FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



139 



reposing for the last fifteen months, was 

 followed by the ceremonies at the crypt. 

 M. J. B. Pasteur said to the council of the 

 institute, in behalf of the family, " I intrust 

 to you this tomb which we have raised to 

 our father in this institute which he loved so 

 dearly." Addresses were delivered by M. 

 Rambaud, Minister of Education, and M. 

 Baudin, President of the Municipality, and 

 an address by M. Legouve was read by M. 

 Gaston Boissier. 



Bachelor Seals. The young male seals, 

 commonly called " bachelors," are very much 

 like the females in size and color. During 

 the breeding season they are not permitted 

 by the bulls to enter the rookeries, hence 

 they herd together separately on the so- 

 called "hauling grounds." Unlike their 

 seniors, who in the " harems " are busy 

 founding families, these young bachelors 

 have no fixed place of abode, but range at 

 will over a large area of ground, usually 

 sand beaches near the rookeries. Known 

 also as " killable " seals, they are driven 

 from their haunts and killed with clubs at 

 about three years of age, the time when their 

 fur is at its best. Small four-year-olds and 

 large two-year-olds, being about the same size 

 as the bachelors, are also hunted. Among 

 these herds may sometimes be found bulls 

 from four to six years old, who, being too 

 cowardly to assert themselves in the harems, 

 are forced to keep company with these young- 

 sters. Another mode of hunting them is 

 called " pelagic sealing," which means kill- 

 ing them in the open sea with firearms, or 

 with the spear and club. In order to digest 

 their food, they lie sleeping on the surface 

 of the water, and the hunter finds it easy 

 enough to steal up in his boat and spear the 

 defenseless animal. This is really wholesale 

 slaughter, for the hunter indiscriminately 

 kills whatever lies in his way, even the nurs- 

 ing mothers, thus leaving the pups to die of 

 starvation. 



Nationality and Scenery. In the intro- 

 duction to an article in the Deutiche Rund- 

 schau descriptive of the German landscape, 

 Herr Friedrich Ratzel shows by a few well- 

 directed allusions how the intrinsic charac- 

 ter of the scenery of a region, even in its 

 apparently most natural features, is affected 



by the nationality that occupies it, and re- 

 flects the character of that nationality. The 

 allusions are local, but the principle they 

 illustrate is general. A country with such a 

 history as Germany's can have no purely 

 natural landscape. The people and their 

 land are the resultant of a long material de- 

 velopment. When the Romans knew Ger- 

 many a barbarian region with few inhabit- 

 ants the works of man were less in evidence, 

 and Nature prevailed. The effects of cultiva- 

 tion have worked in two principal directions : 

 First, the woods are cleared up, the water is 

 confined within limits, the habitations of 

 men are multiplied and enlarged and made 

 more durable, and new plants and animals 

 are brought in. Then uncontemplated 

 changes step in, which proceed of them- 

 selves from the works of cultivation. With 

 the drying of the soil the climate is modi- 

 fied. The introduction of new plants and 

 animals imposes new features upon the con- 

 ditions of life. Where before only stretches 

 of heath, moor, and swamp formed natural 

 openings in the predominant forest, exten- 

 sive woodless regions arise through the la- 

 bors of man, from which the shade-loving 

 plants and animals that were protected by 

 the forest gloom disappear, and other inhab- 

 itants are at home in the cultivated fields. 

 The variations in the particular shaping of 

 these changes are more especially marked 

 where the boundaries run through mountain 

 regions. In the Saxon Erzgebirge the for- 

 ests have lost all their wildness, and planta- 

 tions of firs and oaks grow in regular order, 

 all nearly of a height, with no trees towering 

 into prominence, and the mountain has the 

 trimmed and symmetrical appearance of a 

 nursery. The brooks are tamed, dammed, 

 and made to earn their right to be as the 

 servants of the mills. Passing over the 

 mountains and going down the Bohemian 

 side, we are in the woods again, with the 

 valleys free and irregular, and the brooks 

 running according to their own will. The 

 contrast is seen again, but less marked, in 

 going up from Bohemia and down into Ba- 

 varia. Within Germany itself the garden- 

 tilled plots near the industrial centers and 

 the little rectangular holdings of the south- 

 western and middle districts, each distinctly 

 marked off from its neighbor, and making 

 the whole look like a party-colored checker- 



