THE MUSEUM. 



89 



would only occupy a cubic inch. In 

 six months each separate oyster^; is 

 large enough to cover half a crown, 

 and in 12 months a crown piece, n It 

 bears its age upon its back, and it is 

 easy to tell the age of an oyster by 

 looking at its shell as it is that of 

 horses by looking at their teeth. One 

 to two million oysters are produced 

 .from a single parent. 



Belgium has over 50,000 draught 

 dogs, drawing milk-carts, and vege- 

 table-carts. In Brussels there is a 

 dog market, where a large number of 

 common dogs are for sale cheap. The 

 pure dogs of the breed of St. Bernard 

 and Newfoundland, Great Danes or 

 English mastiff are worth too much 

 money to work in a market cart. They 

 rear Belgian horses almost exclusively, 

 and have no small cheap horses; hence 

 they use dogs where we use horses, and 

 where France uses cheap donkeys in 

 the town and horses on the farms, 

 Germany uses dogs and cheap horses, 

 and is now rapidly increasing her im- 

 portation of American cheap horses, 

 that the\- can make into sausage when 

 done working, while the dogs are not 

 so popular for eating purposes, espec- 

 ially with tourists. 



A good story illustrating the ingenu- 

 ity and intelligence of elephants is con- 

 tributed to the Spectator by Mr. Mos- 

 sop, of Newport, Salop. He says 

 that a child at the Zoological Gardens, 

 in throwing a biscuit to the elephant, 

 dropped it between the cage and the 

 barrier, and out of reach of the child 

 or the elephant. When the latter 

 blew the biscuit with its trunk till the 

 child could reach it, and^again attempt 

 to throw it into the elephant's~mouth" 



This happened not once, but several 

 times. Not that elephants have per- 

 fect reasoning powers, as the sequel to 

 this story will show. After the small 

 child had made many vain attempts to 

 throw the biscuit far enough, a good- 

 natured lad thought he would help, and 

 took the biscuit from the child. This 

 displeased the elephant, who thereupon 

 dealt the lad a severe blow on the arm. 



Notes from Lewiston, Illinois- 



For a week before Christmas time 

 rain had fallen almost continually in 

 this state. The creeks and rivers 

 everywhere were bank full and the Ill- 

 inois river was overflowing the bottoms 

 doing great damage to fields of corn 

 that were not yet gathered. Previous 

 to this big rain the rivers and lakes 

 had been frozen up solid and the wat- 

 er fowl had taken their departure for 

 the South. Warm weather and open 

 water however brought a few flocks of 

 geese back again. The night of Dec. 

 23d was extremely dark and rainy. 

 Several flocks passed over the city fly- 

 ing quite low and at Nubbin Ridge out 

 in the country a large flock became 

 confused and flew about for an hour 

 or two passing quite low over houses 

 where lights were burning. Several 

 farmers got out with clubs and poles 

 and tried to knock some of them down 

 but were unsuccessful except in one in- 

 stance when one was secured by its 

 flying into a cherry tree and falling to 

 the ground and being secured before it 

 had time to rise again. It was quite 

 fat and used for a Christmas dinner. 



Bird life in this vicinity has been un- 

 usually quiet for the last few weeks, 

 the winter residents seeming to have 

 hidden themselves away somewhere. 



Dec. 30th I took a ten mile tramp out 



