SOME FACTS AND FICTIONS OF 

 ZOOLOGY. 



WHEN the country swain, loitering along some lane, comes 

 to a standstill to contemplate, with awe and wonder, the 

 spectacle of a mass of the familiar " hair-eels " or " hair- 

 worms " wriggling about in a pool, he plods on his way firmly 

 convinced that, as he has been taught to believe, he has just 

 witnessed the results of the transformation of some horse's 

 hairs into living creatures. So familiar is this belief to 

 people of professedly higher culture than the countryman, 

 that the transformation just alluded to has to all, save a few 

 thinking persons and zoologists, become a matter of the most 

 commonplace kind. When some quarrymen, engaged in split- 

 ting up the rocks, have succeeded in dislodging some huge 

 mass of stone, there may sometimes be seen to hop from among 

 the debris a lively toad or frog, which comes to be regarded 

 by the excavators with feelings akin to those of superstitious 

 wonder and amazement. The animal may or may not be 

 captured ; but the fact is duly chronicled in the local news- 

 papers, and people wonder for a season over the pheno- 

 menon of a veritable Rip Van Winkle of a frog, which, to 

 all appearance, has lived for "thousands of years in the 

 solid rock." Nor do the hair-worm and the frog stand 

 alone in respect of their marvellous origin. Popular zoology 

 is full of such marvels. We find unicorns, mermaids, and 

 mermen ; geese developed from the shell-fish known as 

 "barnacles;" we are told that crocodiles may weep, and 

 that sirens can sing, in short, there is nothing so wonderful 



