96 SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS [Dro 



gaze like the beautiful ice-phenomenon, leaving only a gorgeous 

 memory behind. no. 



The "Doldrums" of Life. 



Seafaring people have, as if by common consent, divided the 

 ocean off into regions, and characterised them according to the 

 winds ; e.g., there are the " trade-wind regions," the " variables," 

 the "horse latitudes," the "doldrums," etc. The "equatorial 

 doldrums," besides being a region of calms and baffling winds, 

 is a region noted for its rains and clouds, which make it one 

 of the most oppressive and disagreeable places at sea. The 

 emigrant ships from Europe for Australia have to cross it. 

 They are of ten baffled in it for two or three weeks \ then the 

 children and the passengers who are of delicate health suffer 

 most. It is a frightful graveyard on the way-side to that golden 

 land. In crossing the equatorial doldrums the mariner has 

 passed a ring of clouds that encircles the earth. And do not 

 these doldrums illustrate a class of influences to which we are 

 all subject 1 ? Are we not all certain in our journey to have^days 

 of deep melancholy, when all is dismal, when our hopes are 

 baffled, when we make no progress and yet have no calm? 

 Then, indeed, we suffer ; and depression clouds the sky of all its 

 light. Take courage, drooping heart, and remember that thou 

 too hast a golden land in view ! T. 



Nature's Sentence upon Drones. 



It will be profitable to idle people to observe the arrangement 

 whereby nature condemns the drones to death in the bee com- 

 munity. No sooner is the business of swarming ended, and 

 the worker-bees satisfied there will be no lack of fertile queens, 

 when issues the terrible edict for the massacre of the drones. 

 Poor fellows ! It is to be hoped they comfort themselves with 

 the reflection that their fate is an everlasting homily, presented 

 by Nature in dogmatical but most effective fashion, of the use- 

 lessness of all who labour not for their living. If one must 

 die for the good of one's kind, by all means let it be as -a martyr. 

 Poor fellows ! how they dart in and out, and up and down the 

 hive, in the vain hope of escape. The workers are inexorable. 



