n the British Museum, in the
Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, and probably in other collections;
though perhaps some of the "finds" are not nearly as old as
Fitzstephen's day, for there seems to be good evidence that even in
London the primitive bone skate was not entirely superseded by
implements of steel at the latter part of last century.

One found about 1839 in Moorfields, in the boggy soil peculiar to that
district, is described as being formed of the bone of some animal, made
smooth on one side, with a hole at one extremity for a cord to fasten it
to the shoe. At the other end a hole is also drilled horizontally to a
depth of three inches, which might have received a plug, with another
cord to secure it more effectually.

There is hardly a greater difference between these old bone skates and
the "acmes" and club skates of to-day, than there is between the skating
of the Middle Ages and the artistic and graceful movements of good
performers of to-day. Indeed, skating as a fine art is entirely a thing
of modern growth. So little thought of was the exercise, that for long
after Fitzstephen's day we find few or no allusions to it, and up to the
Restoration days it appears to have been an amusement confined chiefly
to the lower classes, among whom it never reached any very high pitch of
art. "It was looked upon," says a recent writer, "much with the same
view that the boys on the Serpentine even now seem to adopt, as an
accomplishment, the acme of which was reached when the performer could
succeed in running along quickly on his skates, and finishing off with a
long and triumphant slide on two feet in a straight line forward. A
gentleman would probably then have no more thought of trying to execute
different figures on the ice than he would at the present day of dancing
in a drawing-room on the tips of his toes." Even as an amusement of the
common people it is not alluded to in any of the usual catalogues of
sport so often referred to.

THE MONKEYS OF INDIA.

A missionary in India gives an interesting account of the monkeys that
live in that far-away country. He says that in the morning, during the
cold season, the monkeys are always very listless, but as soon as they
are warmed with the rays of the sun, they are as playful as kittens.
They will jump over each other's backs, slap each other's faces, pull
each other's tails, and even make pretense to steal each other's babies.

The gray and the brown sp