THE FUN OF SEEING THINGS 



305 



sharp beaks, and when taken into the 

 whale's stomach in large quantities 

 cause the forming of a substance that 

 turns into ambergris. If the whale 

 continues this sort of diet, it causes his 

 day of reckoning to make an appear- 

 ance when the monster mammal of the 

 sea seeks shallow water and dies. 



"Sir. Stull has paid as high as $500 a 

 pound for the coverted substance. Not 

 many years ago he paid $18,000 for a 

 single lump of ambergris ; and his 

 record price is $35,000 for one lot of 

 several pieces. — Every Week. 



Astonishing Bubble Formation in Ice. 

 Jack Frost is a freaky fellow ; one 

 never knows what he will do next nor 

 why he does any one of his queer deeds. 

 Of all the strange freaks that I have 

 seen, one of the most interesting was 

 done in a small aquarium jar in our 

 laboratory on a recent cold night. The 

 water was frozen solid, and in some 

 mysterious way was filled with innu- 

 merable strings of bubbles radiating 

 from a common center which appeared 

 to serve as a headquarters for their de- 



parture. As far as observation can de- 

 cide, they appear in general to direct 

 their course to that center or from it. 

 The entire mass of ice appears to be 

 filled with strings of pearls, and among 

 them other equally beautiful pearls ap- 

 pear to have been tossed by the hand- 

 ful. Notice, too, the central group of 

 diverging lines among the pearls of that 

 part. These are air bubbles elongated 

 in some unknown way into thread-like 

 air channels that add much to the inter- 

 est and mysterious beauty. The result 

 is altogether one of the strangest and 

 most inexplicible performances of the 

 cold that I have ever seen. If any pro- 

 fessor of physics in any college or if 

 any one else can explain the matter, 

 will he not kindly communicate with 

 the editor? 



Since observing this remarkable 

 work my attention has been called to 

 other ice forms, and I have noted that 

 the bubbles frequently take somewhat 

 of an alignment but I have not pre- 

 viously seen any so marked as these. 



WHY THESE CURIOUS "STRINGS" OF "PEARL 

 AIR BUBBLES IN ICE? 



Not a Joke, but a Coincidence. 



Seriously and with no intent to tell 

 a good joke, a correspondent in New 

 York relates some ordinary observa- 

 tions of winter birds made by a neigh- 

 bor, and then relates this somewhat 

 startling experience. 



"A friend of ours, living in the town 

 of Greenwich, has a number of canaries 

 and has raised several of them. 



"One day her husband was enter- 

 taining her with opera music, and after 

 singing several verses, increasing the 

 sound in volume and possibly in dis- 

 cord as he is no musician, he struck up 

 a third in impossible bass tones, and 

 a canary perched high in his cage drop- 

 ped to the floor dead. 



"I had never known such a circum- 

 stance, but I have heard singing that 

 seemed as though it would have a simi- 

 lar effect on me." 



Japan has especially beautiful to- 

 pazes. Their colors run from white 

 through wine yellow, yellow blue, pale 

 blue, pale green and brown. One of the 

 finest known specimens stands three 

 inches high, rising from a base of feld- 

 spar and having beside it a crystal of 

 black quartz. 



