present year of grace we find a man of such varied experience in dealing with the poor as General Booth advocating a return to the same kind of treatment-coercion, pure and simple.

The object of Sir John Gorst's Bill now before Parliament is to give legislative effect to General Booth's proposals for the establishment of labour colonies and the detention of vagrants and others for stated periods in these institutions. The suggestions of the General are adopted en bloc, but the legislator has to go further and prescribe the machinery by which the object he desires is to be accomplished, and in this we think he has signally failed.

If the provisions of this proposed Bill are examined, it will be found that the result of their sanction by Parliament would only be to plant an indefinite number of penal colonies throughout the country, with all the expensive machinery necessarily associated with such institutions. Every colony would be absolutely under the control of the Home Office. If this Bill became law it is probable that no philanthropic association, county council, or town council would be so foolish as to take advantage of it. The certified labour colony would be essentially different from that which has achieved so great a measure of success at Hadleigh. No doubt General Booth fully appreciates the difference between penal coercion and that which is due to the influence of earnest appeals to the better side of human nature, however depraved, by earnest men and women inspired with zeal and sympathy. No one knows better than General Booth, and no one will be more ready to admit, that it is to this kind of coercion must be attributed the good results obtained at Hadleigh. Many by such means have been induced to stay till they got accustomed to work and even liked it, and till brighter hopes and aspirations encouraged them to persevere. But, on the other hand, many who put their hand to the plough turned back, and what is to be done with them?

The conclusion at which General Booth has now arrived is that moral suasion has failed, and that physical compulsion must be substituted. He will say, "No. The two must be combined," but we have no hesitation in saying the two methods are antagonistic; and quite naturally in the machinery devised by Sir J. Gorst for giving effect to the General's recommendations, there is no room left for moral suasion. It is perhaps not too much to say that if the vagrants who have been benefited by their voluntary residence at Hadleigh, and have returned to the world hopefully, had been sent there as convicts condemned to work a year or any number of years, they would have proved so soured and discontented and so insensible to wholesome influences that they would have gone back to their old way of living on the happy day of their release, if they did not effect their escape before that.

Mr. Bramwell Booth has advised that the provisions of the

Inebriates Act should be followed in regard to vagrants.

But here

Mr. Booth evidently forgets the difference between the vagrant and the habitual drunkard, which prevents common regulations being applicable to both. The professional vagrant has been accustomed to an idle wandering life from childhood. He has been taught and encouraged to beg and to tell lies in order to excite sympathy almost as soon as he was able to speak; he has never been instructed in anything honest or good, but rather educated in craftiness to discern how to indulge his vicious propensities without committing the unpardonable sin of being found out. On such a creature coercion alone can impose any restraint. But the genesis of the inebriate is entirely different. He has, alas! very often been brought up in a Christian family, where the family Bible has been a familiar sight, and "the cotter's Saturday night" has often been reproduced; he has from his earliest days been trained to speak the truth, and to do to others as he would have others do to him; he has served his apprenticeship with credit, growing in wisdom as he grows in stature, and acquiring habits of punctuality and industry; and as he starts on his career a fully qualified journeyman, he knows no greater joy than to contribute to the comfort of the tender mother who sees in him the realisation of her fondest hopes.

There are varieties of inebriates, of course-some lower and some higher-but this may be taken as an average specimen. It will at once be seen that in this case compulsory detention is much less necessary than in the other, and where hope is not extinct the inebriate will often be found willing to sacrifice freedom for a time.

What induces him to do this? It is a coercive power more efficacious than armies of warders-a power which we wish to see applied to the refractory vagrant as well—namely, self-interest. The conviction that he is better in detention than at liberty; the belief that if he returned to his old haunts his old habits would meet him there, whereas if he endured with patience the discomforts of restraint for a time, it might be his still older habits of diligence and thrift which would meet him and restore some measure of the comfort he had justly forfeited. It is this same kind of coercion we wish to see applied to the vagrant in preference to that devised by General Booth and Sir J. Gorst. The conviction of self-interest would require to be brought home to the mind of the vagrant by rougher methods than in the inebriate's case, but, once apprehended, it would prove equally effectual and make the establishment of labour colonies, after the model of Hadleigh, practicable. What we have to do is to convince the vagrant that life within a labour colony is more comfortable and attractive than a life at liberty outside, and for this purpose all we have to do is so to arrange matters outside that the vagrant will find his business gone; that the sources on

which he formerly relied are completely dried up, and that after one brief stay in a casual ward he must march on either to work or to a colony. We have no hesitation in asserting that this condition of things can be brought about by the method roughly outlined in the WESTMINSTER REVIEW of last February, if the people in each locality would co-operate; and here we may say that there is little doubt that such a co-operation can be secured by earnest appeals to the common sense of the people, and especially by a judicious use of the lever of self-interest, convincing them that in this way they would not only be doing what would be of advantage to the community at large, but also what would tend to reduce their poor-rates. So far as the vagrant was concerned he would be compelled to have recourse to the labour colony by the force of voluntary compulsion-if we may so speak-his usual avocation being gone, and the sources from which he had derived his living being dried up; and for the same reason he would remain voluntarily till he had acquired the habit of working and skill in some branch of work which would enable him to make a living outside in freedom. It is probably not too much to say that in this way, and in this way alone, is it possible to retain vagrants in labour colonies without an enormous expenditure of money and vexatious trouble-quite sufficient to deter any voluntary association or parish council from obligingly establishing a certified colony which would inevitably pass into the hands of Government which alone could carry it on in accordance with the provisions of the Vagrancy Acts Amendment Bill.

