POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



139 



was ever imparted by a book from a circu- 

 lating library, and hence the question had 

 to be discussed simply as one of theory. 

 The doctors differed, of course, some of 

 them asserting the risk of contagion to be 

 great, while others held it to be nil. The 

 conclusion reached by the committee is 

 that, " while there may be a possibility that 

 contagious diseases may be transmitted by 

 books of a circulating library, the real dan- 

 ger of such transmission is very small." 

 Nevertheless, they recommend to the direc- 

 tors of the library " to act under the advice 

 of the Commissioner of Health, and adopt 

 such regulations as he had suggested, name- 

 ly: that he furnish to the library, whenever 

 he thinks proper, a list of the premises in- 

 fected with contagious diseases, and of their 

 residents ; that no books be loaned to such 

 houses until they are reported by the health 

 office to be free from contagious diseases, 

 and that all books returned from such 

 houses during this period be disinfected 

 before they are replaced on the shelves of 

 the library." 



Bird-Reasoning. — The first winter after 

 the erection of a telegraph line on the coast 

 of Antrim, Ireland, numbers of starhngs 

 migrating from Scotland were found dead 

 or wounded on the roadside, they having, 

 evidently, in their flight in the dusky morn- 

 ing, struck against the wires. Strange to 

 say, during the following and succeeding 

 winters, hardly a death occurred among the 

 starlings on their arrival. The inference 

 drawn from all this by a wsiter in " Nature " 

 is that " the birds were deeply impressed and 

 understood the cause of the fatal accidents 

 among their fellow travelers, that previous 

 year, and hence carefully avoided the tele- 

 graph wires ; not only so, but the young birds 

 must also have acquired this knowledge and 

 perpetuated it — a knowledge which they 

 could not have acquired by experience or 

 even by instinct, unless the instinct was really 

 inherited memory derived from the parents 

 whose brains were first impressed by it." 



Habits of the Thresher-Sharlc.— Having 



received a fine specimen of the fox, or 

 thresher-shark, Mr. Frank Buckland sends 

 to " Land and Water " an account of all he 

 has been able to learn concerning the habits 



of that animal. Premising that what he 

 says has to be taken with many '' grains of 

 salt," we subjoin the main points of his com- 

 munication. This shark, it appears, is called 

 " the thresher," from the power it has, in 

 company with the sword-fish, to destroy a 

 whale, by jumping into the air and striking 

 the whale with its tail, the sword-fish in the 

 mean time striking the whale from beneath. 

 Mr. Buckland has never seen a thresher 

 hunting mackerel, but believes that this 

 shark " rushes into a shoal of these fish, 

 and lays about right and left with his long 

 tail ; when the frightened mackerel are en- 

 deavoring to fall into their ranks again, the 

 shark has a good opportunity of seizing 

 them one by one." Of the contests between 

 thresher-sharks and whales he gives the fol- 

 lowing animated account, on the authority 

 of one Captain Hill, and in that worthy 

 skipper's own words : " The thresher-sharks 

 just do serve out the whales. The sea some- 

 times is all blood. A whale once got under 

 our vessel — the Hurricane — to get away 

 from these threshers, and when she was 

 there we was afraid to throw a rope over- 

 board, almost to walk about, for fear she 

 should chuck her tail and punch a hole in 

 our vessel. She was full length, in water 

 as clear as gin, right under our bottom, and 

 laid as quiet as a lamb for an hour and a 

 half, and never moved a fin. Where they 

 had been a-threshing of her, the sea was 

 just like blood. I have seen these 'ere 

 threshers fly out of the water as high as the 

 masthead, and down upon the whale while 

 the sword-fish was a pricking of him from 

 underneath. There is always two of 'em — 

 one up and one under ; and I think they 

 hunt together, and you can see the poor 

 whale blow in great agitation ; and I be 

 bound the pair of them don't leave him 

 till they have had their penn'orth out of 

 him. I don't think they leaves him till 

 they kills him." 



Cost of the Proposed Lake in Algeria.— 



M. Roudaire, the engineer in charge of the 

 preliminary surveys for flooding the Alge- 

 rian shotts (dried up lake-beds), estimates 

 the cost of the proposed work at not ex- 

 ceeding 20,000,000 francs. It is only ne- 

 cessary to cut through the narrow isthmus 

 separating the head of the Gulf of Gabes 



