the merchants and the Government of Afghanistan have benefited. The facts thus favor a more enlightened policy, and they may even have made it clear to Habibullah that his father's policy was mistaken.

At any rate, there is enough to justify the belief that whenever the Indian Government takes up the discussion of a tariff with Afghanistan it will find Habibullah far more willing to listen to reasonable suggestions than in the past. It may be well to fix with precision exactly what the Indian Government want him most to do. The principal Indian produce for which we wish to obtain a market in Afghanistan and Central Asia is tea. There was a period when it seemed as if Indian tea might command those markets, but these hopes were killed by the late Ameer's policy. If Habibullah can be induced to place only a light import duty on it they will revive, and very satisfactory results must follow for both parties. It is true that Russia's custom houses come down to the Oxus, and that the Russian import duty is even higher than the Afghan. But it may be observed that the markets south of the Oxus are extensive and profitable, and also that the Russian customs line may not prove so impenetrable as is assumed. A diminution of the duty on tea can also be bought by some concessions on our side in favor of Afghan produce.

An improvement in the tariff will not suffice by itself to cause any large augmentation in the volume of IndoAfghan trade. It must be accompanied by an improvement in communications. The argument that pack-horses are good enough can no longer be taken seriously. We have reason to believe that the Ameer is disposed to concede a good deal about the tariff, but we are absolutely in the dark as to his views about railways, and yet without railways there can never be any true

awakening of Afghanistan. For nearly twenty years we have had a line of railway to Chaman, on the southern side of the great plain of Candahar, but owing to the Afghan prohibition to continue it, this railway has remained for all commercial purposes absolutely useless and unprofitable. To make the absurdity of the situation more glaring, we are now constructing through nonAfghan territory, but along the Afghan border, another railway, in order to reach the Persian province of Seistan. There is nothing to be said against this Nushki route, which was adopted as a pis aller, but it is undeniable that if we and the Ameer could come to terms, it would appear of little importance in comparison with trunk lines through Candahar to Herat in one direction, and Cabul in the other.

There is another matter to which the Ameer is not unlikely to lend a willing ear, and this may pave the way to the introduction of railways into his country later on. He can have no misgivings about facilitating the transmission of news. If he had acquiesced some time ago in the establishment of wireless telegraphy between the Khyber and his capital, he would have got his daily bulletin about the war more rapidly and at less cost. Habibullah has a good deal of mechanical knowledge. He was once a constant visitor to the Cabul workshops, and he is quite convinced of the advantages of electricity for lighting purposes. There is no apparent reason why he should demur to the employment of the same agency for the receipt of intelligence. It is most essential in his own interests that he should be able to know at once what is happening at both Herat and on the Oxus. Some remissness has surely been shown in not impressing on him the prime importance of this question. His suspicions might have been dispelled if he had been exhorted in the first place to lay the wires only

from his capital to his frontier towns, leaving the completion of the link with India for the future.

It will thus be seen that there are grounds for believing that the imminent meeting between the Ameer's son and Lord Curzon, and the immediate despatch of a British mission to Cabul under the charge of Mr. Louis Dane, the Indian Foreign Secretary, will be attended by good results. There are some practical points to be arranged. They do not present any serious difficulty. The railway question may not be settled, but it will be brought nearer to settlement. On the other points The Fortnightly Review.

enumerated, definite and tangible conclusions and arrangements will be come to. The Ameer is not merely in an amiable mood; he has been brought by current events to see the necessity of making some change in his policy in order to provide against the perils of a near future. He has shown himself alive to the signs of the times, and at last it looks as if the Government of India were going to reap the reward of the patience and forbearance that it has displayed in all its dealings with Afghanistan during the last quarter of a century.

Demetrius C. Boulger.

The world of waters has ever been the scene of a strife without beginning and without end. The lives of fishes are a game of all against all, the weaker terrorized by the stronger and having recourse to all manner of tricks to escape destruction. Sometimes they stay out of reach, but this is not always possible. Alice's lobster talked in contemptuous tones of the shark when the sands were dry:

But when the tide rises and sharks are around

His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.

With the methods of self-defence adopted by fishes struggling on the hook or in the net anglers and fishermen have made us familiar. The Australian leatherjacket will swim up with the hook in its lip and with its sharp teeth sever the slack line above. The pollack will plunge headlong to the rocks and fray the cast against some handy shell of mussel or oyster. The blue shark twists in the water with

such rapidity as to test the bravest gear. The gray mullet, enclosed in the toils of the seine, will follow an enterprising leader over the edge of the net as sheep follow a leader through a hedge. Yet it is but yesterday, so to speak, that man invented his piscatus hamatilis et saxatilis, and thus added himself to the already long list of the enemies of fishes. More interesting, therefore, to the student of that class is the consideration of some modes of defence against natural enemies, such as have served fishes since the days when the weaker of them gave up the struggle and repose on the coprolitic deposits of the Rhætic beds.

