342 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



and never had warts and also the testimony of persons who have 

 had warts and never handled toads. 



Where do Hair Snakes Originate? 



Although there is no such animal twenty-five students indicated 

 the method by which hair snakes originate. Out of 50 men and 

 50 women in a college freshman class the idea was limited to 26% 

 of the men. A state agricultural college and a class in high school 

 that had had biology, contributed more means by which these 

 animals originate than the other classes. Chamber's Encyclopedia 

 (1753) speaks of animated horse-hairs as horse-hair worms. 



The places where these fictitious animals were supposed to 

 originate were such as: in dirt; in the body; in water; eggs; 

 intestines of mammals; swamps; crossing of reptiles; among 

 rocks. Dragons were also supposed to come from swamps and 

 water. A swamp seems to be a mysterious place. Anything 

 that is mysterious, ipso facto, occurs there. Such reasoning would 

 give-way in a good course in nature-study. 



(To be continued) 



Nature News 



A new star cluster in the Constellation Lynx has been discovered 

 by Dr. Lampland of the Lowell Observatory and Professor Shapley 

 and the staff of the Harvard College Observatory. This star 

 cluster was discovered through photographs, and is one of the 

 faintest and most distant known, and it established a new boundary 

 in the starry heavens. It is 165,000 light years or 990 quadrillions 

 of miles from the sun, and lies about two quintillion miles from the 

 farthest cluster known to us in the opposite side of the skies. 



A thirty-five year campaign for the preservation of the birds of 

 paradise has just come to a successful issue, and we congratulate 

 the Audubon Societies most heartily upon this triumph. For 

 nine years it has been illegal to import bird of paradise feathers, 

 but the Federal Government was compelled to prove that the 

 feathers were smuggled before it could confiscate them. The 

 new Tariff Act provides that the owner of the feathers must 

 submit to confiscation or show proof that the feathers were im- 



