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have been found, and Ickleton, on the southern border of Cambs, to Royston. This is the first point at which any very distinct traces of the street can be found at the present day. Westward of that town it forms the boundary of Cambs and Herts, and running parallel with the railway to Baldock, arrives, viâ Ickleford, at Dunstable (Beds), where Watling Street is crossed. From Dunstable it pushes over the chalk hills, past Tring and Chinnor (near Princes Risborough), till it reaches the Thames between Streatly and Wallingford. After crossing the river, it follows the tops of the Berks Hills, and still bears the name of "Ickleton Street," or The Ridgeway," until at Liddington, near Swindon, it falls into the Ryckneld way.

Last of all comes Ryckneld or Rignal Street, a roadway that took a great sweeping curve through the West of England from Durham to Southampton. I would suggest that it derives its name from the Regni, or ancient inhabitants of Sussex and Hants, and that the same etymological cause which converted Iceni into Ikenings and Icknelds, has also changed Regni into Reknings and Rycknelds. Ranulf Higden, the monk of Chester, mentions it in his Polychronicon, or universal chronicle, and calls it Ryckneld Street; so does Michael Drayton, in his confused poetical account contained in the Polyolbion, or description of Great Britain, which first appeared in 1613:

And Rickneld forth that raught from Cambria's further shore,
Where South Wales now shoots forth St. David's promontore.

Roger Gale, first vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries, who has left a valuable essay on the roads in question, says that in his time Ryckneld Street had taken the name of Ickle or Icknild Street without any just title to it. The remark holds good at the present day, as will be seen on reference to some modern maps. Ryckneld Street led from one of the ports behind the Isle of Wight, and crossed Hants to Liddington, near Swindon, where it meets Ikening Street, and goes on along the road which lies through Stratton St. Margarets and Cricklade to Cirencester. By a strange perversity the mapmakers have marked this part of the route "Ermine Street." Northward out of Cirencester it ran upon the Fosseway, but branched off again westward of the present railway station at Bourton-on-theWater. We can then trace it very plainly through the two villages of Church Honeybourne and Beoley, on the eastern edge of Worcestershire, passing Alcester midway between the two places. At Birmingham we lose it for a moment, though its name occurred in an ancient deed, but between that town and Lichfield (Staffordshire) there are distinct traces of it both at Sutton Park and Shenstone,

where it cuts the Watling Street. From Lichfield it is shown on the maps as following the existing highway through Bourton to Derby, but its original course seems to be indicated by the name of Strettonen-le-Street, a village to the east of the main road. Close to Derby it reached the military station of Little Chesters, and ran northward through Stretton Hill to Chesterfield. From some intermediate point a road probably branched off eastward.

Then in his oblique course the lusty straggling street

Soon overtook the Fosse

and arrived at Lincoln, the great junction of Roman trade routes. The names of Ryckneld-Thorpe (now Thorpe-Salvin), on the south border of Yorkshire, and of Ryckneld Grange and Ryckneld Mill at Sadberg-on-Tees, seem to indicate that the well-known Roman road, running a few miles eastward of those points through Boroughbridge (where it met a prolongation of the Ermine Street which led over Stainmoor to Carlisle) and Catterick, to Corbridge on the great wall, was a northern extension of the Ryckneld Street, and it is so -called in Bowen's old map of Yorkshire.

And now I will bring my survey to a close lest I weary the reader. He will be able to draw his own conclusions from the facts I have stated. Very slowly we are picking up the lost threads of history relating to the four long centuries of Roman rule in Britain. It is the work of the archæologist rather than of the historian, and it is to be hoped, that when some one at last undertakes to collect and arrange the scattered records of that obscure period, he will take into account the economic significance of these ancient trade roads which have played a not insignificant part in "the making of England."

THOMAS H. B. GRAHAM.

197

SOMETHING ABOUT "NATURAL SELECTION.”

WH

HAT is meant by "Natural Selection"? I have had frequent opportunities of watching, in a practical manner, the results both of a pure and of a cross fertilization of plants. A pure white or a pure red variety of a certain species of flower has been hitherto unknown in the market-how does the gardener set to work in order to produce a fresh cultivation, a new variety? he carefully selects from amongst a large number of plants those that show, in the most distinct manner, the particular variation that he desires, and these alone are allowed to interbreed with each other. In the course of a few generations the variation has settled down into a permanent characteristic, but nevertheless the law of "variability" or "reversion" sometimes creeps in, old ancestral traits appearing, proving that blood is blood in the vegetable as well as in the animal world. These variations from the new variety are again studiously weeded out, the bad companions in whom the evil traits of their forefathers have dared to obtrude themselves are disposed of in the most off-hand manner, and the result is something very close to perfection.

