Febrcaey 1, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



91 



Ix the Jatakas, or Buddhist Birth Stories, so called be- 

 cause they narrate the exploits of the Buddha in the 550 

 births through which he passed before attaining Buddha- 

 hood, there is a story called the " Flight of the Beasts," 

 which the recent ridiculous scare in Birmingham — the 

 " Brummagem scare," as we may name it — calls to mind. 



* * * 



This Daddabha Jataka tells of a hare who, sitting under 

 a cocoanut sapling, thought to himself, " If this earth were 

 to come to an end, where should I be, I wonder ? " At that 

 moment a bilra-fruit fell upon a leaf of the sapling, and so 

 startled the hare that he scampered away, thinking that the 

 event was really happening. Another hare, seeing him run, 

 and learning the cause, started off; then a third and a foui-th 

 hare took to flight without knowing the reason, and so on 

 until one hundred thousand hares in like manner followed 

 their example. Likewise all the other animals who .saw 

 them, asking the meaning, went at headlong speed, and as 

 the Bodisat chanced to see them, and heard what fear 

 caused their flight, he bethought himself how to save them 

 from destruction. So rushing with a lion's speed, he out- 

 stripped them, and then roaring a lion's roar, so that they 

 halted aflrighted, he asked them why they ran. And the 

 elephants replied that they knew not what was the sign of 

 the end of the world, but that the lions knew ; and in like 

 manner one beast after another answered until they came 

 to the hares, and last of all to the first hare, who told the 

 Bodisat of the falling of the bilra-fruit. The Bodisat then 

 took the hare on his back, and bounded along to the forest 

 where grew the sapling, when, as it chanced, a bilra-fruit 

 fell upon the sapling, and the Bodisat returned with the 

 hare to the assembled beasts, whom he dispersed with words 

 of comfort. 



At Birmingham the bilra fruit fell in the shape of an 

 astrologer's propbecj- that dire things would happen on 

 January 11 by reason of the conjunction of Mars and 

 Uranus. The old women (were they, after all, hares en- 

 chanted for the nonce into human shape 1) scampered to the 

 police stations, and, foiling to get support or comfort from 

 the constables, clubbed their pennies together and bought 

 Bibles. Others stayed in their beds, their faith in the 

 prediction confirmed by the Cimmerian fog that enveloped 

 the town. And thLs is a.d. 1S88 1 



* * * 



OcR readers may like to know that Messrs. Longmans 

 announce the publication of Mr. Edward Clodd's " Story of 

 Creation " in the early part of this month. The substance 

 of the book appeared in this Journal, but the chapters have 

 teen revised and in great part rewritten, while the text has 

 the advantage of being illustrated by numerous woodcuts 

 and diagrams. The price of the book is six shillings. 



<Rebietu0. 



The Sinclairs of Enjlanl. (London : Triibner iC' Co. 

 1887.) — Notwithstanding his bad grammar and worse con- 

 struction, it is impossible to be angry with the anonymous 

 author of this book. His overwhelming enthusiasm for his 

 subject is such as to disarm criticism. W.os there ever, in 

 the world's historj-, the equal of this Sinclair family of his ? 

 If so, it will have to be sought for in the Heroic Ages. 

 Descended from Odin, god of the Dacians, a Prankish 

 branch of the Sinclairs settles in Neustria, allies itself by 

 marriage with the family of Xorse Rollo " the Ganger," and 

 takes high position in the new Duchy of Normandy. No 



fewer than nine of its members cross the Channel with theii- 

 cousin, Duke William, and fight by his side at the battle of 

 Hastings ; eight of these are rewarded with possessions and 

 earldoms all over the conquered country, and become 

 foundei-s of the Sinclaii-s of England ; the ninth goes north, 

 becomes Steward of Scotland (predecessor in ofiice, and per- 

 haps ancestor of the royal Stuarts), and ancestor of the 

 Sinclairs of Scotland. As time goes on more Norman kins- 

 men crowd into England till there is hardly a noble family 

 there with which they do not ally themselves. And now 

 the climax of their gre.atness arrives. When Henry I. died 

 the real heir to the English throne was— a Sinclair I In 

 the eloquent words of the author, " Had fees not been 

 partible, even to kingdoms, and had the Salique law been 

 preserved (both .solvents avoided in matters of private estate 

 to wonderful extent), the monarch of England now would 

 be of this lineage, as the legitimate heir to Henry I., the 

 last male of the Norman dynasty on the throne. The 

 Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts were, on principles of 

 just primogeniture and true male consanguinity, interlopers. 

 Since Henry schemed for his daughter Matilda, the crown 

 of England has been the prize of adventurers, and not too 

 high type even of that class. The FuJcs, or Plantagenets, 

 were a lot of Gallic robbei-s, not of the gallant Viking, but 

 of the common thief complexion : the Tudors were the fruit 

 of a mesalliance, of a queen of England, daughter of a French 

 mad king, to a little brewer of Wales (and they have left 

 sufficient proofs of their Welsh low origin by essentially 

 weak, cruel, immoi-al, Celtic tyrannical inefliciency, Eliza- 

 beth, the greatest by far of them, being, in all human, if 

 not legal, probability, not Celtic at all, but an energetic 

 p]nglish London Bullen) ; the Stuarts were underling, provin- 

 cial, and upstart, in the exact meanings of those words ; but 

 the Scandinavian Eollo line were royal time out of mind, 

 and their conquests have been all of the royal order. . . . 

 Nothing better than, nothing equal to, them, has ever walked 

 the globe." What a loss the English people have sustained 

 without knowing it ! After such a singular example of self- 

 abnegation on the part of these Sinclairs, we are not sur- 

 prised to find that the family has gradually died out in 

 England until, at the present time, an EnglLsh Sinclair is a 

 rarity. But who will say that their history was not worth 

 writing ? 



rppingham School Songs and Borth Lyrics. By 

 Edward Thrixg, Head-Master of LTppingham School 

 from 1853 to 1887. (London : T. Fisher Fnwin.) — 

 Addresses on Educational Subjects. By the same. — These 

 elegantly printed and bound books will "be hailed with plea- 

 sure by the Old Boys of the school whose fame its great 

 head-master made. Probably to them the chief interest 

 will be in the poems and lyrics, which teem with memory- 

 kindling references to the anxious time of the happy sojourn 

 of the school at Borth — happy to the boys, anxious to the 

 governors and head-master of the school, uprooted from its 

 ancient home, and dropped as from the clouds on the 

 western coast ; but to the general public the Addresses are 

 highly deserving of thoughtful perusal. Every schoolmaster 

 and every schoolmistress should study what this great master 

 taught. Ill could he be spared from a profession half edu- 

 cated, badly organised, or hardly organised at all, and with- 

 out a definite belief in the importance of its work. 

 Teachers are not minders, schools are not creches, and the 

 work done by the teacher is not represented in value by the 

 salary paid for it. Thring was pre-eminently a man who 

 estimated his profession highly. His ideal was high. He 

 appears in these pages as he was ; not a pro\-ider of cei-tain 

 doles of Greek or mathematics, with which, for a considera- 

 tion, he furnished his pupils. He did not measure them 

 with a Latin rule only. The complex entity known as a 