The natural enemies of the fish are so many and so varied that, like Ishmael, it knows well how to take care of itself when danger threatens. In its own class, often enough, indeed, in its own species, in a number of aquatic mammals and waterfowl, in snakes and amphibians, in insects and crustaceans, indeed in almost the lowest realms of life, the fishes have so

many foes that the wonder is that they are able to survive as a class. Indeed, great fecundity must be regarded as Nature's provision for the defence of the species, though it is with the defence of the individual that these notes concern themselves.

Anyone who would compare the defensive methods of fishes with those of terrestrial animals should first form some idea of the different physical conditions and the peculiar environment in which they pass their lives. These include the dim light, diffused only from above, the aids to ambush in the shape of gloomy rock-pools, parti-colored ground, clouds of sand and curtains of seaweed, and the operation of tides, currents, and, in shallow water, sudden squalls, helpful or hindering according to the point of view. Then, as regards the fishes themselves, there are the gregarious and the solitary, the stationary and the migratory, those which burrow in the sand and those which hide among the rocks. Not one of these conditions, physical or biological, but has its direct influence on the animal's choice of defensive weapons when hard pressed.

Exposed as the class is, speaking generally, to the attacks of many and varied enemies, not all fishes have the same risks to run in life. The sharks and rays have obviously less to fear than the herring and the mackerel. The fishes which live on the bottom can clearly disregard the attacks of such marauding fowl as the gull and gannet, while even the cormorant and diver do not as a rule seek their prey far beneath the surface water. The typical ground-dwellers of our seas, moreover, the flatfish, are so formed that, save when extremely small, they would in all probability choke any fowl so ill-advised as to try to swallow them whole. Yet these sand-dwelling flatfish have enemies of their own which the surface-dwellers can afford

to overlook, and these are the rays, which dig them out of their burrows with their pointed snouts and snap them up in their sharp teeth before they have time to alight again. The only chance of safety for a plaice or dab thus dislodged would be to swim above its enemy until the latter tired of the chase, much as an educated old rook will sometimes avoid a falcon by soaring higher and higher above it in the blue sky, the hawk being unable to strike its enemy except from above.

The simplest equipment for defence that we know exists in some form of protective armor. Both in stern warfare and at play man has adopted such aids to safety, and the helmet of the fencer, the pad and glove of the cricketer, or the more complete investment of the American footballer, are but the modern travesty of the old armor worn by knights on the field or in the tourney. Among fishes such armor is not common. In the mammals we find familiar examples in the spines of the hedgehog, in the quills of the porcupine, in the bucklers of the armadillo, or in the skin of the rhinoceros. The feathers of birds and the scales of some reptiles may also be regarded as armor. The scales of fishes, however, are in many cases too soft to afford much protection against the teeth of a determined foe, and we must, as regards living fishes, confine our admission of efficient armor to the sturgeons and some of the rays and sharks. The extinct buckler-heads, which were better armored than any recent forms, are considered to have been of low organization, and it is strange that so well-protected a group should comparatively early have given up the struggle. In a lesser degree, it is true, any equipment of spinous fins may be regarded as armor, and the dorsal fin in the bass and perch and spur-dog, as well as the sharp spines on the gillcovers of the weever and plaice and

dab, must undoubtedly serve to fend off attacks from above and on the flanks. Still, the possession of such isolated points of defence is to be compared rather to the handling of a sword or spear than to the wearing of armor such as, for instance, we find perfected in the crustacea. The cuirass of the lobster, the corselet of the prawn, the hauberk of the crab, all afford protection against the many teeth that appreciate the good things within. Nor would such "shellfish" easily die from any natural cause other than old age, were it not that Nature has imposed on them the necessity of periodically changing their suit of armor. is while growing the new that they are in their time of greatest danger.

