risks and pay its own costs. It is a humiliating fact that in America more than in any other industrial country labor has been left longest without the adequate protection of laws for the prevention of accidents and of occupational disease, and employers always have been exposed

to being mulcted for liability to damages under the common law, while speculative lawyers and casualty insurance companies have been allowed to share the profit and loss involved in the damages nominally awarded the injured or the heirs of the dead.

CONTINUING his interesting series of papers in the Revue des Deux Mondes on the schools of the Orient, M. Louis Bertrand gives an account of the scholastic institutions of the Mussulmans. He explains that it would be fairer, perhaps, to call them national schools, since, like those of the Christians and Israelites, they are open to Ottoman or Egyptian scholars of any confession; but he prefers, for the sake of clarity, to retain the designation Mussulman, because they are directed by Mussulmans, and religious instruction forms the principal feature of the curriculum. It should be premised that M. Bertrand's observations relate

not to the universities and strictly Islamic schools, which perpetuate, even at this late date, the archaic methods of Arab pedagogy,

but to "the modest popular schools, in which the teaching staff is almost always clerical, and instruction is given to the children of each district in the rudiments of reading and writing." It should be added, however, that it is, if one may call it so, lay instruction, modeled more or less on Western methods, that, during the past half century, the Egyptians and the Turks have endeavored to acclimatize among them.

It appears that the educational system actually in operation in Egypt is inspired rather by Continental than by Anglo-Saxon meth

ods.

It comprises primary and secondary schools,

the lycées or gymnasia,-in which the complete for primary and four for secondary studies. course of study extends over eight years: four Besides these there are superior schools, which

take the place of the university; schools of law, medicine and pharmacy, civil engineering, and normal schools. Progression from one school to another is dependent upon the results of quarterly and annual examinations; and at the close of the first four years successful students at the general examinations receive a certificate of primary studies which entitles them to enter the secondary schools. In these schools also general examinations are held at the close of the second year, on passing which the scholars enter upon their third year, specializing in letters or science, as the case may be; and at the end of the fourth year certificates of secondary studies are awarded to successful students, without which admission to the superior schools cannot be obtained. Special schools devoted to agriculture, veterinary surgery, and the training of teachers, admit pupils on presentation of the primary certificate. This organization, it will be seen, rests largely upon the French and European systems; and as regards hygiene, games, and physical exercises, Egyptian pedagogy has borrowed extensively from Anglo-Saxon methods.

The great difference between the Mussulman and Western programs is the entire exclusion from the former of Latin and Greek, These two dead languages are replaced by literary Arabic. But this also is a dead language; and the students as a rule care so little for its study that, were it optional, it would in a very short time be abandoned. At present in Egypt foreign languages form the solid base of literary instruction,-English and French.

Two prominent features of this pedagogic system are to be noted,—each pupil pays for his education, and diplomas are granted only as the result of public examinations.

M. Bertrand describes a visit made by him to a private school founded by Mustafa Kamel at Cairo in 1889:

The pupils were the children of shopkeepers and artisans, and they had a very easy manner. Save for the tarboosh I might have thought I was inspecting one of the schools of our own towns. As we entered the infant class the pupils

were reciting the Koran. In the middle section an Egyptian professor was giving a lesson in English. A lesson in geography followed, the scholars being asked to indicate on the map towns, rivers, mountains, etc. themselves creditably. As I was examining in tently the features of some of the pupils a suspicion crossed my mind. Are these little Mussulmans?" I inquired. "No! this one is a Copt." "And the other? ite.'

also there is a modern system of instruction regularly organized,-primary and secondary schools, superior schools, special military schools, and schools of arts and handicrafts. But the greater number of these drag out such a feeble existence that, as far as their influence is concerned, they might not exist at all. It is the Turks themselves who say this. We are forced to believe them, says M. Bertrand; for the schools are closed to us as tightly as certain mosques.

At Constantinople, in consequence, I had contented myself with admiring the façade of the Here, in Syria, school of military medicine. far from the center of the empire, in a province where administrative rigors are somewhat relaxed, it will be easy, I thought, for me to enter an Ottoman school. It proved an illusion! At Beirut all I saw of the college was the walls. At Jerusalem I was informed sub rosa of the existence of a normal school for girls; but it was evident that I had as little chance to

enter it as a harem; and I concluded that it was not worth the trouble to ascertain where it was to be found.

