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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



succumbed to geologic causes and became 

 extinct, Limulus survived the most stupen- 

 dous changes of land and sea. Whatever 

 the species of the San Francisco specimen 

 may be, as the first one taken in the Pacific 

 waters it is highly interesting. But, sup- 

 posing the specimen to be correctly deter- 

 mined as the species Polyphemus, that be- 

 comes a fact of very high significance. 

 Although our Eastern king-crab survived 

 the subsidence of large land areas, and the 

 localizing of new seas, it was shut into a 

 very circumscribed habitat the eastern 

 waters of the North Atlantic and the West 

 Indies, and not even found in South Ameri- 

 ca. In a word, it is an Atlantic form, and 

 in its new habitat furnishes a fact as re- 

 markable as if an African Hon should be 

 discovered in the American forests. It is 

 almost a certainty that its appearance on 

 the Pacific coast comes of an accidental in- 

 troduction of some Limulus-eggs at the time 

 that the United States Fish Commission in- 

 troduced into the California waters a lot of 

 lobsters taken from the East, as an experi- 

 ment in stocking the Pacific coast. This 

 was seven or eight years ago. The above 

 fact is another illustration of the faunal and 

 floral distribution brought about by man, 

 often, as in this instance, by sheer accident. 

 In the parlance of geologic time, it is a cer- 

 tainty that all plant and animal forms, 

 however restricted their habitats in Nature 

 may be, if they will bear acclimatizing, will 

 soon become so cosmopolitan that their his- 

 tory as indigenes can only be obtained from 

 libraries, where their life records shall be 

 found as the published work of the natural- 

 ists of to-day. 



Education and Crime. The London 

 " Spectator " remarks that the old idea that 

 education would of itself extirpate crime 

 has gradually been dissipated by experience. 

 " It was a foolish idea a priori, for there is 

 nothing in the mere development of intelli- 

 gence to remove the original causes of crime 

 or to cure either malice, or lust, or greed ; 

 and it died away before the evidence that 

 education rather changes the form of some 

 kinds of criminality than extinguishes crimi- 

 nality itself. The educated man swindles 

 when the boor would steal, but the instinct 

 of thievishness is the same in both, while 



greed is slightly increased by education." 

 It does not even make all men intelligent, for 

 " the new Anarchist faction, which rejects 

 all the teaching, not only of history, but of 

 the commonest facts of experience, and even 

 the conclusions of arithmetic, is led by edu- 

 cated men, sometimes of high intellectual 

 attainments." M. Elisee Reel us, author of 

 most delightful and learned geographical 

 books, is an anarchist ; Prince Krapotkine, 

 who counsels the destruction of society by 

 force, is a man of unusual cultivation ; Mr. 

 Hyndman, who, while he disclaims anarch- 

 ism, avows a desire to seize all capital, equal- 

 ize all men, and compel all to labor, is a 

 graduate of London University ; and many 

 of the cosmopolitan revolutionists are men 

 familiar with many literatures. We have 

 further been told, time and again, and are 

 still told, by the advocates of popular edu- 

 cation, that that would be in itself a strong 

 guarantee for social order. Education has 

 gone on diffusing its benefits among larger 

 proportions of mankind ; and now while New 

 England, Scotland, and Prussia, formerly 

 among the most educated states, were also 

 the most orderly, there are in Germany five 

 hundred thousand socialists " ; and " all over 

 the Western world, discontent with the or- 

 der of society, especially upon points which 

 can not be altered, appears to grow deeper 

 and more violent." Thus, while education 

 may still give us much in the end, " the old 

 enthusiastic hopes from it were, as regards 

 the time of their fruition, evidently illusory. 

 It is no more a panacea than any other, and 

 the good it does is as slow to develop itself 

 as the good that rain does. We have all 

 been just like the poor, and have expected 

 pleasant results too soon, and from mere 

 decrees, and from too little labor." 



Traits of the Somanlis. Mr. F. L. 



James has given an account of an explora- 

 tion made early in 18S4 into the Somauli 

 country of East Africa, in which he pene- 

 trated to places where he was the first Eu. 

 ropean visitor. The people seem in many 

 ways to approach more nearly to the ancient 

 Egyptians than any other African race with 

 which the author is acquainted. Their 

 swords are exactly like those used by the 

 ancient Egyptians. Every Somauli carries 

 two spears, a shield, and a short sword, and 