It

These spines on fishes may be merely defensive, or they may be capable of active employment in inflicting serious wounds. The combination occurs in our weevers, which have a protruding black dorsal fin, doubtless of terrifying aspect as its owner lies motionless in the sand, and equally sharp spines behind the gill-covers, the latter furnished with grooved channels, along which is apparently conveyed a venomous secretion. The mechanism of the weever's spines has been erroneously likened to that of the adder's fang, but the poison bag and duct are wanting in the fish, nor, indeed, is its volition in the act of wounding quite satisfactorily established beyond all question. It is said to throw itself sideways and backwards, even when out of water, with such accuracy as instantly to stab the incautious finger that touches it. I do not cite against this the fact that of the many scores of living weevers that I have tested in this way with my boot not one displayed any such accuracy of marksmanship. Yet surely, if such a power is vouchsafed, it is for use in the water only under natural conditions. No one is going to make me believe either that Nature original

ly designed the weever to aim its stab out of water, or that inherited experience of handling by man has been sufficiently cumulative for the fish to acquire any such instinct in self-defence. The actual venom-sac, like that of snakes, though absent in the weever, occurs in a deadly little fish found in Sydney Harbor, and there known as the "fortescue." It is difficult to conceive of either the fortescue or weever as having many natural enemies, but the latter, at any rate, sufficiently resembles the dragonet and bullhead, both of them favorite articles of food with some larger fishes, to benefit considerably by its defensive weapons.

After all, however, the simplest form of self-defence is retreat. Protective armor is very well as far as it goes. Bluff, as the Americans call the art of imposing on the enemy's credulity, is at times even better. But best of all for the weaker-and defence, after all, belongs to the weaker-is a judicious and timely retreat-the sooner the better:

He who fights and runs away
Lives to fight another day;

but he who runs away first, without
stopping to strike a blow, has a still
better chance for the future. Such is
the method adopted with some success
by the launce and sand-eel, the rabbits
of the sea, which burrow in the sand
with great expedition on the approach
of danger. Even when the fisherman
is hungry for the best bait that swims,
it takes a strong fork and a quick
hand to dislodge these little cave-
dwellers from their lair. I doubt
whether any of the larger fishes which
prey on the sand-eels when they catch
them would be able to dig fast enough,
the rays alone, which hunt, as a matter
of fact, after larger fish, having shovel-
shaped snouts sufficiently pointed for
the purpose.
The flatfish also find
safety in the sand, though they rarely

submerge their head, trusting to their protective coloring, about which something has yet to be said, to dupe their watchful enemies.

There is the flight that seeks safety in distance from the pursuer, and there is the instinct that prompts the small boy, when threatened by a bully, to run for protection to a bigger fellow. This habit, which I do not remember to have noticed in either birds or reptiles, is seen in the pilot-fish, which cowers beside the shark, and in the little Fierasfer, which swims secure under the protecting bell of a medusa, not by any means as a noxious parasite, but rather as a grateful messmate, feeding on the small organisms suspended in the water. The mere outdistancing of a pursuer is constantly enacted in the world of waters under our eye, and I have watched hundreds of sand-eels escape in this way from the jaws of hake and bass. As seen, at any rate, in the aquarium, the larger fishes do not seem to persist in pursuit. Their plan is rather a sudden dash, and if that is fruitless they await another chance without going in pursuit.

Throwing dust in the enemy's eyes, as practised by the retreating cuttlefish with its cloud of "ink," which must in the still water have the same effect as a sudden fog in the London streets, has no parallel among fishes, though some of the flatfish feebly imitate the ruse by flinging up a little sand, under cover of which they manage to alight once more out of sight. A similar plan is also adopted by shrimps, which I have noticed behave in this manner when dislodged, resembling in their action grasshoppers suddenly disturbed on a dusty road.

Where it is a question of retreat and pursuit, the battle is to the swift. Some fishes, however, are not built for flight, and such as these must remain where they are, and trust either to not

being seen at all, or, if seen, to frightening their enemies by a simulation of a strength that is not theirs. These different manœuvres involve two separate lines of action. The first is dependent on the aid of protective coloring.

In the aquariums of Plymouth, Brighton, and Naples I have seen turbot lying on sand, shingle, or concrete, and in each case the fish harmonized so well with its background that but for the movement of its respiration the human eye could not, I think, have distinguished it in a dozen feet of water.

To take full advantage of protective coloring an animal must remain perfectly motionless. Whether any animal, other than man, and particularly a fish, can hold its breath in moments of great danger, or whether, being able, it ever occurs to it to do so, I do not know; but certainly the breathing of these turbot alone betrayed them to the eye.

What measure of voluntary adaptation to the different backgrounds aforementioned there may have been in these turbot could not be easily determined, but I have certainly seen young examples of these species, taken by the late Matthias Dunn in a hand-net in the clear water off Pentewan, change within half an hour from their original whiteness to the blackness of the iron bucket to which they were presently transferred. Seahorses, too, particularly some of the Australian species, adapt their appearance wonderfully to the outline of the weed-fronds amid which they hide. Some of the skates and rays show similar protective coloring to that of the flatfish when lying on the bottom of their aquarium tanks, and them, too, the movement of the breathing-spiracles alone betrays.

The flat shape of the turbot and sole aids them in escaping notice when lying on the sand, and it is said that the distribution of the color, on the upper