few days later, some members procured four Quakers admittance to plead at the bar of the House against the proposed bill to "compel certain persons called Quakers to take lawful oaths." By the vote of the House they were called in; "and after some little debate at the door by some of the members about our hats," says Burrough, "the sergeant came and told us we might come in with our hats on or off, which we would. So into the House we were conducted by him, with our hats on; and within the House near the bar he took them off." The hat had, in fact, become the war-standard of this quaint army of non-fighters, and its victorious maintenance is chronicled always with a kind of gleeful and quiet humour by the Quaker autobiographers. In the seventeenth century it seems to have been as usual for men to keep the hat on in some assemblies which were not religious as it is now for women to wear their hats or bonnets at all public assemblies. In the account of the meeting of the English "Academy, or Royal Society," in the "Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo," in the year 1669, it is implied that the fathers of scientific congresses conducted their business with their hats on. "They observe the ceremony of speaking to the president uncovered, waiting from him permission to be covered." The refusal of hat-honour by the Quakers was at first a chance testimony against supposed worldly and unreal courtesy; but in time the negative refusal to take off the hat was fossilized into a kind of positive ritualistic symbol; it became the duty of a Friend of God to keep his hat on. When William Penn, a man of utterly different spirit from George Fox, was at the court of the religious Princess Elizabeth at Herford, in 1677, he argued against hathonour in the language of his spiritual master. "The hat choketh" (he said to "a certain graef or earl") "because it telleth tales. It telleth what people are; it marketh men for separatists; it is a blowing a trumpet, and visibly crossing the world; and this, the fear of man cannot abide." But, when he was closeted with his own sovereign, he spoke of the Quaker's hat in a more courtierly and less pretentious tone. The king asked Penn to give him his own explanation of the difference between their religions, Roman Catholicism and Quakerism. The Quaker answered by pointing out the symbolical difference between the hats worn by the แ king and by himself. "My hat," said he, ". 'is plain. Thine is adorned with ribbons and feathers. The only difference between our religions lies in the ornaments which have been added to thine." No Quaker of the Commonwealth period could have brought himself to give utterance to such a mild definition of Popery. The Quaker's peculiar hat, after lingering long as an exterior sign of the religion of the wearer, has now nearly wholly disappeared. Whether the refusal of hat-honour is disappearing with the broad-brimmed symbol, we do not know, but we believe that there are some "Friends" who remove their hats to ladies, and we know that there are some who take them off when they visit a church. We must not omit to mention that the fiercest controversy within the Quaker sect itself in Fox's time was also connected with the hat. The once famous John Perrot determined to out-Quaker Quakerism, and to develop it along those lines which Fox had pleased to cut short. Fox often speaks bitterly of this schismatic and of "those that run out from truth with him." Perrot naturally asked why, if it were no true honour to neighbours and magistrates to remove the hat to them, it can be true honour to God to remove the hat to Him? - which Fox and his disciples invariably did in prayer. God, said Perrot, does not demand hathonour but heart-honour. He spoke too late, however. At the close of the seventeenth century there was no longer sufficient raw material in England for the formation of new sects; the amazing religious productiveness of the nation had come to an end. The general Quaker body remained content with the casuistic arguments provided by their leader for the retention of the inherited habit of uncovering the head in worship. Fox's latest declaration on the subject of the hat was made at Harlingen, in Friesland, in 1677. We quote it for the proverb which he cites: "The very Turks," says he, "mock at the Christians in their proverb, saying, 'The Christians spend much of their time in putting off their hats, and showing their bare heads to one another.' Now is not the Turk's proverb a reproach to the Christians, and have not you (the burgomaster and council of Harlingen) fined and imprisoned many because they would not put off their hats to you, and show you their bare head?” From Nature. -THE DRAINAGE OF THE ZUYDER-ZEE. THE Dutch are a people who in many respects command the respect of the world. Their little country possesses comparatively few natural resources, and yet they have made so much of it, and they have been compelled to cultivate the virtues of frugality and industry to such an extent, that the people as a whole are probably better off than those of any other country in the world. Small as the country is, it is only by the exercise of great skill and constant watchfulness that they are able to prevent its being overwhelmed by the German Ocean. In this unfortunately they have not always been successful. Over and over again has the sea burst in upon them, laying waste their dearly-loved country, and sweeping away thousands of the inhabitants. It has only been after many severe lessons that they have learned how to keep the invader back. And within recent years they themselves have taken the offensive, and determined to drive out old Neptune from lands which he has possessed for centuries. Even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they succeeded in draining many small areas of land, and during the present century many marshes and lakes have been brought under cultivation, including Lake Haarlem, upwards of forty thousand acres in extent. In this way about three hundred and fifty square miles of land, mostly devoted to pasture, have been reclaimed, and that entirely by means of windmills. scheme has been adopted, after many years' careful research and consideration, for the details of which we are indebted to the French journal L'Explorateur. As early as 1865 a Dutch Crédit Foncier Association took up the scheme at the suggestion of Mr. Rochussen, an eminent statesman, and employed two engineers, M. Beijerinck, who drained the Haarlem Lake, and M. Stieltjes. These reported on the practicability of draining the southern, the shallowest and most fertile, half of the inland sea. Soundings were made, and numerous specimens of the bottom brought up, and in short a thorough investigation