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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



versal, but it was found expedient in some 

 places to postpone the treat till the corpse 

 had been safely taken care of. At Bridgton, 

 a glass of wine was given to each mourner, 

 and a biscuit, on the top of which was placed 

 a piece of dark-colored orange-peel. It is 

 just possible that the presence of this orna- 

 ment "was the perpetuation of a symbol 

 used at old heathen rites. Quite within liv- 

 ing memory it was also customary to put a 

 black mark on some of the oat-cakes served 

 along with whisky in public-houses in Ruth- 

 erglen, near Glasgow. Few, if any, of those 

 who observed this custom in baking the 

 cakes latterly could have the least notion 

 of what their action implied ; but its origin 

 may be traced to the old heathen practice 

 at the feasts of Baal, of giving bread with 

 a black mark upon it to those unhappy per- 

 sons who were selected as victims to be sac- 

 rificed." No religious service was held at 

 the grave ; only the hats of the attendants 

 were taken off sometimes for a moment 

 when the coffin was lowered. The omission 

 " had its origin, no doubt, in the Scotch hor- 

 ror of doing anything that might give a 

 color to the charge of following the Roman 

 Catholic fashion of praying for the dead." 

 Sometimes a chapter in the Bible was read 

 and a short prayer pronounced in the house 

 before the procession set out for the church- 

 yard ; but care was generally taken in these 

 preliminaries to disconnect them from the 

 peculiar circumstances of the occasion. 

 Thus, at one funeral, refreshments were 

 served, and the offering of the prayers was 

 so arranged as to give them the appearance 

 of being a grace before and a grace after 

 meat. The starting of the funeral pro- 

 cession was colloquially called " lifting," in 

 allusion to the "lifting" of the coffin or the 

 taking of it up to carry it from the trestles 

 on which it rested, with " spokes " or bear- 

 ing-poles. Efforts to do away with funeral 

 treats, which were justly prompted by the 

 scandals to which the drinking gave rise, 

 were strongly and bitterly opposed. One 

 man, who had become an abstainer, gave 

 great offense by providing milk instead of 

 liquor. His neighbors ascribed his conduct 

 to meanness, and had nothing but scorn for 

 his plea of principle. " Principle had noth- 

 ing, and could have nothing, to do with it," 

 they asserted. " The minister had no scru- 



ple in taking off his dram, and was he going 

 to set himself up as better than the min- 

 ister ? " 



Bnrmcse Animal Life The "British 



Burmah Gazetteer " gives some notes of 

 rare interest on the zoology of the country 

 to which it relates. The mammalia include 

 the Malasian tapir, four species of rhinoce- 

 ros, a fresh-water dolphin, and bats. Most 

 of the bats hibernate, as their congeners 

 do in Europe, and one is remarked for the 

 reservoir of fat which it accumulates in its 

 tail, to serve it in winter. The list of birds 

 runs up to seven hundred and seventy-three 

 species, or a hundred more than there are 

 in all Europe. A curious fact is that sev- 

 eral species are found in the Island of Java, 

 eight hundred miles south, while they are 

 wholly wanting in the neighboring penin- 

 sula of Malacca. Species that are found in 

 India only at the foot of the Himalayas, 

 at a considerable elevation, occur here at 

 the level of the sea. Species of birds iden- 

 tical with those of Europe, or similar to 

 them, are not rare. The variety of the 

 fauna is explained by the physical configu- 

 ration of the region, where a walk of a few 

 hours will carry one from the green sod of 

 meadows intersected by rice-fields to the 

 inaccessible precipices of the granitic mount- 

 ains, from the sea-shore jungles of bamboo 

 and the rich, tropical vegetation of the 

 coasts to immense virgin forests and the 

 stiff and dark pines of the mountain-sides. 

 The list of reptiles is discouraging to the 

 settler, for it furnishes four crocodiles and 

 seventy serpents, one of which is a python 

 thirty feet long, and the bite of fifteen is 

 poisonous. The list of fishes is the most 

 interesting of all. It includes the Anabas 

 srandens, which they say comes out of the 

 water and goes up into the trees for insects ; 

 species that have a reservoir of air above 

 the gills, and will die of asphyxia if they 

 are kept under water and prevented from 

 drawing air directly from the atmosphere ; 

 a siluroid that has an accessory respiratory 

 apparatus attached to the branchiae ; and 

 the fish-scorpion, which has a long air-ves- 

 sel passing across the muscles of the back, 

 and communicating interiorly with the gills : 

 this explains how these fish can live in 

 mud. These respiratory organs seem close- 



