puscles'-a harmonious phrase-were described in malignant tumors, and might be compared to the Negri bodies of hydrophobia. But, obscure though the cancer problem is, it is not probable that the solution will come from a study of filter-passers-and 'Russell's corpuscles' have long been discredited.

It will be interesting to await the results of the present concentrated attack on the question of distemper in dogs, and its relation to influenza in man. Perhaps in a very short while we may see this whole question on a far more secure basis than it is at present.

A SIMIAN destiny undoubtedly dominates mankind. According to the Semitic legend humanity fell prey to a serpent winding around a Paradise tree; the Banda tradition has it that we are victims of a forest baboon. The Bandas, be it said for those who do not know, are a savage people of Africa. Baboons, of course, are nothing but malicious apes.

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The Banda legend runs as follows:In the beginning of the universe, the earth was arid and deserted, and was guarded by a lonely sentinel by the name of Tere. He had nothing to do and his days passed in idleness. One night Purungu- the Omnipotent Father had a sudden idea that it would be a good thing to call Tere up to the sky and entrust him with a mission of a confidential character. Tere passed through a narrow gorge between two moving mountains, destined to smother any overcurious traveler and guarded by an enormous lizard called Flower of Flame, and immediately met such venerable and distinguished personages as Water,

Wind, Fire, and Thunder, who suspended their play of patara · - a kind of cards - and escorted him into the presence of Purungu. The Omnipotent One confided to him his secret mission and ordered him to return to the earth, not alone but in the company of several different human couples and a couple of each of the known animals; besides, he was given seeds of all the terrestrial and aquatic plants.

A huge tom-tom was prepared on the spot. It was tied to a cord, and descended, like an airship sent forth by Purungu, enclosing in it all the future inhabitants of the earth, and Tere with them. 'As soon as you strike the earth,' Purungu ordered, 'beat the tom-tom as hard as you can, so I shall hear it and cut the cord.'

The descent began-not without emotion. Hours and days passed. The journey went smoothly, but Tere had his hands full quieting down the first disorders that arose unexpectedly: scrambles between lions and lambs, between serpents and goats, between the different humans, who were the

most ferocious of all the animals enclosed and fought for the conquest of their females. Which, of course, belongs to the natural order of things, and Tere was perfectly aware of it. But all of a sudden, while they were still floating through the clouds, a terrible tomtom beat rent the air! And immediately afterward a dizzy precipitous fall, as if the airship had suddenly become the prey of all the winds.

Purungu, indeed, had cut the cord. In his unspeakable consternation, Tere became aware that it was the baboon who caused the disaster. The ape, who is malicious by nature even though he is of celestial origin, had decided to terrify his traveling companions, and gave a good blow upon the tomtom, thus provoking the inevitable consequences.

Like a meteor, the tom-tom whirled toward a high mountain, and animals and people were thrown in all directions. Their terrified flight is beyond all description. And even now they or their descendants are hurrying here and there in all directions upon the face of the earth. It would also be impossible to describe in what utter disorder all the vegetable seeds were scattered upon the soil, and in what strange combinations.

However it may be, Tere, whose secret mission it was to regulate the earthly life of all these creatures, had to renounce these projects and look on helplessly while they did everything that they should not do. In vain he tried to make them understand the divine principles suggested to him by the Omnipotent One. No one wanted to listen except the Bandas, to whose region he came after long wanderings. He gave them their civilization and one day disappeared. Some say he rose again to stay in the holy presence of Purungu, others think he emigrated to the land of the Whites, who need

his wise management more than the other peoples.

Hadendoa, the modern poet of the Bandas, has now used this legend with the object of passing judgment upon the Whites. His poem, "The Fat People,' recently translated into English, expresses not only the author's individual mentality but a peculiar and very attractive national mentality.

Indeed, who are these Bandas who, according to their myth and to Hadendoa, possess the best civilization of the world?

'Animals in the course of evolution, endowed with language and human morphology, with a potentially human constitution of intellect,'-thus Dr. Pernet defined these people some years ago, a judgment rather severe, and, we should like to say, superficial. For Hadendoa and the myth we have narrated, a myth of no recent origin, bespeak a highly evolved mentality.

However, the summary condemnation of the Whites by Hadendoa is founded on a fact which would never seem to us worthy of reprobation. The Whites bury their dead! Whereas the Bandas suspend them from a palm by their feet and build a good fire underneath. The fat they obtain in this way they utilize for kitchen purposes. I beg my readers not to let themselves be overcome too strongly by this disconcerting information. The thing in question is, of course, cannibalism; but it is an intellectualized variety of it. It is not entirely founded on utilitarian, but mainly on metaphysical, conceptions. The Bandas entertain a belief that such a transmission of substance from the deceased to the living makes the former revive again in the bodies of the latter.

