ther instance I may adduce is that of the horror of blood which
is curiously different in animals of the same species and in the
same animals at different times. I have had a good deal of
experience of the behaviour of oxen at the sight of blood, and found
it to be by no means uniform. In my South African travels I relied
chiefly on half-wild slaughter oxen to feed my large party, and
occasionally had to shoot one on every second day. Usually the rest
of the drove paid no particular heed to the place of blood, but at
other rare times they seemed maddened and performed a curious sort
of war-dance at the spot, making buck-leaps, brandishing their horns,
and goring at the ground. It was a grotesque proceeding, utterly
unlike the usual behaviour of cattle. I only witnessed it once
elsewhere, and that was in the Pyrenees, where I came on a herd that
was being driven homewards. Each cow in turn, as it passed a
particular spot, performed the well-remembered antics. I asked, and
learned that a cow had been killed there by a bear a few days
previously. The natural horror at blood, and it may be the
consequent dislike of red, is common among mankind; but I have seen
a well-dressed child of about four years old poking its finger with
a pleased innocent look into the bleeding carcase of a sheep hung up
in a butcher's shop, while its nurse was inside.

The subject of character deserves more statistical investigation
than it has yet received, and none have a better chance of doing it
well than schoolmasters; their opportunities are indeed most enviable.
It would be necessary to approach the subject wholly without
prejudice, as a pure matter of observation, just as if the children
were the fauna and flora of hitherto undescribed species in an
entirely new land.

CRIMINALS AND THE INSANE.

Criminality, though not very various in its development, is
extremely complex in its origin; nevertheless certain general
conclusions are arrived at by the best writers on the subject, among
whom Prosper Despine is one of the most instructive. The ideal
criminal has marked peculiarities of character: his conscience is
almost deficient, his instincts are vicious, his power of
self-control is very weak, and he usually detests continuous labour.
The absence of self-control is due to ungovernable temper, to passion,
or to mere imbecility, and the conditions that determine the
particular description of crime are the character of the instincts
a