THE ABUNDANCE OF ANIMAL LIFE. 45 



(a quarter of a cent) a dozen for these animals, some peasants de- 

 livered fourteen hundred of them a day. Charles Martens has 

 given some curious details concerning the immense troop of lem- 

 mings (Myodes) in Norway. I was struck with the multitude of 

 squirrels in the Rocky Mountains. We met them at every step in 

 passing through the wooded regions. Alcide d'Orbigny relates 

 that when at Carmen de Moxos. he was nearly suffocated by the 

 odor of musk in his house. It c^me from the thousands of bats 

 that hung from the roof during the day. Marine mammals were 

 also very numerous before they were pursued by man. Buffon 

 says that in 1704 the crew of an English ship met a school of 

 more than a thousand morses near Cherry Island, in latitude 75. 



Notwithstanding the number of beings that disappeared in the 

 various geological epochs, I believe that the sum of the appear- 

 ances surpassed that of the extinctions till the ead of the Miocene. 

 I can not assert that there has not been some diminution since 

 that period ; but we can affirm that a prodigious fecundity pre- 

 vails at the present time. Translated for the Popular Science 

 MontJdy from the Revue des Deux Monde s. 



The Cambodian doctors, according to M. Paul d'Enjoy, largely use vege- 

 table poisons as medicines, and apply them with very great skill ; and they 

 are often possessors of recipes, the secret of which is carefully kept within 

 the family. They pretend to be acquainted with the love philter, and sell 

 at a very high price a colorless oil with which the young men impregnate 

 their lips in hopes of winning the young women through its magical power. 

 The Cambodian bonzes have established in the vicinity of their monas- 

 teries, and the Annamites near their pagodas and under their own direc- 

 tion, refuges where the sick are taken care of gratuitously. The institu- 

 tions are sustained by public charity and by the generous gifts of patients. 

 Many of the wealthy are not ashamed to have themselves taken to these 

 asylums, hoping that their cure may be made more complete through the 

 protection of the ministers of God, under whose care they place themselves. 



Insect chrysalides seem totally inert, and to the ordinary observer 

 suggest a mummy rather than anything else. Yet, when occasion arises, 

 they are able to manifest their vitality and even to be active. M. G. de 

 Rocquigny Adanson, studying some Saturnias, opened a few of the cocoons, 

 and having examined the insects, put them in a box in which the place of 

 their broken silken envelope was supplied by cotton wadding. Three weeks 

 afterward he found that they had changed position, and, examining them 

 more closely, that they had thrown out threads and fastened themselves to 

 the cotton. Madame Elisee Reclus, studying natural history in Switzerland, 

 had some Vanessas much shaken by the jolts in descending the mountain, 

 and afterward more shaken on the railway train. Observing them after 

 they had enjoyed a few hours of quiet at home, she found that they had 

 changed position, and, having thrown out threads and cross threads, had 

 fastened themselves firmly to the lid of the box in which they were kept. 