After having given up all hope of being able to visit a school in the Holy City, M. Bertrand was gratified by the unlooked-for opportunity of inspecting a secondary institution, the director of which was a Mussulman of Cypriote origin, more cultivated, more open, and more liberal than the average of Turkish functionaries. The pupils were not particularly well-behaved. One of them recited some Turkish verses; another, a fable of La Fontaine's. The visitor exchanged with difficulty two or three French phrases with certain scholars selected by the teacher. A few days later M. Bertrand visited a school founded and maintained by a been won over to the cause of European culmullah,—a religious Mussulman,-who had

ture.

"He is an Israel

Doubtless both of these children were Egyptians also. Still, in this Mussulman school I should have preferred to hear other brilliant pupils than Christians and Jews.

The New Egyptian Uni

versity

One of the youngest born educational institutions of the East is the Egyptian University of Cairo. It was formally opened little more than a year ago, and already the number of students has doubled. Its founder,of whom further mention follows below, imbued with the idea of "Egypt's civil and political regeneration, evolved a plan for an establishment devoted to higher culture, where the splendid records of the past should be called out from ages of silence, where the ancestral histories should be revived from the old classics,

and this in the original tongue, but where, at the same time, the spirit and the develop ment of other races should be studied through the medium of the new languages."

From an Egyptian point of view, French or German as spoken and written to-day might naturally enough be looked upon as an upstart language. The ancient Moslem ideals and traditions are, however, being perpetuated to the exclusion of modern thought and methods, both in spirit and in form, at another Cairo seat of learning, the mosk and university of El Azhar, said to have first opened its doors a thousand years ago. The existence of the new academical house seems due to the initiative of His Khedivial Highness Ahmed Fuad Pasha, a member of the reigning family, or, to be quite exact, the vice-reigning family, since Egypt is officially a Turkish dependency. Fuad Pasha, so one learns from the Roman Nuova Antologia, is not only the founder of the Egyptian University of Cairo but its "effective President," a number of wealthy and munificent Egyptians having subscribed to its endowment.

The English administrative element. in Egypt regard this educational movement, with its nationalistic tendencies, as not only dangerous but seditious. The courses were at first given in different languages, some in English, others in French, and others yet in Arabic. But it has been determined by Prince Fuad that "whereas it is desirable to free the young students of Egypt from the

yoke of foreign speech, in the acquisition of! higher culture, all instruction will eventually be given in Arabic only,"-cheerless news for believers in the maxim Egypt for the English. Meanwhile, ambitious youths are preparing themselves at European institutions to teach their countrymen whatever that newer world has to offer, one of them, for instance, at the late Professor Lombroso's Turin school of criminal anthropology. Admission to this Eastern university is by no means restricted to Mussulmans, but is granted "to every one asking regular enrollment as student or auditor, of whatever nationality or whatever faith and creed." To show that no want of liberality attaches to Prince Fuad's conception, the author of the article moreover tells us that there are opportunities for female students at this university. He adds, however, that the Egyptian women are not taking to the notion of thus abandoning the langorous life of their scented harems.

In the article in the Nuova Antologia to which we have already referred, and which is published anonymously, there is also given a summary of the hopes and expectations of the projectors of this new university. "Young Egypt," according to the writer, has ambitions with which even the new Orient is unfamiliar. For, to quote the words of Ismail Pasha in characterizing Egypt to a French diplomat: "My country is no longer in Africa; we have become part of Europe."

THE TURKEY:

So much has been said and written about

the eagle in connection with matters political in the United States; it has become such a familiar figure in so many of our newspaper cartoons; we are apt to attach so great a potency to its mere scream as a terror to evil-doers in international affairs; and its adoption as a national emblem has seemed to indicate so exclusive a right in the bird, that the majority of persons, if asked to name the principal indigenous bird of this country, would unhesitatingly reply, "The American. eagle." But they would be wrong. As a writer in the Bulletin of the International Union of the American Republics points

out:

The far-famed eagle represents its species as simply a first cousin in the Western Hemisphere, but the aguila family has occupied the whole earth from time immemorial. The eagle was indicative of the advances of the Roman Empire. It was known in China for ages. To-day it graces the standards of Russia, of Germany, and of several other great worldpowers.

The one truly American bird is our friend the turkey. It is indigenous to America.

