74 6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The prairie-dog (Cynomes ludovicianus) 

 is migratory, although it moves slowly, ac- 

 complishing hardly more than half a mile a 

 year. Apparently, their object is to obtain 

 fresh food, for they eat root and branch as 

 they go. The leaders are, invariably, the 

 young, who are constantly driven out by 

 their more mature and powerful brethren. 

 Their vacated holes are occupied by owls 

 and rattle-snakes, but whether these prove 

 enemies or not I do not know. 



I strongly suspect that the cause of mi- 

 gration in the lemmings is the parasites 

 which infest their bodies. These, after a few 

 years, increase to such numbers as to be 

 unendurable ; then the lemmings set out and 

 are never known to return until they have 

 overcome their enemies in the flood. 



S. E. Wilber. 



Greeley, Colorado, Feb. 28, 1874. 



MR. SPENCER AND THE WOMEN. 



Sir : Two papers have already appeared 

 in your columns relating to Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer's " Study of Sociology : " — a direct 

 review of the work, January 10th, to which 

 Yiscount Amberley has given the credit of 

 fairly appending to it his own name, thus 

 placing his comments on the author's view 

 of women on the true class-footing of their 

 being the judgment of a man ; and a letter, 

 December 20th, confined to this point, to 

 which, through its being signed only with 

 the initial " L.," class-weight of this sort is 

 entirely wanting, notwithstanding the actual 

 force of its remarks — thus forming, as I 

 wish to argue, a notable instance of the un- 

 desirableness of that practice of signing by 

 mere initials which is contended for in an- 

 other article of the first-mentioned number, 

 on the ground of its being a protection to 

 the modest, retiring, sensitive nature of 

 some writers who yet feel that they have 

 something to say which would be well said. 

 My object, then, is now the twofold one, of 

 on the one hand repeating (with some dif- 

 ference) the main arguments of " L.," under 

 the avowed character of a woman ; and on 

 the other of pressing upon my fellow-women 

 the present necessity, as especially called 

 forth by Mr. Spencer's recent work, of wom- 

 en not indulging on this occasion in the 



moral timidity which the hiding of their 

 real names is the effect of. It is the pecu- 

 liarity of the case that, as all writers have 

 hitherto been taken for granted to be men, 

 there has sprung a natural desire among 

 actual women-writers to play a trick on the 

 public, which has thence caused them as 

 much as possible to force the matter of 

 their own thoughts into the mould of those 

 of men. And although, perhaps, there may 

 be little harm in this where it is fiction 

 alone that is concerned, I contend that it is 

 really a deep injury in relation to those 

 practical questions with which specially all 

 the literature of journals must be occupied. 

 I share strongly with "L." the disap- 

 pointment which he or she expresses on the 

 turn which to me also appears indicated in 

 Mr. Spencer's design against the present 

 desire arisen in women to take their part in 

 the social regulating of their country. I 

 mean, chiefly, as to those appended state- 

 ments of his, cast as if casually into the 

 foot-notes at the end -of his volume, which, 

 however, contain in this peculiar instance 

 what must be taken by his readers as a sort 

 of a priori basis to his whole intended rea- 

 soning on the subject to come; the whole 

 statements, crowded into almost a single 

 page, regard matters on which it is the very 

 claim of women that no settled opinion is 

 yet possible. Mr. Spencer signifies that 

 whatever fruits of the higher kind of in- 

 tellect women possibly may produce are, 

 nevertheless, by a certain degree of " nor- 

 mal limitation," to be accounted of as mere 

 mental monstrosities — mere aberrations from 

 the true course of development which is the 

 only profitable course. He obviously thinks 

 it nothing against such course that some of 

 the number of men should exclude them- 

 selves from the ordinary duties of domestic 

 and social life, in order that, by strained ef- 

 forts at intellectual illumination, they may 

 guide those self-efforts of commoner men, 

 which, in the case of men, he asserts are 

 the only true means of real culture ; but 

 with women he implies that all such seclu- 

 sion can inevitably produce nothing of any 

 value so long as men are at hand to afford 

 the required lights. Nothing but an abso- 

 lute dearth of men present to do that for 

 women which normally they cannot do for 

 themselves — the case referred to being 



