Short Papers and Notes. 13} 
from one foot to one-and-a-half feet in thickness, and weigh from 
50 to 75 pounds. ——— 
Mounting Tongues ot Flies. 
If the flies are placed in a small, wide-mouthed bottle, con- 
taining a few drops of methylated chloroform, the tongues will be 
found well protruded ; if not used at once, place in glycerine. 
~ WeOAG IL: 
To Transter Pictures from Paper to Wood 
for Engraving, 
Soak the print in a saturated solution of alcohol and white 
caustic potash to soften the ink, then transfer to the block under 
roller pressure. = 
Cairns of Oyster=-Sbhells. 
Many British cists and cairns have disclosed relics in the form 
of shell-necklaces and bracelets made of the oyster, limpet, and 
cockle-shells, the contents of which supplied an important source 
of food. For not only in the ancient kitchen middens of North- 
ern Europe, but mingling with more ancient cave deposits, as in 
Kent’s Cavern, lay heaps of the shells of such edible molluscs, 
the refuse of the repasts of the old cave-men, which show one 
resource on which they depended for subsistence. America, too, 
had its ancient shell and refuse heaps, as at Cannon’s Point, St. 
Simon’s Island, Georgia, where vast mounds of oyster and mussel 
shells, intermingled here and there with a AZodiola or Helix, and 
with flint arrow-heads, stone axes, and fragments of pottery, cover 
an area of not less than ten acres. ‘They also abound upon all 
the sea islands of the Southern States, and in many cases consti- 
tute regular sepulchral mounds or shell cairns. One of these sin- 
gular cairns on Halling’s Islands, in the Savannah River, more 
than two hundred miles from its mouth, is an elliptical mound, 
measuring nearly three hundred feet in length, and enclosing 
human skeletons, etc. On the island, and along the coasts of 
Georgia and Florida, the inexhaustible supplies of oysters, 
conches, and clams furnish abundant food. Around all Indian 
villages these shells may be observed accumulated in vast heaps ; 
and even now at places they show the circular hollow where the 
native hut once stood.— Cassell’s Natural History. 
Baby Elephants, 
How the young elephants in the large herds escape from being 
crushed is something of a mystery, as they are almost continually 
in motion, but when a herd is alarmed, the young almost immedi- 
ately disappear. A close observer would see that each baby was 
trotting along directly beneath its mother, sometimes between her 
fore-legs. 
