cal; it is, in varying forms of disaster, the history of this group of poets. They were swept from their places of work and opportunity by the relentless storm of war; or they came to maturity in the heartbreaking desolation which followed the struggle. "Perhaps you know," wrote Lanier to Bayard Taylor, "that with us of the younger generation in the South, since the war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying." Their interests were not wide, and they use but one verse form, -the lyric; they were not poets of thought, nor were they masters of the larger resources of versification. They were, however, true singers, with a natural gift for song, moved by genuine feeling, and commanding at times the note of pathos, and the note of passionate feeling.

The searching experience of war drew from them tender or moving expressions of love of their section and their people, as the crisis evoked from the Northern poets hymns to freedom; they were swift to feel and express the dramatic aspects of incident and achievement, and at times, in the turmoil of struggle, the flower of the Mystics bloomed again in their hands. From the small body of verse left by Francis O. Ticknor, a country physician in Georgia, and a devout lover of flowers, a tender and striking lyric may be taken as representative of a class of songs which, despite imperfections of form, have a convincing touch of reality and of pathos which promise long life :—

LITTLE GIFFEN.

Out of the focal and foremost fire-
Out of the hospital walls as dire-
Smitten of grapeshot and gangrene—
Eighteenth battle and he, sixteen-
Specter, such as you seldom see,

Little Giffen of Tennessee.

"Take him and welcome," the surgeon said,

"Not the doctor can help the dead!”'
So we took him and brought him where
The balm was sweet in our Summer air;

And we laid him down on the wholesome bed;
Utter Lazarus, heel to head!

And we watched the war with bated breath,
Skeleton boy against skeleton death!—
Months of torture, how many such!
Weary weeks of the stick and crutch,
And still a glint in the steel-blue eye
Told of a spirit that wouldn't die,

And didn't! Nay! more! in death's despite
The crippled skeleton learned to write-
"Dear Mother!" at first, of course, and then
"Dear Captain!" enquiring about the men.
-Captain's answer: "Of eighty and five
Giffen and I are left alive."

"Johnston pressed at the front," they say ;—
Little Giffen was up and away!

A tear, his first, as he bade good-bye
Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye ;—
"I'll write, if spared!" There was news of fight,
But none of Giffen! he did not write!

I sometimes fancy that were I king

Of the courtly Knights of Arthur's ring,
With the voice of the minstrel in mine ear
And the tender legend that trembles here-
I'd give the best on his bended knee-
The whitest soul of my chivalry—

For Little Giffen of Tennessee.

Father Ryan, a Virginian, a priest, chaplain in the Confederate army, editor, and writer of verse full of deep feeling and tinged with mystical sadness, has left in his three volumes one song, among many, of a rare and singular beauty :

SONG OF THE MYSTIC.

I walk down the Valley of Silence

Down the dim, voiceless Valley-alone !
And I hear not the fall of a footstep

And God and his angels are there :

And one is the dark mount of Sorrow,

And one the bright mountain of Prayer.

The minor Southern poets share a richness of temperament, a freedom and courage of emotion, denied to the majority of the New England poets. They are natural singers, with a quick ear for melody of the kind which instantly discloses its charm. They are mellifluous; they are, one and all, lovers of nature; but, with the exception of Lanier, they approach her through the feelings and sentiments, and are content to describe her rich and tropical aspects. These inspirations are not deep, nor is their art broad and well-sustained. Their verse lacks fulness and variety of thought, and is often over-sensuous in expression. The verse forms used are few and simple, and there are abundant evidences of lack of artistic training.

That which is real in them is their simplicity of feeling, their naturalness of manner, their command of the singing note. There is often a note of provincialism in their praises of their section and their people, a note of exaggeration, a note, in other words, of that inexperience which had its root in lack of that close contact with other communities which gives a sound and true perspective. The Old South was fatally hampered in its later intellectual development by the fact that there was in its social and industrial system one feature which could not be discussed. That fact created a barrier between a generous people and the rest of the world, developed an abnormal, local sensitiveness, and fostered a tone of exaggeration which is reflected in the minor poets, from which Lanier's largeness entirely preserved him. There is, however, the charm of the Southern temperament even in the most conventional of those singers,-warmth, grace, power of abandon, generosity of spirit; qualities which are winning under any conditions, and which, reinforced by adequate, artistic training and adequate ideas, promise rich fruitage in the poetry of the future.

THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD OF STUDYING

ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

EDWARD L. THORNDIKE, Teachers' College, Columbia University, New York.

The function of intelligence is to modify the reactions of animals in such ways as serve to adapt them to their surroundings. Modifications of behavior are the facts from which we infer the presence and degree of intelligence. By a little ingenuity we may devise experiments in which the behavior of an animal is especially illuminating, and is even decisive, on some crucial point of theory. To show some of the ways in which the experimental method has been applied to the study of the mental capacities of different groups of vertebrates is the purpose of this article. We may begin low down in the vertebrate line,—with the fishes.

The common fundulus, or mummichog, was found to be quiet and comfortable in the shaded end of an aquarium near the exit of the water, and restless if driven to the opposite and sunny end. In the latter case it would always swim back to the shaded end. If now we drive one to the sunny end and interpose between him and the shaded end a wide-meshed wire screen, with a small opening somewhere in it, we have the means of finding out whether the fish can adapt itself to a novel situation, can, in common language, learn. What happens under such circumstances is this. The fish swims against the screen, then to and fro along it, poking against it, from time to time, in attempts

Copyright, 1902, by Frederick A. Richardson.