these Frankish ladies, at least at one period, to have their hair curled by means of curling irons. The extravagance in dress and in the toilette during the Carlovingian period appears to have been excessive.

Before the Germans came into Gaul, women had already been employed, on a tolerably large scale, in productive labour. Among the Germans themselves, in their primitive period, the women of the household were employed constantly in weaving the materials and in making garments for their husbands and families. It was the case also among the Romans in Italy, where a name derived from the Greek, gynæceum, was given to the room set apart for the females, in which they assembled to work. In course of time, public establishments were formed, for the manufacture of the same products, in which women were similarly employed, and to which they gave the same name of gynæcea. They were placed under the direction of matrons, but a considerable proportion of the workwomen were slaves. They were early introduced into Gaul, where they formed the nuclei of the staple manufactures of particular localities, the materials being confined in some of them to flax, and in others to wool. Thus the Attrebates monopolised the manufacture of serge, and the same article still continues to be one of the staple manufactures of Amiens, which represents one of their principal cities. St. Jerome speaks of the fine texture of the stuffs made in his time at the civitas Atrebatum, or Arras. After the settlement of the Franks, the native industry revived in Gaul, and the gynæcea were re-established, apparently on an extensive scale, for they soon became very numerous. The historian Gregory, of Tours (lib. ix.), tells us how a lady of the court of Theodebert, charged with plotting against the king's life, had her face branded, and was in that condition sent to the village of Marlheim, to be there employed in turning the mill, and in preparing the meal necessary for the nourishment of the women who dwelt in the gynæceum which existed in that place. The great fairs of Gaul, such as that of St. Denis, were supplied with merchandise from the gynæcea, and Italy and other countries sought their products. A capitular of Dagobert, of the date of A.D. 630, fixes the punishment of a man who violated the person of one of the women of the gynæceum at a fine of six solidi of gold. Under the Carlovingians, the gynæcea remained in full activity. That at Stephanswert, belonging to Charlemagne's own domain, contained twenty-four women ployed in fabricating vestments of woollen and linen, and of fillets for the legs. Charlemagne published several enactments relating

to these establishments. In the celebrated capitular of the year 800, he enumerates the various implements and other things which were to be supplied to these workwomen. The great emperor was so anxious that Womankind should be employed in productive labour, that he made his own daughters work in the domestic gynæceum as diligently as the other females.

After the time of Charlemagne, the character of the women of the gynæcea began to fall into discredit. The old laws for the protection of their virtue were apparently no longer carried into effect, and corruption found its way in among them. It became customary to speak of the inmates of the gynæceum as mere courtezans, until at length this was the only sense in which the word was used.

RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST.*

NATURALISTS make by far the best travellers; indeed, it is rare to find a book of travels worth reading unless it is written by a man of science, or specially relates to important matters of art. Our country produces abundance of adventurous spirits who journey through the most inhospitable regions, and explore the most inaccessible countries; but how few, even of those who take a leading place amongst geographical discoverers, are able to bring home any valuable information about the tribes they have seen, the fauna, the flora, or the geology of the lands they have passed through. Dr. Collingwood appears in the work before us as a very good specimen of a rambling naturalist. He visited the China seas in government vessels, and thus had little choice in the details of his route, and frequently had to hurry through localities in which he would gladly have lingered, but he seems to have made the best of his opportunities, and whether on land or sea was always on the look out for interesting facts.

At Aden he found a rich store of marine animals, including the Bornella digitata, a beautiful sea slug. Creatures of this sort, he tells us, preserve their colours well in glycerine, "though it unfits them for dissection." A week's voyage from Aden carried him to the cocoa-nut groves and cinnamon gardens of Ceylon, and during

* "Rambles of a Naturalist on the Shores and Waters of the China Sea. Being Observations in Natural History during a voyage to China, Formosa, Borneo, Singapore, etc., made in Her Majesty's vessels, in 1866 and 1867." By Cuthbert Collingwood, M.A., M.B. Oxon, F.L.S., etc. Murray.

the passage his observing faculties were never idle or without reward. The uneducated traveller complains of a sea voyage being tiresome, but Dr. Collingwood remarks that "scarcely a day passes without some addition to one's stock of information, whether it be a fish swimming in the sea, a bird winging the air, or some floating delicate animal which would seem least fitted to buffet with the waves." This is true enough; but the gist of the thing lies in the fact of "adding" to one's information, and when there is no information to add to, the case is a hopeless one. In the Royal Navy we occasionally hear of an officer sufficiently instructed to be able to see the things which nature abundantly places before him; but the tone of the service is unfavourable to intellectual exercise, and most officers prefer what Dr. Collingwood terms, "the dull and unendurable monotony" of an ignorant sea life, to the recreations of the man of science. "Not one in a thousand," he says, "troubles himself to observe what passes around him ;" and the reason is too plain; the governing powers care little for the progress of knowledge, and the way not to get on in the service, is to be above the regulation standard in cultivation or usefulness.

