POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



l 37 



male of the Arins of Ceylon and the Chio- 

 nais of the Sea of Galilee carry the eggs in 

 the back part of the mouth. The eggs of 

 dog-fishes, sharks, skates, and rays are in- 

 closed in capsules which in texture resem- 

 ble a bit of sea-weed. The mother-frog of 

 the Alytes obstetricans lays her eggs in long 

 chains of sixty or more. The male takes 

 this string, twines it around his thighs, and 

 retires till the young are ready to leave the 

 ejrg : then he goes into the water, and the 

 young swim out. The eggs of the Ameri- 

 can frogs are placed in pouches in the back 

 of the mother, and in the Surinam toad the 

 egg and the tadpole go through their full 

 development thus inclosed, each in its own 

 cell, till, when they emerge, they differ only 

 in size from the parent. More than one 

 hundred and twenty of these tadpole-cells 

 have been counted in the back of a single 

 female of this species. A Chilian frog has ' 

 the organs, corresponding with the " vocal 

 sacs" of our bull-frogs greatly distended, ! 

 and the young are hatched in these. The j 

 exaggeration of these organs has produced j 

 more or less of distortion in other parts of 

 the animal. 



Happy Tenant-Farmers. A writer in 

 " Chambers's Journal " holds up Lord Tolle- j 

 mache, of Peckforton Castle, Cheshire, as 

 a landlord who has found a plan of dealing 

 with his tenants that satisfies his farmers, 

 his laborers, and himself, and which is work- 

 ing with encouraging results. This propri- 

 etor set out to establish cottage-farms upon 

 his estate, for the purpose of attaining three 

 results : To satisfy the natural and praise- 

 worthy desire of the laborers to have a cow, 

 and land to maintain it ; to train the rising 

 generation of laborers' children from infan- 

 cy in dairying and agricultural pursuits ; 

 and to secure a supply of high-class labor- 

 ers for his large tenant-farmers. All of 

 these results are in process of accomplish- 

 ment. The cottage-farms consist of house- 

 inclosures the houses being built in pairs 

 and fitted with conveniences of about half 

 a rood of garden-land each, with a tract 

 attached, including pasture, of about three 

 acres, and are leased at a fixed rent of fifty 

 dollars a year, for twenty-one years. The 

 laborers thus housed are declared markedly 

 superior to those of their class in most 



counties. "Their wives are robust, their 

 children are unusually intelligent, and the 

 social atmosphere of the neighborhood is 

 exhilarating. In every house visited the 

 furniture was good and excellently cared 

 for. Neatness and cleanliness were evi- 

 dently habitual. . . . And it is the proud 

 boast of the neighborhood that the laborers 

 on the Tollemache estates are unexcelled 

 in England." As a consequence of this 

 system, "while dread and perplexity per- 

 vade the shires, the happy dwellers upon 

 Lord Tollemache's estate are at peace. Ev- 

 ery large farm is occupied, and the obtain- 

 ing of one is the great object of those liv- 

 ing outside." 



Automatic Fire - Extingnishers. Pro- 

 fessor Silvanus P. Thompson, in a recent 

 address before the Society of Arts, dwelt 

 upon the fact that great fires usually owe 

 their magnitude and their consequent ter- 

 rors to the circumstance that a certain in- 

 terval of time necessarily elapses before 

 any application is made to extinguish them 

 because no one is at hand and ready to 

 act on the instant. It is to the fatal two 

 minutes or five minutes that pass before 

 help arrives, that the mischief is due. Noth- 

 ing but a self-acting or automatic system, 

 which will operate at the right moment and 

 at the very spot, without the intervention of 

 the human hand, will meet the case. Au- 

 tomatic systems exist, and are of several 

 kinds, and efficient. Automatic sprinklers 

 are self-acting valves connected with a sys- 

 tem of water-pipes placed in the ceiling of 

 a room, which, on the outbreak of a fire, 

 open and distribute water in a shower or 

 spray exactly at the place where the fire 

 breaks out. The apparatus may be arranged 

 so that, whenever it is called into operation 

 by the heat, it shall sound an alarm-bell 

 and summon aid to the spot. These devices 

 are relied upon in many of the manufactur- 

 ing establishments of New England, with 

 an estimated reduction of the risk of con- 

 flagration to one twentieth of what it for- 

 merly was. Several designs for sprinklers 

 depend for their efficacy on the melting of 

 some kind of easily fusible solder or cement 

 by the heat of the incipient fire, and the 

 consequent loosening of the valve which 

 holds the water back. The obvious requi- 



