lo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



disaster literally as to the scallop, and metaphorically as to the 

 polyp: both were sadly taken in. Actinia now looked very serious 

 comically so like one in an evil strait. Perhaps it felt as bad as a 

 hen-pecked subject, for it had got itself around a pecten, and a, pecten 

 maxirnus at that. If a guest at tea should swallow the tea-saucer, 

 matters would look alarming. And this bolted scallop was as big as 

 a saucer. The effect upon the actinia's looks was ludicrous, since there 

 was a narrow, bulging, equatorial belt, strongly significant of an undue 

 centrifugal force in activity at that place. Get rid of the saucer it 

 could not ; so it seemed, with a saucy air, to have made up its mind to 

 resort to an expediency that should fairly checkmate the strange exi- 

 gency. And this expediency was a change of base. In fact, it trans- 

 formed its old base entirely. Tentacles grew out around it, an oval 

 aperture appeared, and, in a word, it became a double actinia, and the 

 large scallop shell was made a double base, and was accepted ever 

 after as the demarcation of the two individualities. No fun in Nature ? 

 If this, despite a smack of sauciness, was not a practical joke of the 

 first water, then bring out your specimen-brick, old Sober-sides ! 



But the time is up, and so much must be left unsaid. In the cuts 

 is the white Arachnactis, a baseless actinia, which, stuck in the mud, 

 waves its few snaky tentacles about. And there is the waxy Anthea, 

 or opelet, with its snaky or gorgon hair. But we must stop, without 

 telling of the singular varieties of forms, and the rich diversities of 

 tint and color, and the sometimes queer, yet normal functions per- 

 formed by these marine animal mimics of the floral structures of the 

 land. 



THE FIEST TKACES OF MAN" IN EUEOPE. 



By Peof. ALBKECHT MUELLEE. 

 translated feom the german, by prof. joseph millikin. 



II. 



WE have been concerned heretofore with the human and animal 

 remains of the older Diluvium. We come now to the upper 

 and more recent lavers of that formation. 



In these, the formerly so abundant remains of the cave-bear are 

 wholly wanting, those of the mammoth very rare. The common 

 animals are the giant-elk, primitive ox, aurochs, horse, chamois, 

 steinbok, moose, monkey, and various species at present confined to 

 arctic and high Alpine and Pyrenean tracts. The characteristic 

 animal of the time, however, is the reindeer, heretofore absent or very 

 rare, and hence the name the Age of Reindeers. 



The continued prevalence of a northern and Alpine fauna in the 



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