A TUOIT FISH LIVING IN A WEI.I, TWENTV- 

 FIVK YEARS. Mr. F. Hoyt, a correspondent of 

 the Country Gentleman, writing from South 

 East, New York, November 19th. says : / 



Can any one tell how lo-g a trout fish will live .'. 

 Twenty-five years the past summer I came on 

 the farm where I now am. Almost the first 

 that I did after getting in my spring crops was tot 

 drain a bog swamp, the outlet of which ieads iutd 

 fche Croton river. I had an old Scotchman to d# 

 the ditchiug. One day he brought up a trout fish.' 

 about the size of a man's little finger in his whis- 

 key jug, (by ihe by we used a little on the farm 

 then, and not since then.) I put 't in the well 

 near the house, and it is there ROW, grown to a 

 goodly size say about a foot long and large in 

 proportion. It has been fed but very little ; once 

 in a while some one throws in a grasshopper or 

 cricket, lo see him catch it. The well is thirty 

 .'.*p and water harJ,and settles down n' arly 

 t the !'o;.t-m, and ihen again rises to near the 

 en taken out a few times to clean 

 the wel; for the Tnst five years. 



Friday last I got a grasshopper, the last one I 

 expect to see iliis fall, and irave it to him. The 

 water is now twenty-five feet deep, but it hardly 

 touched the suriace before he had ;tt. If any 

 one has a fis older than mine, I would like to 

 know it. 



STRANGE ANIMALTHE GORILLE. A gentle- 

 man has furnished us with a translation of an ar- 

 ticle from a recent number of the Echo du Pa- 

 cifique, giving the description of a most singular 

 animal. That paper says : / &*^ 



" Our French scientific newspapers, by last mail, 

 brought us accounts exceedingly interesting, of a 

 new kind of animal heretofore unknown, which 

 was sent by a French literate to the Historical Mu- 

 is, It bears the name of the Gorille, 

 ppro eg very near the human species. 

 one of the European menageries ever posses- 

 sed a living Gorille, and .the French museumjisthe 

 first to possess a dead one. The animal curiosity 

 was brought by Dr. Franquet from the coast of 

 Gabon. The Gorille absolutely resembles the 

 man, of which it has the proportions but on a 

 gigantic scale. It is as large as a giant. The legs 

 are short, thick, and of enormous size. The bust 

 long and herculean. The breast and shoulders are 

 sixty inches in circumference. Its face is black, 

 long and naked, with the exception of some gray 

 hairs upon its lip and chin. Its head is covered 

 with long stiff' hair, which, from the forehead, rises 

 directly on the skull, and reaching the nape of the 

 neck, at which point it divides, and in short, re- 

 sembling two branches of a crown. This movea- 

 ble mane stands upright at will, and gives to the 

 animal a ferocious look. Add to this two long 

 arms which may suffocate a man without the least 

 effort and hands Sufficiently large to grasp the 

 most voluminous hand of a man twice over. The 

 Gorilles are of such strength, that ten men could 

 not subdue a single one. Their principal force lies 

 in the vigorous pressing of their hands, by means 

 of which they quickly choke their enemy. Like 

 those negroes who swallow their tongues that tuey 

 may die free, the Gorille will not know slavery 



A 



it must be killed to be taken." 



Curious Plants. 



Almost every body has heard of the wonderful 

 walking leaves of Australia. For a long, time 

 after the discovery of that island, many people re- 

 ally believed that the loaves of a certain tree 

 tvhich flourishes there, could walk upon the 

 ground. The story arose in this way : 



Some English sailors lauded upon the coast one 

 day, and after roaming about until they were 

 tired, they sat down under a tree to rest thein- 

 eelves. " A puff <>f wind came along, and blew off 

 a shower of leaves, which, after turning over and j 

 over |n the air, as leaves generally do, finally rest- 

 ed upon the ground. As it was midsumwer, ar.d 

 everything appeared quite green, the circumstan- 

 ces puzzled the sailors considerably. But their 

 surprise was much greater, as you may well sup- 

 pose, when, after a short time, they saw the leaves 

 crawling along the jground towards the trunks ot 

 the tree. They ran at once for the vessel without 

 stopping to examine into the matter at all, and set 

 sail away from the laad where every thing seemed 

 I to be bewitched. One of the men said thnt "he 

 expected every moment to see the trees set to 

 dance a jig." Subsequent explorations of Austra- 

 lia have taught us that these walking leaves are 

 insects. They live upon the trees. Their bodies 

 are very thin and flat, their wings forming leaf- 

 like organs. When they are disturbed, their legs 

 are folded away under ther bodies, leaving tne 

 shape exactly like a leaf, with its stem and all 

 complete. They are of a bright green colr in 

 the summer, but they gradually change iu the fall 

 with leaves, to the brown of i'rost-bittea vegeta 

 tion. When shaken from the tree, they lie for a 

 few mimics upon the ground, as though they were 

 dead, but presently they begin to crawl along 

 towards the tree, which they ascend again. They 

 rarely use their wings, although they are pretty 



* well supplied in this respect, r 



Another eccentric production of nature, .which 

 we find mentioned in Milner's Crimea, is the 

 "Steppe Witch." /fj 3~~ 



This curious plant, which grows in the Cnm*a, 

 is in that country the theme of many a tale and 

 ballad of childhood. The plant rises to the height 

 of three feet, and ramifies considerably upwards, 

 so as to form a thick round bush, bearing pretty 

 little flowers. When sapless and withered in au- 

 tumn, the main stock is broken close to the ground 

 by the first high wind that rises; and the rounded 

 top is carried rolling, hopping and skipping over 

 the plain under the conlrol of the breeze. Other 

 small withered plants become attached to the mass, 

 and it gradually forms a huge mishappen ball; 

 while several being drifted together, adhere like 

 enormous burrs, and have some witchery in their 

 appearance, as they go advancing and bounding 

 before the gale. Hundreds of these objects may 

 be seen scouring the steppes at the same time, 

 and may easily be mistaken at a distance for hun- 

 ters and wild herds. Heavy rains put an end tc 

 the career of the witches; or the Black Sea, in- 

 to which they are blown, summarily arrests their 

 course. 





Is IT so ? It is a popular belief that the age 

 of trees can be determined by the " rings" or 

 grains that overlie each other in their trunks. 

 Mr. Joshua Howard, of Maryland, disputes the 

 fact. He says that these rings counted on the 

 section of the tree are not of annual growth 

 are formed one at every full moon in the grow- 

 ing season, and at the latitude of Maryland five a 

 year. This he has frequently proved by felling 

 trees, the age of which he knew. The extraor- 

 dinary age given to trees by the popular rule has 

 made many persons doubt whether it is true. 



LIFE WITHOUT WATER. The day before we 

 reached the Orange river we fell in with a kraal 

 of Hottentots, whom, to our great surprise, we 

 found living in a locality altogether destitute of 

 water. The milk of their cows and goats sup- 

 plied its place. Their cattle, moreover, never 

 obtained water, but found a substitute in a kind 

 of ice-plant, (mesembry-aritkemwn,) of an ex- 

 ceedingly succulent nature, which abounds in 

 those regions. But our own oxen, not accus- 

 tomed to such diet, would rarely or never touch 

 it. Until 'I had actually convinced myself as I 

 had often the opportunity of dping at an after 

 period that the men and beasts could live en- 

 tirely without water, I should perhaps have had 

 some difficulty in realizing this singular fact. 

 Anderson's Wanderings in Southwestern Africa. 



