552 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



glories of his country and of the present epoch." Perhaps one of the 

 most significant of recent testimonials of appreciation of the Syn- 

 thetic Philosophy is the announcement of the publication of a com- 

 plete translation of First Principles into Japanese by Mr. Fujii, who 

 has devoted several years to the work. " Mr. Spencer's works," it 

 is added, " have long had a great attraction for Japanese transla- 

 tors." Mr. Spencer is now engaged upon the second volume of the 

 Biology. 



It was formerly Mr. Spencer's custom to spend about nine months 

 of the year in London and the three summer months in the country, 

 but for several years past he has found the fogs and other gloomy 

 winter conditions of the metropolis too trying. The confinement en- 

 forced upon him by increasing feebleness has, moreover, precluded his 

 enjoyment of the social privileges, particularly of the Athenaeum 

 Club, which were one of the attractions that made a town residence 

 tolerable. He therefore, at the beginning of 1898, took up his resi- 

 dence in Brighton, where he has a house looking upon the sea, and 

 giving him the benefit of the flood of light which that place enjoys. 



At present Mr. Spencer is able to give very little time to work, 

 and being confined to the house most of the time, the routine of his 

 daily life admits of little variety. His first business in the day is 

 to hear the morning paper read; then he attends to his correspond- 

 ence, and if well enough does a little work. If any matter is going 

 through the press he will generally be seen with a proof close by. 

 His afternoon is spent in such relaxation as is afforded by scan- 

 ning the illustrated papers and magazines, listening to music, 

 which must always be classical, or, if sufficiently well, a drive; 

 and he retires at ten o'clock. 



IT is often asked, Miss Mary H. Kingsley says in her West African 

 Studies, whether Christianity or Mohammedanism is to possess Africa 

 " as if the choice of Fate lay between these two religions alone. I do not 

 think it is so, or at least it is not wise for a mere student to ignore the 

 other thing in the affair, fetich, which is, as it were, a sea wherein all things 

 suffer a sea change. For, remember, it is not Christianity alone that be- 

 comes tinged with fetich, or gets ingulfed and dominated by it. Islam, 

 when it strikes the true heart of Africa, the great forest belt region, fares 

 but little better, though it is more recent than Christianity, and though it 

 is preached by men who know the make of the African mind." 



PRESIDENT CHARLES W. DABNY, Jr., of the University of Tennessee, 

 once said in an address that when in school, where the work was all done 

 " at the point of the hickory, so to speak," the best teacher he had " was 

 the kindly old neighborhood loafer," who roamed the woods with him, told 

 him of the times of the wild flowers and the habits of the birds, and 

 taught, him to shoot the long rifle. He followed the " natural method, and 

 showed a pupil how to do a thing by doing it." 



