MISCELLANY. 



763 



decreasing, and then another iron employed. 

 If a red-hot iron only is used, the agony is 

 intense. The first time I saw the cautery 

 used, on a gid of fourteen years, no pain was 

 given ; the second time, on an elderly person 

 (both for fungus in the upper maxillary bone) 

 her screeching was fearful, till I told the 

 operator his irons were not half hot enough. 

 He requested me to heat them properly, 

 which being done, not a mui-mur was heard. 

 The last time was opening four or five 

 sinuses in a horse's shoulder. He never 

 flinched and scarcely seemed aware of what 

 was being done. I would suggest using — 

 to obtain the white heat for actual cautery 

 — a large spirit blow-pipe." 



An Edible Lizard.— Dr. Burt G. Wilder 

 communicates to the American JVaiuralist 

 a brief note on the Menohranchus maculatits 

 as an article of food. This animal he re- 

 gards as probably a variety of the banded 

 Proteus, or big water-hzard, but it is never 

 striped, and always spotted. So abundant 

 are they in Cayuga Lake that a single fisher- 

 man brought him a hundred of them during 

 the month of March. The animal is held to 

 be poisonous, and the fishermen dislike even 

 to touch them. So far, however, is this from 

 being the case, that they are absolutely 

 harmless in every way. Dr. Wilder and his 

 associate. Dr. Barnard, have eaten one which 

 was cooked, and found it excellent. It is 

 their intention to recommend the Meno- 

 branchus for food, but not until all their in- 

 vestigations into the anatomy and embry- 

 ology of the animal are concluded. 



Conversion of Wood into Lignite.— In 



one of the old mines of the Upper Hartz, 

 in Hanover, some of the wood originally 

 employed in timbering has become so far 

 altered as to assume most of the characters 

 of a new lignite, or brown coal. Many of 

 the levels in the ancient workings of this 

 mine are filled with refuse matter, consist- 

 ing chiefly of fragments of clay-slate, more 

 or less saturated with mine-water, and con- 

 taining here and there fragments of the old 

 timbering. When wet, this wood is of a 

 leathery consistence, but in the air it soon 

 hardens, having most if not all the charac- 

 ters of lignite. It breaks with a conchoidal 

 fracture, and the parts that are most altered 



have the black, lustrous appearance of the 

 German " pitch coals." Chemical examina- 

 tion shows that this altered wood is nearer 

 to true coal than some of the younger ter- 

 tiary lignites. From all this it would ap- 

 pear that the transformation of vegetable 

 matter into coal requires less time than is 

 usually estimated by geologists ; in the pres- 

 ent instance it cannot have been over four 

 centuries. 



Indittmcnt of the English Sparrows.— 



In his " Key to Xorth-American Birds," 

 Mr. Coues expressed his apprehensions that 

 the English sparrow would molest and drive 

 away our native species. He now writes to 

 the American Naturalist that these appre- 

 hensions have already been verified. From 

 a letter written by Mr. Thomas G. Gentry, 

 it appears that, in the neighborhood of Ger- 

 mantown, Pa,, the English sparrows are 

 driving away the robins, blue-birds, and na- 

 tive sparrows. " They increase so rapidly, 

 and are so pugnacious, that our smaller na- 

 tive birds are compelled to seek quarters 

 elsewhere." It is chiefly on this account 

 that Mr. Coues has always been opposed to 

 the introduction of the English sparrow, 

 but also for other reasons. He holds that 

 there is no occasion for them in this coun- 

 try, and that the good they do in destroy- 

 ing cei'tain insects has been overrated. The 

 time will come, he says, when it will be 

 deemed advisable to take measures to get 

 rid of these birds, or at least to check their 

 increase. 



inatomy of the Porpoise. — Mr. Frank 

 Buckland, having dissected a porpoise, gives 

 some interesting information on the struct- 

 ure of that animal. In the matter of bow- 

 els it is well provided for, the specimen ex- 

 amined having 62 feet 2 inches of intestine. 

 The stomach was so complicated that it 

 could not be made out by ordinary dissec- • 

 tion. To get round the difficulty, Mr, Buck- 

 land hung it up by the oesophagus, and filled 

 it with plaster of Paris, of which nearly a 

 pailful was required before the organ was 

 fully distended. It was then found that the 

 porpoise has two stomachs — one in which 

 the prey is kept, and the other in which it 

 is digested. A careful section of the head 

 showed the blow-hole to be a most compli- 