At Penang our traveller was much struck with the caricature plant (Justicia picta), every leaf of which exhibits a series of caricatures of the human face of the most grotesque character. Hong Kong he describes as presenting a varied and beautiful appearance when approached from the sea; but he found the police of the little island badly managed, and walking in the Chinese quarter far from secure. From Hong Kong he steamed to Protas Island (N. L. 20° 42', Long. 116° 43′ E.), mainly inhabited by gannets, who have an amazing faculty of devouring flying fish. When gorged with this prey, the birds sit on their nests, and if a stranger approaches they have to throw their stomachic cargo overboard before they can take to flight. The dinners ejected before Dr. Collingwood consisted of sometimes "six or seven flying fish, in other instances only three or four, and in two or three cases a squid or two intermixed with them." At this island the curious phenomenon occurred of rollers dashing in from the S.W., though the wind was N.E.; this effect was occasioned by a typhoon blowing 200 or 300 miles further south, and curving round.

At Formosa, Dr. Collingwood met with the leaping fish (Boleopthalmus Boddaertii), salamandrine-looking animals, scarcely distinguishable from the mud on which they rested, until, on being alarmed, they made off in a series of rapid leaps, which caused the sailors to denominate them "Jumping Johnnies." They were not

confined to muddy shores, but were also found" among smooth, rocky places, up which they climb with great skill by a series of leaps, wriggling and curving the tail at each leap in a contrary direction, that is right and left alternately."

The use of the towing-net in the Formosa Channel was very successful, catching, amongst other forms, the glassy crustacean, Alima hyalina, "whose carapace seemed carved from the purest crystal, with an elegance of sculpturing and a sharpness of outline not to be surpassed;" and glass crabs (Phyllosoma), whose flat leaf-like bodies, and long branched legs seemed made of fine plates of clear mica."

Several new species rewarded Dr. Collingwood's researches in this neighbourhood and in the adjacent islands. At Slut Island he found a small shrimp belonging to the genus Alpheus, "of a deep violet colour, and with a claw of a very remarkable construction." "I placed it," he says, "in a basin of water with a small crab, whose presence appeared violently to offend it. Whenever the crab came in contact with the shrimp, the latter produced a loud sound, the explanation of which is as follows: the shrimp possessed two chelæ or claws, on the right a large and stout one, and the left one long and slender. When irritated it opened the pincers of the large claw very wide, and then suddenly closed them with a startling jerk. When the claw was in contact with the bottom of the basin a sound was produced as though the basin were smartly struck, but when the claw was elevated in the water, the sound was like a snap of the finger, and the water was splashed in my face." He called it the Trigger Shrimp, from the action of this claw resembling that of a pistol trigger. If only put upon half-cock this trigger closed without noise. Dr. Collingwood adds, "The peculiar clicking apparatus is by no means unusual, and is shared by another genus, Alope."

As a good specimen of Dr. Collingwood's descriptive powers, we must quote the account of his visit to Fiery Cross Reef on a day when the sea was so calm that the ship's anchor could be distinctly seen sixty or seventy feet from the surface. Rowing over a two fathom patch, he allowed the boat to drift slowly and gazed on the sea treasures. "Glorious masses of living coral strewed the bottom; immense globular madrepores, vast overhanging mushroom-shaped expansions, complicated ramifications of interweaving branches, mingled with smaller and more delicate species-round, finger-shaped, horn-like and umbrella form-lay in wondrous confusion, and these painted with every shade of delicate and brilliant colouring-grass green, deep blue, bright yellow, pure white, rich buff, and more

sober brown-altogether forming a kaleidoscopic effect of form and colour unequalled by anything I ever beheld. Here and there was a large clam shell (Chama), wedged in between masses of coral, the gaping zig-zag mouth covered with the projecting mantle of the deepest Prussian blue; beds of dark purple long spined echini, and the thick black bodies of sea-cucumbers (Holothuria), varied the aspect of the sea bottom. In and out of these coral groves, like gorgeous birds in forest trees, swam the most beautifully coloured and grotesque fishes, some of an intense blue, others bright red, others yellow, black, salmon-coloured, and every colour of the rainbow, curiously barred and bounded and bearded."

Naturalists frequently observe curious and friendly relations subsisting between creatures that might be supposed hostile to each other. One of these is related by Dr. Collingwood as occurring on the Fiery Cross Reef, and also near Labuan, where he discovered a magnificent anemone two feet in diameter, with numerous deep blue tentacles, and in the cavity of this creature elegant fish, about six inches long, seemed to make their abode or at any rate to seek shelter.

Labuan was found by Dr. Collingwood to offer a host of interesting objects to the attention of the naturalist. He also reports sufficiently well of the Labuan coal to lead to the belief that if the company for working it had been properly managed, success would have been the result. At Labuan, Singapore, and Johore, Dr. Collingwood met with a new species of crab, the "Pill-maker." It is a small creature of its kind, many being no bigger than large peas. Its habit is to take up particles of sand in its claws, deposit them in a groove beneath the thorax, and subsequently to eject them as little pellets or pills from its mouth after having extracted what nutriment they may contain.

We are quite sure the specimens we have given of the "Naturalist's Rambles in the China Seas," will cause our readers to get the book for themselves, and they cannot fail to be much pleased with a work in which every page contains interesting and valuable matter.