PUNITIVE LASSO-THWEflS. 



EVERY one knows that the long cord or thong, called the 

 lasso, is the peculiar weapon of the South American 

 hunter. Almost from his earliest childhood the young 

 Gaucho learns to amuse himself with it, and as soon as he 

 is able to walk takes great pleasure in catching young birds 

 and other animals around his father's hut, hurling the long 

 lash with such dexterity that the noose drops over their 

 bodies and brings them to his feet. Did we wish to select 

 from among all the denizens of life the most brilliant, grace- 

 ful, and sylph-like, whose very life-histories read more like 

 the romance of poetry than sober reality, we would choose 

 those which might be appropriately designated the lasso- 

 throwers. 



Now among animals, as is only too well known, any 

 weapons which they could be called upon to use must 

 develop in their own bodies, and therefore it could hardly 

 be suspected that a simple jelly-animal could be provided 

 with a lasso ready grown in its own flesh. Yet it is so, for 

 in that class of animals, which ranks just above the sponges, 

 we discover a weapon of this kind as simple and as deadly, 

 and far more wonderful in its action than any used by man. 



In fresh- water ponds, attached by its base to the under 

 surfaces of aquatic plants, may be found a very small animal, 

 just large enough to be seen without the aid of a lens, usu- 

 ally pale green, but sometimes of a brown color. This is 

 our common hydra, technically called Hydra fusca. It is 

 nothing more than a tube or sac, with a sucker at one end 

 to hold on with, and a mouth at the other, surrounded with 



