should no longer be possible for an "Alabama" to be built in our docks for so bad an use as she was put to; but if we thus bind ourselves not to build cruisers for one Power against another, it is only fair that they should equally debar themselves from building cruisers for service against ourselves. As it at present stands, we might not, for instance, build cruisers for Russia should she be at war with France, but there is no legal impediment to preclude France from building cruisers for Russia against ourselves, should we chance to be at war with the latter Power. We might resent it as a breach of neutrality and seek redress by war, but the remedy would only be worse than the disease, since we should then have two enemies instead of one. And thus in the event of an Anglo-Russian war, while every neutral port of the Continent would be free to assist our enemy with cruisers to injure our commerce, we are incapacitated by our own laws from acting towards them, in reverse circumstances, in a retaliatory way. Those who are in favour of the laws of war as they now exist, are bound to show in what way this inequality conduces to our advantage.

Then again, the famous three rules of the Treaty of Washington (1871) bind both us and the United States, as neutrals, to observe a course of conduct towards other Powers that is a purely optional obligation upon the latter in their relation, as neutrals, towards ourselves. By the first rule, each Power contracted to use due diligence to prevent the fitting-out, arming, or equipping, within the jurisdiction of any vessel suspected of being intended to cruise or wage war against any belligerent for the time being at peace with either Power; and to prevent the departure of any such vessel from its harbours. By the second rule, each Power contracted not to let either belligerent use its ports or waters as a base of naval operations against the other, or for the renewal or augmentation of military supplies or arms, or for the recruitment of men. The third rule merely repeated the obligation of reciprocal due diligence.

Both countries agreed to invite all other maritime Powers to accede to these rules, so as to make them of universal obligation; but this has never been done, partly owing to the different interpretations that were placed upon the rules, and partly owing to a difference of opinion between the two contracting Powers themselves as to the meaning of the second rule. Did it mean that either Power was to prevent the sale of arms to a belligerent in the ordinary course of commerce, at the risk, of course, to the vendor of its confiscation as contraband? Or did it mean that only the open sale of such arms was to be prevented, and not the concealed sale under which such

shipments are usually made? At all events, whatever the right interpretation of the rules, they only restrict England and the United States in the exercise of their neutrality, and not other countries. As neutrals we are bound by duties towards belligerents by which, as neutrals, they are not bound towards us in our capacity as belligerents. Our shipbuilders may not build ships for any Power at war with another; but the shipbuilders of any foreign country, save the United States, are bound by no treaty or international agreement not to build ships for any other Power with which we may chance to be at war. Is it not clearly to our interest that there should be one and the same duty obligatory on all neutrals; and that, since it is as practicable to bind all nations as to bind two, the three rules, better defined, should be made binding between all nations? We gain nothing by binding ourselves to duties towards others by which they are not bound towards ourselves. If, in the American Civil war, in the Austro-Prussian war, in the Franco-German war, in the RussoTurkish war, and the Chili-Peruvian war, we issued instructions that no belligerent cruiser should be allowed to ship at any of our ports more coal than would suffice to take her to her own nearest port or some specified destination, nor to ship any more without special license till three months after the original supply, we have a right to expect other Powers to treat us in the same way in the event of our being engaged in hostilities. One law should bind all nations alike.

In another point we gain nothing from the present unsettled state of maritime law, namely, from leaving it undefined what constitutes contraband of war. An international definition of contraband is as much our interest as it is every other nation's, so that it should not happen again, for instance, as in the Franco-German war, that one of the belligerents should claim to regard the supply of coal to the other as a supply of contraband. And having defined contraband, it is as much our interest as it is that of every nation, that the supplying of a belligerent with such contraband should be as much an offence punishable by the common law of each country, as by our Foreign Enlistment Act is the supplying of a belligerent with cruisers.

To suppose, therefore, that our maritime supremacy consists in, or depends on, keeping maritime international law in its present one-sided condition, is to leave or place us at a great disadvantage compared with other Powers. Our main interest is clearly that there should be one and the same law for each and every nation that if we may not supply other belligerents with ships or coal against one another, neither should those belligerents, when one is neutral, be free to so supply the other against ourselves; that if we

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and all the signatory Powers of the Treaty of Paris may not commission privateers, Spain and the United States and Mexico should no longer stand apart as not included in that agreement.