But this is not the only charge brought against the Whites by Haden

THEOPHILE GAUTIER is eminent among French writers for the very qualities which distinguish the literature of France among the literatures of Europe. These are attributes which it is much easier to recognize than to define, but among them is certainly to be found a remarkable fusion of intellectual lucidity and imaginative grace, accompanied by an admirable deftness of literary workmanship. Intelligence, interest, a sprightly fancy, an adroit irony, graceful scholarship, a delicate sense of style

these are characteris

tically French gifts, and there is no writer who possesses them more completely than Gautier.

There are still greater gifts that he does not possess. He has generally little sense of the profound pathos of life; he is not burdened with the weight of all this unintelligible world; he never feels any religious emotion; he never betrays any moral enthusiasm; he is content to dwell on the decorative surface of nature and of civilization. But if we are willing to take him as he is we shall find that there is no more delightful companion in all the realm of letters. Like Scott as Lockhart's unnamed correspondent said he is 'such a friendly writer.'

He was born in 1811, and as a little boy must have heard the reverberations of the battle of Waterloo. He died in 1872, distressed by the triumph of Germany and the wild excesses of the Commune.

When he left college he was determined to be a painter, and he spent a

couple of years in the atelier of Rioult. It was while he was here that he made the acquaintance of Sainte-Beuve, the famous critic, who was astonished by the remarkable knowledge of the French Renaissance poets shown by this lad of eighteen. Either Sainte-Beuve or Gérard de Nerval-whose friendship Gautier had gained at college-introduced him to the notice of Victor Hugo, who became his literary hero. About this time he was definitely launched on a literary career.

It was a remarkable period, for it witnessed the romantic revival in French literature. It would take us too far afield if we attempted to trace the sources of that movement; roughly, it was the influence of Goethe and Heine in Germany, and of Scott and Byron in England, that was making itself felt among the younger writers of France. The romantic movement was a revolt against literary conventions that had grown rigid especially against the chilly classicism of the eighteenth century; a return to nature, though not in Wordsworth's sense; a spirit of liberty and adventure in the realm of letters; a new sense of the infinite charm and color and movement of life.

The crucial date of the movement was February 25, 1830, when Victor Hugo's Hernani was produced at the Théâtre Français. Both the classical and the romantic factions made it the occasion of a demonstration. Half-adozen tickets were taken to Rioult's studio. 'You will answer for your friends?' said the messenger to Gautier.

"By the skull from which Byron drank at Newstead Abbey,' was the response, 'I will answer for them!'

The reply was a characteristic extravagance. The early romantics rather affected skulls, and indeed anything that suggested vaults, mortality, melancholy, the mouldering past, the Middle Ages - all of which were supposed to be the special properties of a grotesque and Gothic taste, as opposed to the frigidities of classicism. When Scott, as a young man, was translating Bürger, he 'wished to heaven that he had a skull and crossbones'!

Hernani was a huge success. Gautier was prominent, on the night of the production, in a crimson waistcoat. He must have made a striking figure, habited in this fashion, with his powerful frame and his flowing locks. His gilet rouge became famous; it was remembered for long as the oriflamme of romanticism.

About this time Gautier published his first volume of poems, soon followed by a second and a third, and his first novel. A little later he joined the staff of La Presse as dramatic and art critic. Twenty years afterward he left La Presse for Le Moniteur Universel. This was afterward replaced by the Journal Officiel. Gautier continued this work until his death, and indeed made most of his living by it. He often lamented his fate, and girded at the hard necessity that kept him at work on his feuilleton every week except for an occasional holiday: 'Jusqu'à lundi je suis mon maître. Au diable, chefs-d'œuvre mortnés!'

Yet it may be doubted if any other life would have suited him so well; certainly no other would have ministered so richly to his special instincts as a lover of art and letters. It kept him in constant contact with the drama, the art, and the intellectual life of Paris generally for nearly forty years.

Apart from his travels there is not much incident in Gautier's life. He had no interest in politics, and, unlike Hugo, was quite content with the Second Empire. He was thrice proposed for the Academy, but never elected. The names of those who were elected on those three occasions, when contrasted with the name of Gautier, are enough to show the futility of the whole business of an Academy - they were Gratry, Autran, and Barbier. But Gautier was in excellent company in his exclusion from the number of the immortal Forty. If he was not an Academician, neither was Molière, nor Pascal, nor Balzac.

Physically, Gautier was robust. It is said that he ordinarily consumed five pounds of mutton and three bottles of wine in the course of the day. Once, at a fair, he struck a blow of over five hundred pounds on the tête de Turcthe popular dynamometer — and he declared that it was the proudest action of his life. It is curious that sturdy men of a vigorous habit are often the most humane in their outlook upon life, and the most subtle, delicate, and fastidious in their artistic work; and that it is usually the physical weaklings who yell for carnage, who disregard the decencies of literature, and who generally seek to draw attention to themselves by violence and blasphemy.