordinary female. Other characteristic marks are her agility in gaining the tops of omnibuses, her power of entering a tramcar without stopping the horses, her cool self-possession in a crowd, her utter indifference to weather, and, it must be added, an undoubted disposition to exact her rights to the uttermost farthing. If he should chance to overhear her conversation with a boon companion he would be still more enlightened, and perhaps dismayed. For the sisterhood hold strong opinions which, however, they are very cautious not to promulgate to the vulgar. Dependent for subsistence on the patronage of middle-class Philistines they are too wise to shock their prejudices needlessly, but atone for this reticence in public by the boldness of their private speculations. Some are theoretically Socialists who would limit the population by forcible means; others are thorough-going Democrats who would hail a revolution as the quickest and best solution of existing difficulties; others, Dames of the Primrose League. Varied as are their nostrums, they agree in ardently desiring the public good, and would make considerable sacrifices to attain that object. Their courage in following out the premises they severally accept is striking. It is not uncommon to hear them discuss such propositions as the lawfulness of suicide, the advantages of a State-regulated infanticide, the possibility of compelling incurable invalids or useless individuals to undergo euthanasia after a certain time, or the merits of a general redistribution of property.

One of them explained this trait by saying that while other people were hampered by the necessity of making

their theories coincide with personal or family interests, they themselves, having given no hostages to fortune, were exempt from the temptation to shirk facts and conclusions which logically lead to the re-organization of the social structure. The speaker added that, since they have at present little power for good or evil, they indulge in such academic discussions rather as an intellectual pleasure than with any strong wish to see such measures actually tried, and that personally they were always remarkably law-abiding and orderly citizens. Like meteors, they wander free in interfamiliar space, obeying laws and conventions of their own, and entering other systems only as strange and rare visitants. Widely read and often highly cultured, their circumstances prevent them from associating with the learned classes, who in England are always wealthy, while their tastes and habits forbid them finding enjoyment in ordinary middle-class female society.

By careful investigation we find that the main forces which have brought about the evolution of this variety of Femina have been, in the first place, the present contraction of means among the professional classes without their standard of comfort being correspondingly lowered, which has driven the sisters and daughters to seek remunerative employment; the same cause has operated powerfully in checking the marriage-rate, and thus leaving more women unprovided for. Secondly, the democratic spirit of the age, which is unfavourable to satisfied acquiescence in a position of dependence and subjection. Thirdly, the general spread of education, which has enabled many women to find happiness in intellectual pleasures and to care comparatively little about social environment.

As concerns the all-important question of money, it may be stated that the Glorified Spinster is invariably poor, her income varying from eighty to one hundred pounds. If it approach

the latter sum she is quite sure to disburse a considerable amount yearly for the benefit of her relatives; for, in spite of the apparent selfishness of her mode of life, she readily acknowledges the claims of family, and, if the truth must be told, her male connections show themselves very willing to shift the burden of providing for the ineffective members of the family to her willing shoulders.

But in spite of the smallness of her resources, she manages to see every good piece at the theatres, to attend a dozen good concerts during the season, to visit the chief picture-exhibitions, and in addition to experience something of foreign travel. She shows herself a financial genius in extracting the greatest possible amount of pleasure out of every shilling. She patronizes the galleries of the Albert and St. James's Halls, and the pits at the playhouses, where, be it confessed, she is sometimes unreasonable enough to resent being subjected to the scrimmage which ensues at such places. A man with her income would be wretched, but as she spends no money on beer, tobacco, or bets, she manages to exist in tolerable comfort.

She economises, too, in her lodgings. A visit to the den of one of the sisterhood reveals a small room, twelve feet by fourteen, in a quiet street in Kensington, for which its occupant pays six shillings a week. In one corner stands a small wooden bed covered with gay chintz, an idea evidently adopted from Newnham College; before the window is a large tin trunk, the battered sides and numerous labels of which attest it has been a wanderer in its time; this also has a chintz cover, not over clean, be it noted. Next, comes a cheap imitation of an oldfashioned bureau which is meant to conceal the necessaries of the toilet; but, alas! the spring is broken, and the Irish expedient of inserting a small wedge of paper has been, perforce, adopted. Over the mantelpiece are well-filled bookshelves, in which may be noted. Mill's Logic, two volumes of Mr.