The United States did so stand apart from that agreement, because it omitted to insure the immunity of private property from plunder and destruction at sea; and compared with this reform in the law of nations, every other is indeed of secondary importance. It has already been argued that our greater vulnerability in the vast extent of our commerce cancels our greater power of attack on the commerce of our neighbours, and that, therefore, we have no real interest in keeping alive this relic of piracy. The mere apprehension, indeed, of capture is almost as detrimental to us as capture itself, and tends to drive our carrying trade into the hands of a nation like the United States, which is less likely to be engaged in war than ourselves. And in actual war, no loss we might suffer from the capture of many of our most valuable cargoes would be so great as that which would be involved in the loss of employment that would result from the inability to go to sea of such of our sailing ships or slow steamers, as their owners could not afford to transfer, at a loss, to some neutral flag. Were we at war with Russia, we could, by the liability of her commerce to capture, inconvenience her, no doubt; but whilst our commerce on every route of the seas would lie at the mercy of the cruisers she could equip in all the ports of the Continent, our enemy, even if his own enormous corn supplies fell short, could satisfy his needs freely and without difficulty from every country that touches his borders.

But let us imagine for the moment the practice abolished by general consent, like the practice of privateering, and suppose the principle recognised of the sanctity of private property at sea during hostilities. Suppose a war comes: we are then freed from all anxiety with regard to our food supplies, which will come to us without danger from our colonies or foreign countries; the majority of our ship-owners are not reduced to the necessity of leaving their capital lying idle, or of transferring their ships from our mercantile marine to a foreign flag. There is no longer any fear of our carrying trade, one of the chief sources of our prosperity, passing into other hands. Our enemy loses any advantage he may have from his liberty to equip cruisers against us in most neutral ports. Should we not gain more advantage from this than any we could ever hope to gain over an enemy by our liberty of preying on his commerce and shipping? Ask any merchant or shipowner. Reduce it to a calculation of pounds, shillings, and pence, as regards the loss or

gain, either to the nation itself as a whole, or to the individual commercial interests that make it up; and then let us decide accordingly.

President Buchanan, in reference to the proposal of the New York Chamber of Commerce to render private property exempt from capture at sea, argued that such an innovation would be useless so long as a belligerent, by means of a blockade, could prevent such private property from being on the seas at all; that it would be necessary to obtain the consent of powerful naval nations not to blockade merchant vessels in port, but to let them pass through the blockading squadron into the open sea. But this is to forget the loss of power that blockading has undergone as a weapon of war, through the development of railways. The sea is no longer the exclusive outlet or inlet for trade that it was when we used the blockading plan so effectually at the beginning of this century. But even then, trade found means of defeating the obstacles opposed to it; how much more easily would it do so now, with the aid of the railways! If we blockaded all the Russian ports, we could not prevent the railways supplying them with a passage for their trade through the ports of Germany or any other neutral country.

But what would remain for navies to do if commerce might no longer be attacked; if contraband, checked at its source, left no pretext for search; and if it be true that blockade has lost its power? There would still remain the possibility of sea-fights; there would still be hostile cities to be attacked and bombarded; there would still be armies to be transported to the scene of action; there would still be colonial possessions and native coasts to defend; there would still be some damage to be done by blockading. For all these purposes, which should supply scope enough for the brutal fighting instincts that still disgrace our civilisation, our maritime supremacy will ever require to be strenuously upheld; but it consists in maintaining a great superiority in the number and efficiency of our ships, not in leaving the customs of war at sea in their present unequal and unsettled condition, as was thought when the chance of improving them offered itself twelve years ago, and was then so wilfully and unwisely rejected.

J. A. FARRER.

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SCIENCE NOTES.

A NEGLECTED FARMER'S FRIEND.

WORK of considerable scientific interest and practical value A has recently been prepared by Mr. Charles Whitehead for the Agricultural Department, Privy Council Office. It is a "Report on Insects injurious to Hop Plants, Corn Crops, Fruit Crops, &c., in Great Britain."

Among our natural enemies there described is the familiar daddylong-legs or Crane-fly. This animal when arrived at years of discretion, or rather weeks of discretion, is harmless enough. It is during its youthful career, when it has the form of a crawling, sneaking maggot, that it injures the plants of corn and grass "by attacking them with its strong jaws and eating into them just below the ground, so as either to kill them or make them sickly." Mr. Whitehead tells us that "in the early spring, if wheat plants which show signs of failing are examined, large ash-grey grubs or maggots will often be found close to the affected plants. Oats and barley are equally liable to harm from these grubs, not perhaps quite to such an extent as autumnsown wheat, and especially wheat sown after clover leys."

The eggs of these beasts, and also of their equally mischievous co-partner, the Tipula maculosa, whose maggots are called "leatherjackets," are laid in the autumn; one mother may lay 300. They hatch in early spring, and then the maggot grows rapidly until the beginning of July, doing great mischief all the while. Mr. Whitehead gives an example of a crop being reduced from nine quarters of oats to four per acre by their ravages.

I have lately amused myself by watching the proceedings of ducks and drakes in my cockney garden. I find that when allowed free range there they work with great energy and curious intelligence in grubbing up grubs of all kinds, and extirpating snails and slugs. They are not to be trusted within reach of young lettuces, nor currant bushes when the fruit is ripening; they are epicures in reference to strawberries, and are capable of swallowing gooseberries without