LEARNING TO WRITE. 795 



leech, Astacobdella, or Branchiobdella, while it is quite abundant on 

 ' the A. fluviatilis, at any rate in some rivers (e. g., the Saale, in North 

 Germany). 



A. fluviatilis is largely eaten in France, attaining to the very re- 

 spectable size of five inches or so in length, while our smaller A. tor- 

 rentium is neglected from this point of view. We can recommend 

 it, however, when boiled in salt and water, as nearly if not quite equal- 

 ing the prawn. The poisonous properties of the flesh of crayfish might 

 perhaps be considered as justly falling within the scope of the first 

 chapter of Professor Huxley's treatise. As in the case of many mol- 

 lusca and some true fishes, there appears to be a substance present 

 which acts as an irritant poison upon the human organism, and to its 

 action some persons are more liable than are others, while certain con- 

 ditions of the crayfish seem to favor the development of a large 

 amount of this poisonous body. A case was recently reported, in a 

 French medical journal, of the poisoning of six persons who partook 

 of a dish of crayfishes — in one case with fatal result. — Nature. 



LEAENING TO WRITE. 



WE wonder sometimes, as we wade through a mass of correspon- 

 dence, whether it is possible to teach good writing. The doubt 

 may seem absurd, considering that the majority of civilized mankind 

 can write, that every qualified teacher among one or two hundred 

 thousand in Western Europe thinks himself or herself competent to 

 teach the art, and that there must be some hundreds of men in Eng- 

 land, or possibly some thousands, who make a living of some sort by 

 practicing this specialty. Everybody, we shall be told, is taught, and 

 some few people write well, and consequently to teach people to write 

 well must be possible. Still, we have this little bit of evidence in 

 favor of hesitation. Nobody ever saw anybody who wrote a thor- 

 oughly good hand, and who had been regularly taught to do it. 

 Good handwritings exist, undoubtedly, and are, we should say, rapidly 

 on the increase ; but the possessors of the art never admit that they 

 acquired it through teaching, and, in the majority of cases, never were 

 taught. When cross-examined, they always afiirm that some man or 

 woman taught them to write, and that then a certain inclination or 

 compulsion of circumstance, or desire to do everything Avell, or, in fre- 

 quent instances, a caste feeling, provoked them to teach themselves- to 

 write well. They were not taught, except in the most rudimentary 

 sense of the word, and we do not know how they should be. Tutors 

 and governesses have all caught up a system from the professional 

 writing-masters, and the professional writing-masters are all dominated 



