their way through the water in preparation for the time when age shall force most of them to settle down to a life of crawling, creeping, winding, or even vegetative existence on the bottom of the sea.

With and about and around all these tiny creatures drifts still another world of life - billions upon billions of onecelled animals and plants. And, were we of sufficient lack of stature to observe these adequately, we should be hard put to it often to tell which was plant and which animal; such easy marks of difference as green coloring matter and lack of movement are meaningless here. We are in a strange cosmos where no second glance would be given to a geranium with wings or a puppy with roots. This third world furnishes an abundance of nourishment for the second, which is that of Zoea. And Zoea crumbs fall from the banquet table of the fish fraternity, and so on.

the

In the matter of privacy, the famous goldfish lives in an opaque seraglio in comparison with Zoea. The latter is absolutely transparent, and nothing is hidden from friend or enemy heart, beating sometimes fast, some times slow, or stopping, the food going cheerfully on its way through the body, while we can see the muscles move as behind clear glass.

For a few weeks Zoea succeeds in keeping near the surface, but, as it moults again and again, its oars are blunted and it gets heavier, until it gives up and rolls about helplessly on the bottom. The fifth Zoea now moults into a being somewhat awfully like a crab, but one misshapen and gone all wrong. It is as horrible in disposition as in bodily form. Megalops it is called, and claws its way through the water, feeding voraciously. Its own brothers and lesser Zoea nephews are especial titbits. Another month passes, while the crab spirit grows stronger, and for a

week or more it clings to floating nuts or weeds or bits of wood, and at last crawls unsteadily out on land. Here it is probably devoured by its father, mother, or relatives, for it is still only a twelfth of an inch in length. If, however, it runs the gauntlet, it digs a tiny burrow, and for the first time in its life has a short, safe breathing space.

When it moults into one-eighth inch of crab, it observes with interest (or should do so) that one of its front pincers is larger than the other. It is easy for us to imagine how exciting it must be to watch one's figure alter after each moult; to hold up one's hands and see one growing larger and larger, while the other stays unchanged. It is fortunate that one does remain unaltered, for the great claw is more in the way than it is useful. While the body of the crab is drab gray, exactly the color of damp sand, the enormous claw is of a conspicuous ivory-white.

If a man of average size and weight changed a pair of mittens every week, and developed along the lines of a male fiddler crab, his hand finally would measure ten feet in length and weigh sixty pounds. With such a handicap (no pun intended), he would surely have trouble at a lunch counter.

Day by day now the growing fiddler leaves its burrow and follows the tide up and down the beach, feeding on all the flotsam and the windrows of dead and living creatures, and the algal manna spread twice a day by some benignant god of fiddlers. If the crab is hungry he must envy the lady fiddlers who shovel in the food with both hands, while he must lug the great claw about and ply his single little spoon as best he may.

IV

Our fiddler, whether right- or lefthanded, is now finally started upon his way of life. Up to this time he has been

I can take no conceit for this, for all his cosmos is divided into two parts things harmless and things unknown, and therefore probably harmful. First are the darkness and the sunshine, the wind, the rain, the rising tide, and all quiescent things. A heron- a hungry carcinophagous (look it up, it's a good forthright-sounding word) heron-who has the patience to imitate the immobility of his likeness on a Japanese screen, such a heron is but a spindling bush or is not at all to the fiddler peering out of his burrow. But if the bulging eyes of the heron so much as wink, if the smallest muscle gives an anticipatory twitch, the spindling bush becomes what it is a cancrivorous (you may like this one better, if your forbears came from Rome instead of Athens) horror. It may then stand still till doomsday, and the crab will remain in his burrow until a few minutes after that time.

Immediately the morning sun has boomed down the Valley of the Cul-deSac and set fire to Port au Prince and the waters of the great gulf, my fiddler peers out from behind his plug of earth -his barricade against unknown and therefore imminent dangers of the night. He pushes it aside and stands aloft beside his burrow. The new day dawns

and find food, and he must detect and secure a mate and ensure future offspring. Not being a self-conscious 'higher' animal, these are to him sacred responsibilities, none of which he may avoid.