made from a geological and agronomic point of view. The result of these investigations was most favourable, and the specimens submitted to the analysis of a distinguished agricultural chemist, M. van Bemmelen, having been found to consist of alluvial clay or loam of the first quality and of great depth, over an extent of four-fifths of the bottom of the sea, the society entered into negotiations with the government. A government commission was appointed to consider the whole question from an economic and scientific point of view, and after an investigation lasting about two years, gave in their report in April, 1868. This report was in favour of granting a concession to the Crédit Foncier, whenever that company could present a definite plan that would obviate all existing objections. The society, after further consideration, requested the government to delegate a commission of specialists to report further on the scheme, taking into consideration all the interests concerned, Now, however, that the applications of and to decide upon the plan best adapted steam-power have reached such perfec- to carry the scheme into execution. After tion, this enterprising people have deter-three years' thorough consideration the mined upon an enterprise much more gi- commission gave in a voluminous report gantic than any they have hitherto at- in April, 1873, which declared that the tempted,-nothing less than the drainage project from an engineering point of view of the Zuyder-Zee. Until the end of the was practicable; that the clearing of the thirteenth century the area now occupied new lands would be a difficult and very exby that arm of the ocean seems to have pensive enterprise, but that the experience been mostly dry land, with a lake in the acquired and the progress of science centre, which by means of a river drained would furnish the means of overcoming into the German Ocean. At the time these difficulties, and making the enter mentioned, however, in 1282 according to prise a benefit to the country. some authorities, the sea broke through what is now the Strait of Helder, and converted the dry land into a gulf. For many years the drainage of the Zuyder-Zee has occupied the attention of the Dutch government and of engineers, but it is only since the improvements in the application of steam that the idea has been seriously entertained. At last a The drainage will be effected in that part of the gulf lying between the provinces of Guelderland, Utrecht, and North Holland, over an extent of 195,300 hectares (about seven hundred and forty square miles, nearly equal to the area of Surrey, and about one hundred miles larger than the Dutch province of Zeeland), by means of a principal dike or embankment of forty kilometres in length, fifty metres broad at the base, and raised five metres above the ordinary tides, to be constructed from the left bank of the mouth of the Yssel to the island of Urk, and from hence to the town of Enkhuyzen in the province of North Holland. The inclosed area will be divided into squares, and numerous pumping steam-engines will then be set to work, having a collective force of nine thousand four hundred horse-power. The commission estimates that the work will be entirely accomplished in sixteen years, and that it will cost a sum of 10,000,000l. not including the interest of the capital employed; or 1,600,000l. for preparatory works, provisional circular canals, etc., about 2,760,000l. for the construction of the dike, and the rest for the purchase of engines, the drainage proper, and the construction of reservoirs, internal canals, roads, railway lines, and works preparatory to bringing the new lands under culture. The interest on the above sum will raise it to 13,400,000l., but one-fourth of this will be granted as a subsidy by gov-| ernment, which will be amply compensated by the comparatively enormous addition to its small territory. Of the 473,000 acres to be drained, four-fifths, as we have said, are of great value, composed as they are of a bed of more than a metre thick of the most fertile mud deposited for centuries by the Yssel and other rivers of which the Zuyder-Zee is the receptacle. Only one-fifth consists of land of less value and of sands which will be useful in constructing the base of the dike, or to establish large reservoirs, indispensable in all drainage work, for the reception of the waters until they can be conveyed to the sea. Deduction being made for the land absorbed by these works, by canals, dikes, roads, etc. etc., there will remain upwards of 400,o00 acres suitable for culture, and the selling value of which ought considerably to exceed the expenses of the enterprise. Every one must wish that this bold and really beneficent scheme may be carried out with complete success. BRAINS. A brain attains its highest utility, | power to kill in fight enables a lower organism as distinguished from its highest development, to subordinate another of a higher but less when it can not only absorb from others and warlike form. A similar supremacy of mere direct its own further evolutions, but can also brute force and animal courage over higher organize and regulate the working of other intellectual development lacking these qualibrains under its own superintendence and con- ties, is far from uncommon in history. In this trol. This power it is which enables the the capacity to slay in war has exerted a rising merchant or manufacturer to utilize | supremacy which is far removed from that of other brains, to either use them for purposes one organizing brain over other brains inferior of comparative mental drudgery, or to per- to it in power, in development, or subordiform higher work under the immediate super-nated by the pressure of the environment. intendence of the ruling brain. By such The power to aid the working of one brain by means the single brain can multiply its working indefinitely by a well-selected series of other brains under itself; a few brains of comparatively high order regulating the working of numerous brains of a lower order, which perform the purely mechanical mental work. Such is the organization of a first-rate business in full working order. Of a precisely similar nature is the co-ordinating and ruling power of such men as Cromwell, Napoleon, or Washington, whose single brains controlled nations and peoples. The highest of all forms of brain-value must be clearly differentiated from several similar but really unlike forms of control; and the rule of brute force must not be confounded with it. Such rule we see in the lower animals, where the red ant enslaves the black ant, and where the a trained staff of subordinates is utilized by Medical Examiner. 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