FANCIEKS' JOUENAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 



35 



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The dog tax in England amounted to $1,510,098 last 

 year. 



Fashionable poodles, in New York, have adopted the 

 Elizabethan ruff. 



A day in the moon is fourteen times as long as a day on 

 earth. What a place in which to give a six months' note I — 

 hut what a bore to the Lunatics,, when they work by the 

 day! 



A woman living near Altoona recently entered a stable 

 attached to the house in which she lived, when a horse 

 caught her by the nose and bit it off. 



A Titusville paper says a man called at one of our shoe 

 stores yesterday and vainly essayed to get on either num- 

 bers 11, 12, or 13 shoes. The storekeeper then suggested 

 that he should put on a thinner pair of stockings and try on 

 the box. 



The bear of the arctic region does not hug, but bites his 

 opponent, declining to eat his captive until life is extinct. 

 Like a cat he plays with his victim, whose only refuge when 

 attacked is to "play dead," so that when the bear retreats 

 to enjoy the prospect of his meal, the gun can be got ready 

 for him when he returns. 



A Russian naturalist claims to have found living mam- 

 moths in Siberia. He has seen five small ones, twelve feet 

 high, eighteen feet long, and having tusks eight or ten feet 

 in length. The brute haunts great caves, and feeds on grass, 

 etc. It may as well be mentioned that the grass in Siberia 

 is small, but the caves must be large. 



It is worth mentioning that three of the produce of the 

 imported Jersey cow Duchess, belonging to Mr. C. L. 

 Sharpless, Philadelphia, have been sold for an aggregate of 

 fourteen hundred dollars, and Mr. S., has a daughter, Duch- 

 ess 3d, and a son, Chelton Duke, that he would not part 

 with. The service charge for Chelton Duke is $100. 



The following piece of Oriental flattery is quoted by the 

 Moniteur (Paris) : "An American diplomatist, Mr. Wade, 

 having lately died at Pekin, the Chinese attributed his de- 

 cease to the inexpressible emotion which he experienced at 

 seeing the august face of the emperor." [The above Mr. 

 Wade was no relative of the Editor of this Journal, or he 

 would not have died from any such cause. ] 



Nkae Knoxville, Tenn., it is said there is a mule which 

 has been but one time outside of its stable in twenty years, 

 and then it was taken out by the soldiers during the war, 

 and as they could not use the animal, it was immediately 

 replaced. It is said that its hoofs have grown to the length 

 of about 12 inches, turning up at the ends, while its mane 

 reaches to the ground. 



One of those miserable boys whose sole object in life 

 appears to be the making of extraordinary faces at honest 

 and industrious store clerks, mistook a roll of oil cloth for 

 a roll of carpet, hanging in front of a Main street establish- 

 ment, Saturday evening, and making a sickening grimace 

 at the clerk, who stood in the door, doubled his fists and 

 struck the inoffensive roll a tremendous blow. Then he 

 put the fist under the other arm, and doubling up his body, 

 ambled swiftly away, while the clerk retired to the store to 

 dry the tears of a new found joy. — Danbury News. 



A "whiter in Harper's Bazar says : " We do not believe 

 there is much human affection wasted upon the spider ; 

 nevertheless it is a very useful creature, and should not be 

 despised. Its specific office is to prevent the dangerous 

 multiplication of winged insects. Entrapping flies is its 

 forte, and it has been remarked that ' if spiders should 

 strike, and for a single month in summer refuse to set their 

 traps, we could hardly defend ourselves against armies of 

 noxious insects that would take possession of our dwellings.' 

 Nevertheless there may be such a thing as too many spiders 

 in the world — a possibility against which Nature has pro- 

 vided. When spiders are thickest and busiest catching 

 flies, a large, peculiar looking fly appears upon the stage of 

 action, and adroitly seizes the spiders wherever found. 

 These spiders are stowed away in secret cells to be food for 

 young flies. Thus there is compensation all around." 



The Chinese have trained cormorants to fish for them. 

 The birds are tied to floats, and have collars around their 

 necks to keep them from swallowing the fish they may 

 catch. When the cormorant rises to the surface with a 

 fish in his mouth, the fisherman catches the float with a 

 hooked stick, draws the bird to him, and secures its prey. 

 The cormorant is made to work from eight to ten hours a 

 day, and is fed on small pieces of the fish he catches. Some- 

 times he strikes for more wages or fewer working hours, 

 but the yelling of his master frightens him to such an 

 extent that he instantly resumes work. Isaac Walton 

 would probably have no greater liking for this method of 

 fishing than Californians have for other Mongolian eccen- 

 tricities ; and yet after all it has its advantages. Isaac 

 Walton was a " Micawber," waiting for a bite, but the 

 Chinaman takes the bite himself or gets the cormorant to 

 do it for him. 



A Newfoundland Cuttle Eish. — On the 26th of Octo- 

 ber, two fishermen who were out in a small boat, observed 

 some object floating at a short distance, which they sup- 

 posed to be a large sail or the debris of a wreck. On reach- 

 ing it one of the men struck it with his " gaff,' ' when imme- 

 diately it showed signs of life and reared a parrot-like beak, 

 which they said was as big as a six-gallon keg, with which 

 it struck the bottom of the boat violently. It then shot 

 out from about its head, two huge, livid arms, and began to 

 twine them round the boat. One of the men seized a small 

 axe and cut off both arms as they lay over the gunwale, 

 whereupon the fish backed off to a considerable distance 

 and ejected an immense quantity of inky fluid that dark- 

 ened the water for a great distance around. The men saw 

 it for a short "time afterward, and observed its tail in the 

 air, which they thought to be 10 feet across. They estimate 

 the body to have been 60 feet in length, and five feet in 

 diameter, of the same shape and color as the common squid, 

 and moving in the same way as the squid, both backward 

 and forward. As usual in the cuttle-fish, the under surface 

 of the extremity of the arm is covered with sucking disks, 

 the largest of which are an inch and a quarter in diameter. 



A well-organized man or woman cannot live long and 

 happily without congenial employment; and so it is of im- 

 portance that young men and women should find out early 

 what they can do best, and then prepare themselves to do it. 

 Most of our happiness comes from work done in the spirit 

 of love ; most of our unhappiness from work done in the 

 spirit of hate. 



