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Many writers have dwelt with delight on the cheerful disposition that seems so common in Japan. Lightness of heart, freedom from all anxiety for the future, living chiefly in the present, these and kindred features are pictured in glowing terms. And, on the whole, these pictures are true to life. The many flower festivals are made occasions for family picnics when all care seems thrown to the wind. There is a simplicity and a freshness and a freedom from worry that is delightful to see. But it is also remarked that a change in this regard is beginning to be observed. The coming in of Western machinery, methods of government, of trade and of education, is introducing customs and cares, ambitions and activities, that militate against the older ways. Doubtless, this too is true. If so, it but serves to establish the general proposition of these pages that the more outstanding national characteristics are largely the result of special social conditions, rather than of inherent national character.

Tree-frogs have, of course, in most circumstances much greater difficulty in getting at water than pond-frogs; and this is especially true in certain tropical or desert districts. Hence most of the frogs which inhabit such regions have had to find out or invent some ingenious plan for passing through the tadpole stage with a minimum of moisture. The devices they have hit upon are very curious. Some of them make use of the little pools collected at the bases of huge tropical leaf-stalks, like those of the banana plant; others dispense with the aid of water altogether, and glue their new-laid eggs to their own backs, where the fry pass through the tadpole stage with the slimy mucus which surrounds them. Nature always discovers such cunning schemes to get over apparent difficulties in her way: and the tree-frogs have solved the problem for themselves in half a dozen manners in different localities. Oddest of all, perhaps, is the dodge invented by "Darwin's frog," a Chilean species, in which the male swallows the eggs as soon as laid, and gulps them into the throat-pouch beneath his capacious neck: there they hatch out and pass through their tadpole stage: and when at last they arrive at frogly maturity, they escape into the world through the mouth of their father.

ALIPPI-FABRETTI, QUIRINA. Silver medal at Perugia in 1879; honorary member of the Royal Academy in Urbino and of the Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia. Born in Urbino, 1849. She was the daughter of the jurisconsult Luigi Alippi. She studied drawing and painting in Rome with Ortis and De Sanctis. Following her father to Perugia in 1874, whither he had been called to the Court of Appeals, she continued her study under Moretti. She married Ferdinando Fabretti in 1877. She made admirable copies of some of the best pictures in Perugia, notably Perugino's "Presepio" for a church in Mount Lebanon, Syria. She was also commissioned to paint an altar-piece, representing St. Stephen, for the same church. Her interiors are admirable. She exhibited an "Interior of the Great Hall of the Exchange of Perugia" in 1884, at Turin. She painted two interior views of the church of San Giovanni del Cambio in Perugia, and an interior of the vestibule of the Confraternity of St. Francis. Her other works, besides portraits, include an "Odalisk," an "Old Woman Fortune-teller," and a "St. Catherine."

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