SIR JOHN LUBBOCK

(1834-)

IR JOHN LUBBOCK has written a number of the most pleasantly instructive essays that could well be imagined. He is a member of the British Parliament, President of the Institute of Bankers, President of the Linnean Society of Great Britain, Trustee of the British Museum, Vice-President of the Royal Society, and the inventor of an admirable system of identifying ants by splotches of paint on their backs. A man of such diversified usefulness could not have expected to escape reproach, and Sir John can hardly have been surprised if his discoveries of the almost miraculous intelligence shown in the management of the ant hills he has kept under glass for observation, excited something of the same incredulity which rewarded Huber's discovery of the intellectual operations of ant life. Lubbock's "Ants, Bees, and Wasps," published in 1882, and his book on « The Senses, Instinct, and Intelligence of Animals," published six years later, made him a general favorite as a writer of popular science. But this popularity has been far surpassed by his moral essays collected and given coherency under the title of "The Pleasures of Life.» Few moralists have equaled him in usefulness. "The Pleasures of Life" is still running through one edition after another, and it is doubtful if its circulation has been equaled by any novel published since it was issued, a proof, if proof were needed, that the public is fonder of nothing than of being preached to by the right person in the right way.