It was at this moment that I settled down to a comfortable position within my decayed and stranded craft, and watched him over the crumbling sternpost. A small flock of blackbirds dashed past the mangrove tree over my head, and the fiddler dived sideways into his hole. I stretched out my hand, rested the ends of all five fingers on the sand, and waited. Soon the tip of an eyestalk appeared and then all of it, and fiddler was above ground again. He surprised me now, for after only a few seconds he walked on toe-tips to my thumb and gently nibbled it with his small claw, then strolled around and between my fingers. His sense of sight was apparently the dominant one, for the odor of my hand, and, as I subsequently found, even the roar from a shotgun, conveyed nothing. It is difficult to study fiddlers seriously, they are so comical in their appearance and motions and so absurdly like human gnomes, and yet the slightest smile or laugh will send them headlong. Whenever my fiddler came out from his burrow, he cleaned himself carefully, wiping off every fleck of mud from eyes and whatever parts of himself he could reach.

A file of fiddler brethren passed and my crab raised aloft and brandished his great claw-broadsword, battleaxe, mammoth shears - all similes fail. He was answered by every male in sight, and a youngster ran up and made one or two passes at him. The ebbing tide was lapping a yard or two away, and all the host gradually made its way

down to the water. With eyes on high the little chaps worked at feeding with might and main. They simply spooned the mud into their mouths and there made selection of edible morsels, or with the tiny forceps of the small claw picked up bits of seaweed. Once full retreat was sounded a false alarm, for one crab had seen another frightened by some youngster down the beach, who suddenly caught sight of a small hermit crab bumping along peacefully enough and fled headlong, doing whatever crabs do instead of screaming.

My muscles rebelled at last and I sat up to ease them, and by the action sent every crab into its burrow. They even ran toward me in order to reach their holes. All was quiet for the space of two minutes, and then the elves and hobgoblins again appeared. When the procession had fairly begun, I saw a new development. Every male in sight stiffened to attention, and lifted his great claw as high as he could reach. And down the line came a female fiddler. There were others of her sex in sight, some larger, but this particular one worked magic. The frantic gesticulating and waving on all sides would have stirred any blasé movie queen to appreciation. Food and danger were forgotten. The only thing in the world was to get one's ivory-white claw noticed, and then gently to persuade Her to enter one's burrow. The action was that of a mighty gesticulation, a beckoning in five jerks, the last of which almost threw the crab over on its back. When all the male crabs in the colony were suddenly seized with this frenzy of persuasion, the distant view was exactly that of a mob of cheering human beings, the simile being all the more remarkable because of the desperate and complete silence which

clothed the emotional outburst of these crustacean citizens.

The difference between this gesture of the right hand of passionate fellowship and that of shaking the fist in the face of any passing male was hardly to be discerned. In the case of the courtship the fiddler would often freeze into a statuesque pose for three or four minutes at a time. And if any man sneers at fiddler crabs because they are inedible and hence unworthy of notice, let him try to hold a sixtypound weight at arm's length. The crab's record is ten minutes.

My Haitian fiddler crabs were christened sixty years ago by a certain Dr. Smith, who called them Uca mordaxfrom Uça, a native Brazilian name, and a Roman's appreciation of their pinching and biting ability. Although a crab's sand burrow is his castle, and the most savory morsel or most charming fiddler wench can tempt him hardly more than a yard or two away, yet his race is widespread. Many times in past centuries his ancestors must have clung fearfully but tenaciously to floating trees and other oceanic jetsam, and drifted far and wide, for his brethren are found to-day from the Bahamas throughout the West Indies, clear around the Gulf of Mexico and on south as far as Rio.

In the course of ten visits I observed a noticeable increase in an acceptance of me as something not wholly inimical. I should dearly love to identify myself in the fiddlers' notions as a swaying mangrove for harmlessness. I believe I should find more than the three basic problems. The courtship I think would prove to be more complex, and actual uses more apparent and vital for the huge claw, twice as long and nearly half as heavy as all the rest of its owner.

I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of dispatch dated August 1.

On the tenth of September the Italian troops crossed the Roman frontier. I immediately left Como, where I was staying. The railway through the Roman territory had already ceased running regularly, but a military train took me within twentyfive miles of Rome. From thence a wagon brought me to the city, after many hours of dusty travel, through the now parched and deserted Campagna. We met no travelers; no one was at work in the fields, and we saw nothing of the Italian troops, until within about five miles from Rome a small encampment was seen on a distant hill. A little further on the railway bridge had been destroyed by the Romans. Near this we crossed the River Anio, by the Nomentana bridge, which was guarded by the first Papal troops we had met.

