MM. Bertaux and G. Yver are quoted, in _La Nature_, as relating in their travels in Italy that between Benevento and Foggia, where the railway passes through a tract of wheat fields, a falcon was observed closely accompanying the train. He would graze the windows, fly over the roofs of the cars and turn, and keep constantly dashing down to the ground by the side of the track. A habitual traveler on the road remarked that he had observed this habit of the bird several times a week. The crafty hawk had observed that the eddy made by the train as it rushed through the air overcame the small birds and made them an easy prey, and it had learned to take advantage of the fact. It was also remarked that this particular train, which was the "fast train," was the only one the bird thus pursued. A SURVIVAL OF MEDIÆVAL CREDULITY. BY PROFESSOR E. P. EVANS. One of the crassest and most impudent and yet most successful frauds of modern times is that recently practiced by Leo Taxil and his associates on the papal hierarchy in their pretended exposures of the Freemasons and the Satanic rites performed by this secret fraternity. On April 20, 1884, Leo XIII issued an encyclical letter in which he divides the human race "into two diverse and adverse classes" (_in partes duas diversas adversasque_): "the kingdom of God on earth--namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ"--and "the realm of Satan." All who are not members of the former belong to the latter, so that there is no alternative between being a good Catholic or a worshiper of the devil. His Holiness then proceeds to show that the headquarters of Satanism are the lodges of the Freemasons, a fact, he adds, fully recognized by his predecessors, who have never ceased to expose and denounce the diabolical character and flagitious aims of these archenemies of the Christian faith. The detailed description of the organization of this order, its devilish purposes, and the horrible crimes committed in order to accomplish them are very queer reading in an official document emanating from an infallible ecclesiastical authority at the close of the nineteenth century. On August 20, 1894, Leo XIII published a decree of the Inquisition putting under ban "Odd Fellows, Sons of Temperance, and Knights of Pythias" as "synagogues of Satan," and excluding them from the sacraments of the Church.