Among the aboriginal inhabitants it was a favorite fowl; wherever their corn or maize was grown the turkey also grew thrived; and like corn, the turkey was discovered by the earliest European adventurers and settlers, and by them sent home as trophies of the chase. Since then the turkey, following Indian corn, which it dearly loves as food, has been carried to all the corners of the earth, to embellish the farm, and to add another factor to the many contributed for man's enjoyment America.

by

THE TURKEY IN PICTURE WRITING OF THE NORTH

AMERICAN INDIANS

(Whatever means the aboriginal inhabitants of North America adopted to record information was by rude inscriptions on wood or stone. This curious presentation of a turkey was meant to convey the idea that the bird was abundant in that particular neighborhood. It is a rare specimen of native character writing, preserved in the Bureau of Ethnology of the National Museum)

A FINE SPECIMEN OF THE CHRISTMAS BIRD

When Coronado explored the region west of the Mississippi, he and his companions were especially attracted to the large numbers of turkeys that they saw in the Indian villages. Many of them were domesticated; but large flocks were in the wild state. Even earlier than this, Cortes and his followers in Mexico had found turkeys more common than any other kind of poultry. That the Aztecs knew the bird is shown by the very name of it in Mexican, huajolote. Indeed, in certain parts of the country it was worshiped. In the Bureau of American Ethnology at Washington there is a rare specimen resident in that particular neighborhood. The Zuñi Indians, who knew the bird from their earliest history, have the following curious legend about the turkey, which links the New World with the Old-World account of the Deluge:

The world was at one time covered by a terrible flood of water. The turkey became weary of constant flying and decided, against the advice of companions and even of the gods, to land wherever opportunity offered. The bird settled in the mud, and when he tried to rise again the feathers could be released only by a mighty pull. Some of the mud stuck to the feathers, making a spot on them, and this mark has ever since remained as a sign of the turkey's disobedience both of common sense and divine command.

There seems to be little doubt that the wild turkey of America is the progenitor of turkeys the world over; but some scientists

favor the view that our domestic bird is descended from a variety indigenous to the West Indies. It is, however, generally agreed that all turkeys have descended "in some way or other from the three kinds known to-day as the North American, the Mexican, and the Honduras or Ocellated varieties." For the benefit of those of our readers who are familiar with the bird only when it is "smoking on the board," as the poet Gay says, we append the following brief description of the three kinds:

The colors of the North American turkey are black, beautifully shaded with a rich bronze, the breast plumage being dark bronze, illuminated with a lustrous finish of coppery gold. The full-grown, healthy bird is a beautiful picture of bronze, black, copper and gold. The Mexican turkey, wild throughout that republic, is short in shank, the feathers of its body are metallic black, shaded only slightly with bronze, while all its feathers are tipped with white. It is thought that the white markings of its plumage appear in the variety known as the Narragansett domestic turkey. The Honduras turkey is scattered well over most of Central America. It is extremely wild, and its coloring is the most beautiful of all the family. The head and neck are naked, and no breast tuft is present. The ground color of the plumage is a beautiful bronze-green, banded with gold-bronze, blue, and red, with some bands of brilliant black. The name Ocellated" is given to it on account of the large spots on the longer feathers, giving them a fanciful resemblance to

eyes.

66

In the United States there are raised six standard varieties,-the Bronze, Narragansett, Buff, Slate, White, and Black. The chief differences are in size and color of plumage.

Turkeys were carried to the Old World by the earlier discoverers as 'trophies of the New World." Cortes took specimens

to Spain in 1520: to-day, in Madrid, turkeys are offered for sale in the very square in which were held the autos de fe of the Inquisition. In England the bird was introduced in 1524. These descendants of the parent stock were carried back again to New England, where they were crossed with the original turkey and began, the breed that has spread from one end of the country to the other. The fowl was long in reaching France; for the first mention of it in history is in connection with the wedding of Charles IX. and Elizabeth of Austria (June 27, 1570).

As to the distribution of the turkey in the United States, we are informed that Texas headed the list of States producing the fowl at the date of the census of 1900. Then came Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, and Indiana. Rhode Island is noted for the excellence of the breed and the study given to the fowl, both as a scientific and commercial object. Although turkey raising is not a simple matter, the bird requiring more space than is found in a small farm, yet satisfactory profit is the general reward if proper attention is given to the business; and it is as simple to raise turkeys of superior quality as it is to raise those of inferior quality.

Contrary to the general opinion on the subject, it appears from the Bulletin that there is really a scarcity of turkeys compared with the population of the United States. It is estimated that there are about 9,000,000 turkeys in this country,-less than one bird for every nine persons. This, reckoning the standard weight of a bird at 12 to 36 pounds, of which only one-half is available