NA TURE-STUDY AND SCIENCE NOTES 221 



three or four for more than 510,000, and one for $50,000. The shells of 

 the oysters are used for making buttons. \Joumal of Geography, Mav, 1906.] 



Old Horses. A new law in Massachusetts makes it unlawful to offer at 

 public sale or to lead, drive, or ride on anv public way (except on the wav 

 to the proper place for humane keeping or killing) any horse which could not 

 be worked without violating the law against cruelty to animals. Heavy 

 penalities are provided for violation of the law. 



Oology. In Bird-Lore for May, Professor Montgomery, of Texas, 

 deprecates the ordinary collecting of birds' eggs, and points out that little 

 valuable knowledge comes from the collection of shells. Certainly there are 

 many reasons why pupils in schools should be discouraged from collecting eggs. 



Alcohol from Sawdust. M. Classen, of the High School of Technology 

 of Aix-la-Chapelle, has just succeeded in making absolute alcohol from saw- 

 dust. By treating one ton of sawdust with gaseous sulphuric acid 1 10 liters 

 of absolute alcohol were made. [Review of Reviews, 33: 634, May, 10,06] 



Aged Tortoise. The famous tortoise which recently died at the London 

 Zoological Gardens was supposed to be nearly four hundred years old. It 

 was captured in the Galapagos Islands late in the eighteenth century. A 

 much-worn date carved on the shell led to the belief that it had been captured 

 and marked in the seventeenth century. Of course this is very uncertain 

 evidence; but adding the fifty years necessary for fuU growth to the time 

 passed in captivity makes it safe to estimate the age above two hundred vears. 

 The Literary Digest for July 28 gives a photograph copied from La Nature 

 of Paris. 



An "Intellectual" Horse. The problem of the famous Berlin horse 

 which has long puzzled scientific men bv his apparent ability to make simple 

 arithmetical computations and announce the result bv a series of pawings, 

 his way of counting, has been solved. It has been discovered that the horse 

 cannot do such tricks when blindfolded, which suggests that it is not a mental 

 process of the horse which leads to the correct answers to problems. Bv 

 means of delicate apparatus recording movements it has been demonstrated 

 that very slight movements, even unintentional, of the one who gives the 

 problems are noticed by the horse and taken as signals to stop pawing. Al- 

 though we cannot longer credit the horse with mathematical powers involving 

 intellectual operations known only in the human species, it is evident that he 

 has been trained to be a wonderfully fine observer — almost an equine thought- 

 r eader. A long translation of the original German article publishing the latest 

 experiments is given in the Literary Digest tor fulv 28. 