There is every reason for believing that the earliest flowers were composed simply of stamens with their pollen grains, and the pistil with its stigma and ovary; for in plants, as in animals, the great purpose of life is the fertilization of the ovum and the reproduction of kind. The caprice of fashion demands a flower with large proportioned reproductive organs, with aborted corolla or calyx, or with the petals. united, or with fifty other whatnots, and the gardener adapting the laws of "Natural Selection," in due course produces what is wanted. All this is easy enough; variabilities are always occurring; he has only to be clear in his selection, to pay some regard to any peculiar condition in the surroundings of those of his cares that most frequently show the variation, prevent any cross fertilization, and the laws of inheritance will gradually do the rest. If the variability be limited, say, to a single male and female plant, he will have great

cause for regret if any accidental cross fertilization has taken place, for the sins of the parents are indeed passed down, even unto the third or perhaps the twentieth generation. A well-known breeder once crossed a mare with a quagga-the result, of course, was a hybrid. On all subsequent occasions the mare was bred with one of her own kind, but each successive foal showed distinct markings of the quagga, and furthermore (although history in this particular instance does not say so) we may safely assume that the offspring of these foals, anyhow as a variability, also showed some traits of their interpolated ancestor. The variability in such cases is noteworthy, for it leads up to a wide field for consideration. Doubtless some members of a third, or later generation, may have shown no traces of such an interpolation, but individual members here and there would produce conclusive evidence, to speak after a vulgar fashion, of the tar brush. Physical peculiarities can be passed along from parent to child, from animal to animal, from plant to plant; so too mental and intellectual idiosyncrasies can be inherited; they also may be subjected, as they descend, to the law of variability, and any of these traits, physical or intellectual, may crop up if they are to appear at all during any of the different phases of life, during the period of growth and development, or of maturity, or of decay. Not long since in the neighbourhood in which I live a man of forty-five years of age, who had borne throughout his life a most exemplary character, suddenly committed a most atrocious murder. Largely owing to his previous most excellent antecedents, he escaped the extreme penalty of the law. Can this man's extraordinary behaviour be accounted for by the laws of "Natural Selection," and the chances of "variability"? At all events, such an explanation is not a wild unreasoning improbability. We often hear people say that such and such a man or woman shows a touch of the Old Adam. Well, the stretch of imagination from our living selves to the Old Adam is a fairly vague one; but there is more wisdom in an expression of this kind than the speaker always conceives.

"Natural Selection" is very extensively made use of by breeders, and the rules they adopt are precisely those of the gardener with his flowers and plants. Where strength is required strength is mated with strength, when speed and power of endurance are sought after the like is mated with like, and we have the cart-horse in the one case, and the racer in the other. The greyhound has been crossed with the bloodhound, and the selected offspring have been allowed to breed together, or better still with similar hybrids, and the result has been the elk hound-a matchless combination of speed, cunning, and power.

When we consider how the rules of society so utterly ignore all that is known of what is meant by "Natural Selection," can we ever absolutely condemn the sins and errors of our fellow man, or sister woman-can we say that none of the terrible calamities that befall them are occasioned by the sudden development of some variability, evidencing a wretched eccentricity of a remote progenitor? For the time being, perhaps, the variation in their character has a fearful hold of them, and it may require more than human strength to battle against it. When we are too ready to blame others, let us remember that the force of this same law of nature may some day overtake ourselves, and that we may be either strong or weak to resist it.

From an article in a well-known evening paper on the subject of "Cruelty to Children," I extract the following lines: "The harm that is done to society by such conduct is not to be measured by the suffering endured at the time. Children brutalised by neglect and cruelty are only too likely at a later stage to treat their own children as they have been treated themselves." Is not this too true? The mating of the parents of such children can hardly be termed a natural, but an unnatural, selection.

What a world of thought is opened out by the consideration of the universal application of the law of selection to the human race. Science, music, art, strength and beauty, carefully mated, generation after generation. Inherited disease, crime, and vice would as far as possible be "prevented," or be destroyed, and when as each generation became more and more perfect, some bad ancestral variability occurred, the individual would be obliged to suffer for the good of the mass. A dream, perhaps, but not wild unreasoning! The only modern human attempt at the enforcement of any such laws was that of one of the late Prussian Emperors, who allowed no one to belong to his regiment of body guards under six feet high, and furthermore they were compelled to marry, if they married, women who were at least five and a half feet tall.

From time to time there are exhibited in London enormously tall men and women, and not infrequently we are informed that the parents of these monstrosities are ordinary-sized individuals. Here again the "variability" is the simple expression of the proof of the pre-existence of a giant ancestry, and the ordinary-sized children that may be produced by His Prussian Majesty's body guard points to the same conclusion, in the opposite direction.

An older and more perfect "selection" in man is furnished by the history of the ancient Spartans. By their laws all weakly and sickly children were carefully exterminated at birth, and the enforcement of these laws produced a race full of strength and vigour.

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