In conclusion, we can only say in a word that the Home Office is not the department which should be charged with the direction of such work. It naturally devolves on the poor-law authorities under the Local Government Board. Tramps and vagrants are a section of the poor of a most troublesome character, and if it may be said. that they have not been successfully dealt with in the past, it must be remembered that that is due to defects in the poor-laws which ought to be amended so as to give the authorities more power in some directions, and more freedom and larger discretion in others.

JOHN HONEYMAN, LL.D.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF COLOUR IN

NATURE.

It is conceivable that the world and all things in it might have been made of one uniform colour-a vast Sahara of monotonous drab, or a colourless globe of Arctic whiteness. It would not have been devoid of grandeur or beauty, but the fascinating charm of variety would have been wanting, and life would have lost some of its most exhilarating pleasures. Imagine the landscape like a brown photograph, and sunrise and sunset marked solely by increase or diminution of light; while birds, beasts and insects would be almost undistinguishable from their monotonous surroundings. It would be a dreary world indeed, compared with the bright and beautiful one in which our lot has been cast.

The distribution of colour in Nature is a fascinating study, and one that presents many perplexing problems. Some of these have been discussed at length in recent years, but there are many others that still await solution. The object of this paper is to call attention to some of the strange phenomena that present themselves in the various aspects of Nature's robe of many colours.

There is no need to dwell upon scientific theories of colour. We know that the white light of the sun can be broken up into infinite huos and shades as it passes through a refracting medium; and this fact accounts for many colour effects in nature. The falling drops of rain, illuminated by the sun's rays, give us the marvellous " bow in the clouds"; and the brilliant colours of the upper sky are due to the sun shining upon ice-crystals suspended in the atmosphere. We know also that various substances receive the sun's light according to their nature, absorbing some of the rays and reflecting others, and so presenting endless variety to the eye; but, though science tells us so much, it cannot explain in what respect the tissues of a blue flower differ from those of a red one, or why some hairs of an animal's coat reflect white to the eye, and others brown or black. There are many mysteries of colour that science cannot explain, and perhaps will never fathom.

A subject that has occupied a large amount of attention in recent years is the protective colouring of animals. Many animals partake more or less of the hue of their surroundings, and some have the power of changing their colour and so assimilating it to that of a

new environment. A hare will crouch unobserved in a cover of dry grass or bracken; a fish will lie in the bed of a river or the sea, undistinguishable from the mud and pebbles around it; and many insects are scarcely noticeable when resting upon the ground or the trunk of a tree. This protective colouring is found even in the eggs of birds:

"Those which are placed on the open ground are protectively coloured so as to resemble surrounding objects. Those of the night-jar, though white, marbled with brown and grey, look at a little distance like rough quartz pebbles; the eggs of the ringed plover and little tern, laid among shingle, pebbles, and shells, are so like pebbles on the strand that one treads on them before they are recognised; and the same may be said of many others which, laid on the ground like those of the oyster catcher, are quitted by the parent bird on the approach of the intruder, though she uses all her arts to draw him away in pursuit of her."

Though the eggs of many species are thus protectively coloured, the object of the colouring in most cases is not obvious. Many eggs that are laid in seclusion, even in absolute darkness, are beautifully coloured or most curiously marked.

The chameleon's power of changing the colour of its skin is proverbial, and many other animals possess the same faculty in a less degree. A frog or a lizard will alter its hue to correspond with any change in its surroundings, and a number of animals, as is well known, assume a white coat in winter, doubtless for protection from enemies. Among the lower orders of creatures similar phenomena are very common; many fish possess this power of tinctmutation, and insects frequently assimilate themselves to leaves, earth, twigs, &c. Professor Poulton lately conducted a series of experiments with chrysalides, causing them to assume certain colours by placing them amid particular environments. They had the power to become green upon leaves, grey upon walls, and brown upon bark.

In fishes, and probably in other animals that possess the power of changing colour rapidly, the process seems to be brought about by impressions received through the eyes.

"Dr. J. Weir, who has devoted much attention to the study of animals' auxiliary senses, says that careful dissections and repeated experiments have convinced him that these senses have their centres in the animals' brains. In regard to the colour-changing of fishes, he asserts that the theory that light acts directly on the colour-cells has been proved to be incorrect, but that light is the indirect cause of the phenomenon there can be no doubt. As long ago as 1858 Lister showed that animals with imperfect eyesight were not good colour-changers, and subsequently Pouchet ascertained that the sympathetic nerves, which run close to the vertebral column, transmitted to the colour-cells in the skin the impressions received through the eyes. Should these nerves be severed, or paralysed by atropine, the colour-cells will not respond to the light impressions."

This seems conclusive in regard to tinctmutation in fishes, but the