360 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cises of worship, and that Protestant religious influences shall posi- 

 tively prevail. Such being their attitude, they can not consistently 

 object to a division of the public moneys. They want sectarian teach- 

 ing, but that of their own sect. This is what the Roman Catholics 

 ask also. If these claims are strongly insisted upon, it seems that to 

 divide the funds is not only just but the only thing that can be done 

 in a free country, unless taxation for educational purposes be abandoned 

 altogether. If Protestants desire the public-school system continued, 

 they will be careful how they press the theory that the schools must 

 be religious or under religious influences. On the ground which they 

 ordinarily take, they have not the slightest right to oppose the division 

 asked for by the Romanists. The only position from which these 

 latter can be successfully resisted (I mean logically) is the platform 

 of non-religious, or scientific teaching which has been above set forth. 

 [ To be continued.] 



THE HOUND OF THE PLAINS. 



Bt eenest ingersoll. 



A PICTURE of the Great Plains is incomplete without a coyote or 

 two, hurrying furtively through the distance. 

 The coyote is a wolf — a wolf about two thirds the size of that one 

 which haunts forests and the pages of story-books. He has a long, 

 lean body ; legs a trifle short, but sinewy and active ; a head more 

 foxy than wolfish, for the nose is long and pointed ; the yellow eyes 

 are set in spectacle-frames of black eyelids, and the hanging, tan- 

 trimmed ears, may be erected, giving a well-merited air of alertness to 

 their wearer ; a tail — straight as a pointer's — also fox-like, for it is 

 bushy beyond the ordinary lupine type, and a shaggy, large-maned, 

 wind-ruffled, dust-gathering coat of dingy white, suffused with tawny 

 brown, or often decidedly brindled : 



"A shade in the stubhle, a ghost by the wall, 

 Now leaping, now limping, now risking a fall; 

 Top-eared and large-jointed, but ever alway 

 A thoroughly vagabond outcast in gray." 



Such is the coyote — genus loci of the plains ; an Ishmaelite of the 

 desert ; a consort of rattlesnake and vulture ; the tyrant of his in- 

 feriors ; jackal to the puma ; a bushwhacker upon the flanks of the 

 buffalo armies ; the pariah of his own race, and despised by mankind. 

 Withal, he maintains himself and his tribe increases ; he outstrips ani- 

 mals fleeter than himself ; he foils those of far greater strength ; he 

 excels all his rivals in cunning and intelligence ; he furnishes to the 

 Indian not only a breed of domestic dogs, but in many canine races 



