508 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



if he would grant him a trifling request. 

 With a smile, the Lord answered, " What 

 you ask will be granted so soon as the oaks 

 have lost all their leaves." The Goltsei 

 beiuns (literally, " God-be-with-us " in old 

 times people did not like to name the devil, 

 lest he should appear) was delighted, and 

 eagerly longed for the coming of autumn ; 

 but the oak-leaf gave no sign of falling. So 

 the devil, somewhat disappointed, deferred 

 his hope to winter. Winter came, but still 

 the leaves clung fast to the oaks, though 

 they rustled all yellow and brown in the 

 wind. Satan had then to comfort him- 

 self with the thought that at least they 

 would fall in the spring. But when joyous 

 Spring came, making its progress through 

 the verdant fields, first young leaves began 

 to sprout, and not until these had grown to 

 considerable size did the old ones drop off. 

 Then the prince of darkness knew that his 

 request would never be granted, for the oak 

 never loses all its leaves at once. So in his 

 rage he rushed howling and roaring at the 

 oak-trees, and with his claws tore the leaves 

 to pieces, and we, to this day, only see the 

 6hreds. 



A Big Fish- Worm. The people who in- 

 habit the highlands of Southern Brazil have 

 a firm belief in the existence of a gigantic 

 earthworm fifty yards or more in length, 

 five in breadth, covered with bones as with 

 a coat-of-mail, and of such strength as to 

 be able to uproot great pine-trees as though 

 they were blades of grass, and to throw up 

 such quantities of clay in making its way 

 underground as to dam up streams and di- 

 vert them into new courses. This redoubt- 

 able monster is known as the " Minhocao." 

 Dr. Fritz Miiller, who has for some years re- 

 sided in Brazil, studying in particular the 

 entomology of that country, has thought it 

 worth his while seriously to investigate the 

 grounds of this popular belief, and has pub- 

 lished the result of his researches in a Ger- 

 man periodical, from which Nature has taken 

 the gist of his communication. As will be 

 seen, he is inclined to admit, with consider- 

 able allowance, the truth of the popular 

 stories. The evidence of the existence of 

 the Minhocao is of this kind : About eight 

 years ago one of these monsters made its 

 appearance in the neighborhood of Lages, 



but perhaps it will be safer to say that it 

 " is reported to have made its appearance." 

 One Francisco de Amaral Varello, at a place 

 distant ten kilometres from that town, saw, 

 lying on the bank of the Rio das Caveiras, 

 an animal nearly one metre in thickness, 

 not very long, and with a snout like a pig. 

 He went to call his neighbors, but when he 

 returned to the rescue the animal had disap- 

 peared, and the party saw only the trench 

 it had made in disappearing under the earth. 

 A week later a similar trench was seen at 

 the distance of some six kilometres from the 

 former one. One F. Kelling, a German, 

 from whom Dr. Miiller got this information, 

 was at the time a merchant at Lages, and 

 he saw these trenches. Another German, 

 E. Odebrecht, while surveying a line of road 

 from Itajahy into the highlands of Santa Ca- 

 terina several years ago, crossed a broad, 

 marshy plain traversed by an arm of the Ma- 

 rombas River, where his progress was much 

 impeded by " devious winding trenches which 

 followed the course of the stream, and occa- 

 sionally lost themselves in it." These trench- 

 es he is now inclined to believe to be the work 

 of the Minhocao. Other testimony, relating 

 to five or six earlier apparitions of the Min- 

 hocao, is cited, but we have no room to give 

 it here. To Dr. Miiller the conclusion ap- 

 pears inevitable that in the above-named 

 region of Brazil " long trenches are met with, 

 which are undoubtedly the work of some 

 living animal. It might be suspected," he 

 adds, " to be a gigantic fish allied to Lepi- 

 dosiren and Ceratodus ; ' the swine's snout ' 

 would show some resemblance to Ceratodus, 

 while the other characters show rather an 

 analogy to Lepidosircn. In any case," he 

 concludes " it would be worth while to make 

 further investigations about the Minhocao, 

 and, if possible, to capture it for a zoologi- 

 cal garden." 



Aurora Borealis. From statistics of the 

 aurora borealis collected by H. Fritz, and 

 extending from 1846 to the present year, we 

 learn that out of 2,035 days in the months 

 from August to April, on which auroras 

 were seen, 1,107 were aurora-days in Finland, 

 and that of these 1,107 auroras 794 were 

 simultaneously visible in Europe and Amer- 

 ica, 101 only in Europe, and 212 were visi- 

 ble only in Finland. During the same period 



