Plato Profile Directory 20

In this great work the late ruler derived advantage, not only from his eminent personal qualities, but from his foreign origin. As a German Prince, powerfully connected, he stood outside and above Rumanian party factions, and succeeded gradually in imposing his will on them all. Born on April 20, 1839, at Sigmaringen, near the source of the Danube, he was barely 27 when he accepted the call to rule an unknown country with which his only connection was that, like the estates of his family, it, too, was watered by the Danube. Of middle height, well built, pronounced features, and clear, gray eyes, his personality expressed quiet energy. His statecraft he learned by experience and from the excellent counsel of his father, Prince Charles Anthony of Hohenzollern, head of the senior and Roman Catholic branch of the Hohenzollerns.

Almost never do we find a device in nature which occurs once only. The unique hardly exists: nature is a great copyist. At least two animals of wholly unlike kinds are all but sure to hit independently upon the self-same mechanism. So it is not surprising to learn that a cat-fish has invented an exactly similar mode of carrying its young to that adopted by the Surinam toad: only, here it is on the under surface, not the upper one, that the spawn is plastered. The eggs of this cat-fish, whose scientific name is Aspredo, are pressed into the skin below the body, and so borne about by the mother till they hatch. This is the second instance of which I spoke above, where the female fish herself assumes the care of her offspring, instead of leaving it entirely to her excellent partner.

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