5 i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



public place, but at home, in a comfortable Dutch interior ; but 

 he is not without skillful accomplices the matron, his habitual 

 assistant, with her cunning expression, and the urchin who laughs 

 at the humbug of the thing, as he passes the pebbles which the 

 crafty charlatan causes to roll over the neck of the suffering 

 patient. 



The scene represented in Jerome van Achen's picture (Fig. 3) 

 would be considered less grotesque were it not for the fantastic 

 dress and appearance of the operator ; his robe, his cap, down to 

 the curious stool he stands upon all are extraordinary. The 

 quiet figure of the patient is no less so. Surely, if any such stones 

 had been taken from his head as the other doctor is showing to 

 the assistants, it must have been with the aid of a local anaes- 

 thetic. He beams with as happy an expression as if a most griev- 

 ous pain had just gone away from him by enchantment. 



M. Meige has collected more than a dozen pictures represent- 

 ing these operations for stone in the head. Translated for the 

 Popular Science Monthly from La Nature. 



A LILLIPUTIAN MONSTER. 



BY EGBERT BLIGHT. 



IN front of a sunny window there stands, on a small bamboo 

 table, an aquarium of very unpretentious appearance and 

 size. It is nothing more than a "globe," such as is used for 

 goldfish. In the bottom are a couple of inches of river sand, 

 with a thin layer of gravel, which was repeatedly washed before 

 it was placed there. Planted in the sand is a plant of water 

 star wort, as well as one of anacharis, while on the surface float 

 a few plants of duckweed; and two or three water snails com- 

 plete the arrangement. Around the rim of the globe is tied a 

 string on which is threaded a screen of dark -green material, 

 which can be drawn so as to shade the globe or to admit the sun- 

 light at pleasure. 



Occasionally I amuse myself by fetching a pailful of water 

 from the stream that runs through the meadows ; and as I take 

 up the water I give the grass and water weeds a good shake to 

 get whatever creatures may be hiding there. I have provided 

 two pieces of glass tubing of equal diameter one about two feet 

 in length, the other only some fourteen inches ; and these I have 

 bent nearly double by the heat of a spirit lamp. Thus equipped, 

 I change some of the water. I place a footstool or a pile of books 

 covered with a newspaper on the table, so as to get a surface as 

 high as the top of the globe. On this I place a "Mason jar," 



