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HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE - GOSSIP. 



[March 1, 1867. 



A Boy Charmed by Serpents.— The Mays- 

 mile (Kentucky) Eagle says that a boy, four or five 

 years of age, in Bracken county, was in the habit, 

 during the whole of last summer, of going out in the 

 woods near his home to play with his "pretty 

 things," as he called them. After much persuasion 

 one day, his mother was induced to follow him to 

 his playgrounds to see what attracted him so much, 

 when, to her horror, she discovered her little darling 

 playing with a trio of huge black snakes, wholly 

 unconscious of his peril. The boy was completely 

 fascinated, and would advance and retreat, and sport 

 and dally with his hideous comrades as if he were in 

 the charmed circle of his brothers and sisters. The 

 mother, in terror, ran to the house crying for help, 

 when the father of the child rushed to the rescue of 

 the boy, and, after some difficulty, killed the snakes. 

 Wonderful to relate— and we have this information 

 from a gentleman of unquestionable veracity — the 

 little boy soon took to his bed, from which he never 

 arose, 

 the 



Can the above be true ? — J. B. 



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se. He pined away and died, an early victim of 

 fascination of the serpents. — New York Times. 



Twin Trout.- — I paid a visit the other day to 

 Mr. King, of Portland Road, whose name is so well 

 known to the public for his exertions in connection 

 with the recent calamity in Regent's Park. He has 

 just now — or had when I called — a curious lusus 

 naturae, a sort of Siamese twin trout, hatched on 

 the premises. This extraordinary joint-stock fish 

 (limited) finds it as difficult to get on, apparently, as 

 some of his brother Co.'s. There are two distinct 

 bodies, but only one tail; and as the two bodies 

 don't always take the same thing into their respective 

 heads, the common tail has its work cut out to 

 steer them. I have never heard of a case of the 

 sort before. I also saw the curious parasites, found 

 in the gills of a salmon, which were recently ex- 

 hibited at the meeting of the Quekett Club. Mr.' 

 King is an ardent naturalist, and has devised a 

 scheme for the employment and amusement of the 

 young, which 1 for one should be glad to see taking 

 the place of purposeless postage-stamp collecting. 

 He suggests that schools, or the young people of 

 various neighbourhoods collectively, should make 

 gatherings (in duplicate) of the natural objects of 

 their districts. A central bureau should be estab- 

 lished, where prizes would be given for the best 

 collections, and where exchanges might be effected. 

 By these means, the study of natural history would 

 be promoted, and museums established in various 

 parts ; not to mention other advantages. The idea 

 seems to me a very good one.— Town Talk, in Fun," 

 Feb. 9. 



Shell Money. — It is somewhat curious, that 

 these shells {Entails sp.) should have been employed 

 as money by the Indians of N.W. America, that is, 

 by the native tribes inhabiting Vancouver's Island, 

 Queen Charlotte's Island, and the mainland coast 

 from the straits of Fuca to Sitka. Since the intro- 

 duction of blankets by the Hudson's Bay Company, 

 the use of these shells, as a medium of purchase, 

 has to a great extent died out, the blankets having 

 become the money, as it were, or the means by 

 which everything is now reckoned and paid for by 

 the savage. A slave, a canoe, or a squaw, is worth 

 in these days so many blankets; but it used to be 

 so many strings of Bentalia. In the interior, east 

 of the Cascade Mountains, the beaver-skin is the 

 article by which everything is reckoned, in fact, the 

 money of the inland Indian. — /. K. Lord, F.Z.S. 



Frederick J. Foot. — Those of our readers who 

 remember the interesting chapter on Sea-Anemones 

 (Science-Gossip, vol. i. p. 155), by F. J. Foot, 

 M.A., will regret to learn from an obituary in the 

 Geological Magazine for February, that on the 

 evening of the 17th January a number of people were 

 skating upon the ice of Lough Kay, near Boyle, in 

 Ireland. Two of them having ventured upon a 

 weak portion of the ice, it gave way, and they fell 

 into the lake. Seeing their extreme danger, Mr. 

 Foot came to their assistance, and in a noble effort 

 to save their lives, lost his own. They were both 

 rescued, but he was drowned. Mr. Foot was at- 

 tached to the Irish Branch of the Geological Survey, 

 and though only thirty-six years of age, had commu- 

 nicated many useful and interesting papers to the 

 Natural History Society of Dublin, on botany aud 

 zoology, as well as written several geological 

 notices. 



Birds breeding in Confinement.— Can any 

 of your readers give me any information so that I 

 may get my birds to breed? I have pairs of the 

 following birds : — Siskin, Snow Bunting, Bullfinch, 

 Goldfinch, Brown Linnet, Lesser Redpole, and 

 Canary. I have them in a room, and feed tnem on 

 hemp, canary and rape-seeds, and in summer I sup- 

 ply them plentifully with green food, but for all 

 that I cannot get them to build ; the canary is the 

 only pair that breed. If I could get any hints that 

 would tend towards inducing them to breed, 1 should 

 be very glad. They seem to be very healthy and 

 tame, and very seldom fly against the netting or 

 the window. — A. Pickard. 



Aquarium Pest. — Last year some of your cor- 

 respondents mentioned, under this name, the nests 

 of the fresh water snails that are so apt to appear 

 on the sides of an aquarium ; others said there was 

 no need to remove them, as they were " greedily 

 devoured " by the fish. My children have a fresh- 

 water aquarium, on the sides of which upwards of 

 100 of these nests have appeared within the last 

 six weeks. So far from being " greedily devoured," 

 not one has been touched either by fish, newts, or 

 beetles : every tiny egg, moreover, contaius a black 

 spot, which must be the embryo snail. Why, then, 

 do they never hatch ? Some of them have been 

 there more than a month; and last summer, 

 being curious to see what would come from them, 

 we removed from the aquarium some aquatic plants 

 covered with them, and kept them for many weeks 

 in a separate glass jar, with no living creatures 

 to molest them. If they are the eggs of the 

 snail, why does nothing come from them ? — 

 L. H. F. 



Among Wasps. — One day last autumn I ob- 

 served a small cluster of wasps on the ground, 

 busily engaged in moving round some object in 

 their centre. After a few moments' observation, 

 their movements allowed me to discover that the 

 object of their assiduous attentions was a queen 

 wasp, which they were engaged in attacking, exactly 

 in the same manner as the working bees do the 

 drones, when about to lay up their winter stores. 

 In both cases they attempt to tear or destroy the 

 wing, especially at its attachment to the body, with 

 their mandibles. The issue of the assault I cannot 

 record, as the whole combatants soon took flight. I 

 could only observe that, like the drones, the queen 

 wasp's defence seemed very [languid. Are these 

 struggles usual ? — G. A. W. 



