ers who profess a knowledge of astronomy. The second point has significance for students of the political economy of the Empire. There were many Canadians in Jamaica at the time of the earthquake, and some may ask why Canada should be so largely represented there. The truth is that their presence is a sign of the growing desire of the people of the Dominion for closer commercial relations with the British West Indies, and, when the time comes, for some form of political union. The Canadian preference, which has done so much to rebuild the prosperity of these far-flung and, until lately, half-forgotten fragments of the Empire, is one proof of the growing favor with which an Imperial policy of construction and reconstruction is regarded by Canadians. Another is the disposition of Canadian statesmencapitalists to look southward and seaward for investments of the kind which Mr. R. G. Reid has made in The Outlook.

Newfoundland. In the Maritime Provinces of the Dominion there is a very strong wish for the inclusion of the West Indies in the Canadian Confederacy. This feeling has a root in the past, when Halifax in Nova Scotia was the outfitting and entrepôt port for the West Indies. There are colonies of negroes and their descendants in Nova Scotia to this day to bear witness of the old historical intimacy. Underlying all these acts and intentions we may trace one of the great motives of all countries that aspire to be selfcontained polities-the wish to have an economic foothold in the Tropics. If union with the West Indies is impossible, then the Dominion is for ever incomplete, and the "pull" of the United States on the islands must some day deprive us of their usufruct. But if union is brought about, Canada will have territorial interests in blue water. and must sooner or later invest in seapower.

"Women in their nature are much more gay and joyous than men," said Addison. "Their spirits are more light," he goes on; "vivacity is the gift of women, gravity that of men." Addison, of course, spoke for his own time, and no doubt he truly recorded what he saw. The diaries and letters of the period give us the same impression. The ladies of his day were "sprightly," their charm was "variety," their vice frivolity. But Addison seems to mean his words to apply to women in general. There is no sound of hesitation in them; he evidently thinks they will be accepted as a truism. Would they be accepted in the present day without challenge? We think not, and yet we believe that they contain a measure of truth. Undoubtedly, however, we should no longer turn to the writings of women in con

firmation of his dictum. There is a melancholy tone in literature just now, and in women's writings it is very strongly marked. This fact, however, seems to illustrate a phase of thought rather than reflect human nature. The pens of women have been captivated by a kind of philosophy which they could never have evolved, and which gives little scope to their natural ability. It is outside the power of the imagination to conceive of a feminine Swift. That great morose genius could have no parallel in the opposite

sex.

But setting aside feminine writers, and looking round among one's ordinary acquaintance, are not the women more light-hearted than the men? Surely they are. For one thing, they have to appear to be; and the habit of content can be cultivated. Who in the

world would show any sympathy to an habitually depressed and pessimistic woman? She may be so lucky as to find one of her own sex who will continue to feel affection for her, but she will not find one of the other. If her melancholy be united to some force of character, she will be called a scold and a nagger. If she is merely weak and fretful, she will be disliked and disregarded, or at best considered a hopelessly selfish person. Men will not put up with melancholy in women. and on the whole it is perhaps a good thing for the new generation that they will not. It is no argument to say that women have to put up with this disagreeable quality in men. All experience shows that the laws of compensation-of compensation in character-act differently upon the two sexes. A man's character seems to be made up of more items than a woman's, and each single one has less weight. A woman has seldom any virtue able to balance a really bad fault, and how rarely we find a serious fault at all in the character of an essentially good woman. It is easy, we admit, to exaggerate the difference between the sexes, but women have one peculiarity in their characters which is all their own. It testifies to the moral height of their common attainment, and to the depth of their possible degradation. They are not forgivable.

No doubt the root of content and discontent lies not in circumstances but in temperament, and no training can ever altogether prevail over a tendency. Some women, like some men, are born to look, be it ever so secretly, upon the dark side. For ourselves, however, we do not believe the apparently greater happiness of women to be entirely a matter of self-control. It is as natural to a woman to adorn herself with cheerfulness as with ornaments. It belongs both to the graver and the lighter side of her nature; it is part of

her self-respect and part of her vanity. Her cheerful countenance may witness to a real heroism-it often does-or it may come of something less noble. It may be the outcome of her instinct to make her household happy, or of her instinct to attract admiration to herself. But whether she belongs to what Addison calls "the more valuable portion of the sex" or not, if she cares at all for the impression she creates she will no more be melancholy than she will be slovenly. The less "valuable" portion may

be capable of no courageous effort to keep up the hearts of those they love, but they too will express pleasure to give pleasure and get pleasure back, and so contrive their own happiness. What Goldsmith said of the French applies to many inferior women:

They please, are pleased; they give to get esteem,

Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.

Moreover, in discussing happiness it is not possible to put situation and circumstance quite out of account, and we think that the life of an ordinary woman makes more for cheerfulness than that of a man. She has fewer ambitions, and they are less likely to be thwarted. Her life has fewer possibilities of disappointment and of disillusionment. Of course, if she marries badly it means more; on the other hand, the vast majority of marriages are moderately happy, and it is only an abnormal woman who does not love her children, and her children make a far larger part of her life than they do of her husband's. So many men are embittered by professional ill-success; by the constant grind of work they do not like; by the never-ceasing burden of money anxiety; by rubbing shoulders all day long with persons who are unsympathetic to them. A man's recreation and his daily toil are not in

extricably mingled as are the labors and delights of a woman, and it is not infrequently the case that hard-worked men have very little recreation at all.

