96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SOME FACTS AND FICTIONS OF ZOOLOGY. 



By Dr. ANDEEW WILSON. 



WHEN the country swain, loitering along some lane, conies to a 

 standstill to contemplate, with awe and wonder, the spectacle 

 of a mass of the familiar " hair-eels " or " hair-worms " wriggling 

 about in a pool, he plods on his way firmly convinced that, as he has 

 been taught to believe, he has just witnessed the results of the trans- 

 formation of some horse's hairs into living creatures. So familiar is 

 this belief to people of professedly higher culture than the country- 

 man, that the transformation just alluded to has to all, save a few 

 thinking persons and zoologists, become a matter of the most com- 

 monplace kind. When some quarrymen, engaged in splitting up the 

 rocks, have succeeded in dislodging some huge mass of stone, there 

 may sometimes be seen to hop from among the debris a lively toad or 

 frog, which comes to be regarded by the excavators with feelings 

 akin to those of superstitious wonder and amazement. The animal 

 may or may not be captured ; but the fact is duly chronicled in the 

 local newspapers, and people wonder for a season over the phenome- 

 non of a veritable Rip Van Winkle of a frog, which, to all appear- 

 ance, has lived for " thousands of years in the solid rock." Nor do 

 the hair-worm and the frOg stand alone in respect of their marvel- 

 ous origin. Popular zoology is full of such marvels. We find uni- 

 corns, mermaids, and mermen ; geese developed from the shell-fish 

 known as " barnacles " ; we are told that crocodiles may weep, and 

 that sirens can sing in short, there is nothing so wonderful to be 

 told of animals that people will not believe the tale ; while, curiously 

 enough, when they are told of veritable facts of animal life, heads 

 begin to shake and doubts to be expressed, until the zoologist despairs 

 of educating people into distinguishing fact from fiction, and truth 

 from theories and unsupported beliefs. The story told of the old 

 lady, whose youthful acquaintance of seafaring habits entei'tained her 

 with tales of the wonders he had seen, finds, after all, a close appli- 

 cation in the world at large. The dame listened with delight, appre- 

 ciation, and belief, to accounts of mountains of sugar and rivers of 

 rum, and to tales of lands where gold and silver and precious stones 

 were more than plentiful. But, when the narrator descended to tell 

 of fishes that were able to raise themselves out of the water in flight, 

 the old lady's credulity began to fancy itself imposed upon ; for she 

 indignantly repressed what she considered the lad's tendency to exag- 

 geration, saying, " Sugar mountains may be, and rivers of rum may 

 be, but fish that flee ne'er can be ! " Many popular beliefs concerning 

 animals partake of the character of the old lady's opinions regarding 

 the real and the fabulous ; and the circumstance tells powerfully in 