In a little while we entered Rome by the Porta Pia, where earth barricades had been erected and a deep trench dug outside the gate. The gate itself had been padded with sandbags, and other preparations made to receive the enemy. All the other gates were pretty much barricaded in much the same way. From this time until the attack began on the twentieth, Rome was in a state of quiet expectancy, almost, it seemed, of apathy. The streets were comparatively deserted, most of the shops closed, all telegraphic communications cut off; from the twelfth until the twenty-third of September the mails were not received. On the walls were posted proclamations declaring the city in a state of siege; forbidding all people to enter or leave the city, or to assemble in any considerable numbers in the streets. Still they did assemble to some extent, and quietly talked over the situation.

A careless observer, particularly one who read the Roman newspapers, all of which were under strict Government control, might have supposed the Papal Government to have been reasonably popular, and to have relied implicitly upon a faithful people. But although they have made violent exertions for some time past, they have been able to induce only two hundred additional volunteers to enlist. With the exception of these, and the few Romans already in its service, not one of the people raised a hand for the defense of the Papacy. A body of men who are said to have been employed hitherto

by the Government as spies were uniformed and constantly patrolled the streets. These were assisted by the Squadriglieri, about seven hundred in number, many of whom were refugee Italian banditti, pardoned by His Holiness on condition that they should serve in his ranks. To such defenders was the Pope reduced!

It was known here that numerous propositions, looking towards a peaceful settlement of the question, were being made by the Italian Government. However, all propositions were rejected; the Pope was firm, cheerful, and hopeful. In the meantime he held special services in St. Peter's and visited the monasteries and nunneries, telling the inmates that the Italians would never enter Rome. They might, he said, come to the gates, but there they would be stayed. Only once did I hear of his having given way; last Saturday, during a service at Ara Coeli, he burst into tears and all present wept with him. On the evening of September 19 he visited the Porta San Giovanni and blessed the barricades and the banditti-soldiers defending them. On the fifteenth news was received of the fall of Civitavecchia; on the sixteenth the Italian troops began leisurely to assemble, and by the eighteenth they completely surrounded Rome.

In the meantime such preparations as the Papal troops wished to make had been made, and they anxiously looked forward to an attack; in fact they provoked it by firing on the Italian troops, who did not reply. The enemy were 60,000 strong, the Romans 13,000, with an immense extent of wall to defend. No one not Papalini supposed for a moment that it could be successfully defended, although the Army here seemed sanguine as to the result. On the twentieth of September at 5 A.M. the attack began by a sharp fire of musketry and a heavy cannonading

of about forty shots to the minute, extending from near the Porta del Popolo to the Porta San Giovanni, along about one third of the whole city wall. A slight attack was also kept up at the Porta San Pancrazio, on the opposite side of the city. The most severe cannonading was at, and near, the Porta Pia and the Porta San Giovanni. At eight o'clock the firing was about twenty-five to the minute; it then slackened materially. The guns at the Porta Pia were soon after dismounted, and a little later the gate at San Giovanni was entirely gone, but guns were manned and discharged until the enemy were within a few feet of them.

The old walls generally proved utterly useless against heavy artillery; in four or five hours they were in some places completely swept away. A clear breach was made near the Porta Pia, fifty feet wide, and the Italian soldiers in overwhelming force flowed through it, and literally filled the city. Simultaneously the Porta San Giovanni was carried by assault; a white flag was then seen flying from the dome of St. Peter's, and the city was known to have surrendered. After the cannonading ceased, the Papal troops made but a feeble resistance. They who a moment before ruled Rome with a rod of iron were nearly all prisoners or had taken refuge in the Castel San Angelo, or St. Peter's Square. Yesterday they were all sent away from Rome. As a general rule they were only too glad to submit quietly, except the Squadriglieri, some of whom, dreading the gallows, made a desperate resist

ance.

I believe that no private citizens made the least effort or demonstration in favor of the Papal Government. During the attack the streets were crowded with expectant, orderly people. The fire was directed entirely