In the nature of things, men's pleasures are positive ones, and are nearly always more or less expensive, requiring sometimes more money, more health, or more time than they have to give. However tired a man may be, he is always bored by doing nothing. Now the ordinary woman is very well pleased without any positive pleasures. Her work is very rarely distasteful to her. The care of her children and her home is always intermixed with pleasure, and it is an undoubted fact that, lacking the safety-valve of a home of her own for her energy, she will in the majority of cases throw herself into other work with a fervor which is complete evidence of the delight she derives from it; and we believe that more women break down from doing unnecessary work than ever break down from seeking unnecessary distraction.

One source of women's happiness is to be found, we think, in their love of detail. They enjoy every detail of social life. They love the minutiæ of their work. They do not love it as a man loves his, for the sake of an end. They look close at what they are doing, and they do not look forward. They

The Spectator.

If a

take pleasure in their children as they are. A defect, even though it be a serious one, destroys their pleasure in them far less than it destroys that of a man. They are not constantly oppressed by the thought of what that defect will mean in the future. woman is by nature apprehensive, her fears apply for the most part to little things. If a man is apprehensive, he fears when the fit is upon him the débá cle of heaven and earth. For women time goes a little slower. They take pleasure in each jewel of that mosaic which makes up happiness, and are not fretted because the pattern is not complete. Of this quality they have, no doubt, the inevitable defects,-much brilliance, little grasp, and a tendency to frivolity. They are apt to fritter away their lives and minds on little things; they become engrossed with the details of play as well as the details of work. Men, no doubt, have more opportunities of keen pleasure than women have, but these opportunities are short-lived. The happiness of the moment they are less fitted to take. The difference between the sexes in this particular might, we believe, be thus summed up: a man is happy whenever he has anything to make him happy, but a woman is happy whenever she has nothing to make her unhappy.

The winter snows have come and gone, and soon a new life will be stirring in our trees and shrubs; the sap will rise in their bare and leafless stems, stimulating the flower-buds to burst open and to herald in another year of growth. Although many cold, dreary days with frost and biting winds are still in store for us, yet the earlyflowering trees are usually punctual

within a week or two in unfolding their small and dingy blossoms. The hazel is the first to shake out its long tassels for the wind to scatter their shower of gold dust upon the tiny crimson feathers of the female flower. A little later, about the end of January, the male cornel opens its small yellow clusters to brighten many an old garden in the suburbs; and the flowering of the elm

trees will clothe their gaunt branches with a shimmer of russet-brown before the tender leaves venture to expose their delicate tissues to the winds of March. A mild spell of weather in December, however, does not tempt these trees to unfold their flowers before their usual time; their steadfast punctuality in this respect seems all the more surprising when one hears of the many plants which are in flower out of season in the last months of the year. The bulb of a snowdrop contains already in autumn the rudiments of the future flowers and leaves, yet if it is forced by heat to bloom in November or December a poor sickly plant is the only product. Heat alone cannot, therefore, be the sole agency in inducing a new lease of active life, for the snowdrop prefers to flower in January or early February, when the temperature is often barely above freezing point. The little winter aconite unfolds its single flower even earlier in the year, when the weather is yet more inclement. The disinclination to start growth before a definite period, which is always constant for each species, is still better exemplified by the potato; its tubers may remain in a dark, cold cellar all the winter long without showing a sign of life. Yet when March comes round these potatoes will begin to sprout in spite of the fact that their surrounding circumstances have not changed in any degree, for no sunshine reaches them and the temperature of a cellar is usually colder at the end of winter than in December. The only possible conclusion is that both snowdrop and potato only remained dormant until they were quite ready to start the active processes of growth, and although apparently lifeless yet minute chemical and molecular changes must have been proceeding within them, and cannot be unduly hurried without injury to the plant. The case is somewhat similar to that of a locomotive

which remains motionless and inert until sufficient pressure of steam has been raised to push the pistons in the cylinders, but notwithstanding its rest in relation to external surroundings, internal activity is taking place all the time in the burning of coal and heating of water.

Not only bulbs and tubers, but nearly all seeds and spores, require a period of quiescence before giving birth to a fresh development of life and growth. The products of the chemical changes which go on during this season of preparation may sometimes become distinctly perceptible to the taste; many nuts, such as the hazel and almond, have quite a different flavor in autumn, when newly fallen from the tree, than in spring when ready to germinate. Plants with a high and elaborate organization need a longer rest for their seeds than those in which the output is slight. In the case of the commoner weeds, the seeds will sprout soon after ripening, and hence chickweed, groundsel, and many other lowly plants may be seen flourishing nearly all through the year, and even flower in January. Their vitality and power of propagation is checked only by frost, so that these humble, self-fertilizing weeds are able to spread all over the world, covering tracts of ground on which plants of more delicate structure with showy flowers could not make a living.

Finally, the tree, no less than the bulb or the seed, has to rest for a certain length of time in order to mature its large quantities of reserve materials, which are stored up in the trunk and roots. When this process is complete each species renews its external growth in the new year at a definite date, within very narrow limits.

When animals hibernate, their rest invariably results in a wasting of tissue and a burning up of reserve material, so that, on awakening in spring out of their winter sleep, they are ex