KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



57 



tiger, whoever he is, will not only soon be shown 

 up, but smartly fined and severely punished." — 

 So much, my dear Sir, for the paragraph. _ I only 

 wish I could send you the name of the miscreant 

 who has thus disgraced human nature. _ I feel 

 sure you would publish it. It may transpire yet ; 

 if it does, how gladly will I send it you ! Is it 

 not monstrous, thus to mutilate a dear, confiding, 

 inoffensive creature, whose only sin is — love for 

 mankind! Which is the " brute " in this case ? 

 — A. T., Southampton. 



[Alas ! fair maiden, what can we do or say to 

 meet such a case? The only means of punish- 

 ment would be, to gibbet the wretch by naming 

 him. He would then be expelled from all decent 

 society, and have the mark of Cain set upon him. 

 The wretch, King,* who lately roasted an in- 

 offensive cat alive — and this man,would form fitting 

 associates. Send us the name of the offender, if 

 ever it transpires, and we pledge our word to im- 

 mortalise him to the last generation. No word in 

 our English dictionary can characterise such an 

 offender. We may call him a monster, a wretch, 

 a villain, a miscreant. Here our language stops ; 

 and leaves this scum of society unscathed. Let 

 us only get his name, and he will remain a vaga- 

 bond all the rest of his days. Let us hope the 

 poor jackdaw is dead. Death would be merciful 

 in a case of such extreme barbarity.] 



The Ant and the Bee. — The following obser- 

 vations on the mode of communication adopted by 

 the Ant and the Bee, will perhaps be interesting 

 to your readers. You have already furnished us, 

 in your former volumes, with much that is valu- 

 able in connection with these useful members of 

 the community. Any one who finds himself in 

 the vicinity of an ant's nest, may soon be con- 

 vinced that these industrious little laborers are by 

 no means destitute of the power of communicating 

 information to each other relative to the affairs of 

 their commonwealth. Let him, for example, place 

 a heap of food in the neighborhood of the ant-hill, 

 and watch the proceedings of its inmates. A short 

 time will probably elapse before the discovery of 

 the treasure, but at length some wanderer, in his 

 morning's ramble, has the good fortune to stumble 

 upon it. What does he do ? He does not, like 

 an isolated individual incapable of asking for as- 

 sistance, begin at once the task of removing the 

 heap ; but, on the contrary, off he scampers with 

 the glad intelligence ; and running his head 

 against that of every ant he meets, manages, in 

 some mysterious way, not only to intimate the fact 

 of the discovery, but also to give information rela- 

 tive to the locality where the provisions may be 

 found. Speedily it will be seen that troops of 

 porters, summoned at the call of the first finder, 

 hasten to the spot, and all is activity and bustle 

 until the store is safely warehoused in the ant-hill. 



* We exposed this fellow in our Second Volume 

 (see p. 377). We only wish we could have seen 

 the shadow of any extenuating circumstances — 

 this, for the sake of human nature. But when we 

 remember that he and his "friend " complacently 

 sat down to cigars and brandy and water (with 

 the outcries of their innocent victim hardly yet 

 silenced), all pity for such outcasts becomes mis- 

 placed. 



Another still more striking instance of the posses- 

 sion of a capability of spreading intelligence — and 

 that of a somewhat abstruse character — is fur- 

 nished by experiments that have been made by 

 Huber and others upon bees. Every one is aware 

 that the queen-bee is an object of the greatest 

 solicitude and attention to all the workers of the 

 hive ; and yet, among so many thousands, all 

 busily employed in different and distant parts of 

 the colony, it would appear impossible for them to 

 ascertain — at least before the lapse of a consider- 

 able time — whether she was absent from among 

 them or not. In order to see whether bees had 

 any power of conveying news of this kind, the 

 queen-bee has been stealthily and quietly abstract- 

 ed from the hive ; but here, as elsewhere, ill news 

 was found to fly apace. For some half-hour or so, 

 the loss seemed not to have been ascertained, but 

 the progressively increasing buzz of agitation 

 gradually announced the growing alarm, until 

 shortly the whole hive was in an uproar, and all 

 its busy occupants were seen pouring forth their 

 legions in search of their lost monarch, or eager 

 to avenge with their stings the insult offered to 

 their sovereign. On restoring the captured queen 

 to her subjects, with equal secrecy, the tumult 

 speedily subsided ; and the ordinary business of the 

 community was resumed, as before the occurrence. 

 — These are merely hints, thrown out by the way. 

 Proof of all that is here asserted is so easily ob- 

 tained, that every inquiring mind should at once 

 investigate the facts for itself. — Anna G., Maid- 

 stone. 



[There is no excuse for any body to remain ig- 

 norant of these delightful matters-of-fact. So 

 many people keep bees, now-a-days, that a sight 

 of their movements may be readily obtained. As 

 for Ants, they may be seen at work, in the sum- 

 mer, in nearly every garden we enter.] 



Cats without Tails. — In your admirable Jour- 

 nal, Mr. Editor, I have seen many commentaries 

 on this peculiar race of cats, — all of these com- 

 munications have been full of interest. Rely 

 upon it, it is a distinct race. They are quite com- 

 mon in Westmoreland, where I have seen whole 

 litters of them. I have also found single spe- 

 cimens of them (occasionally) in different parts 

 of England. How any sane person can, for one 

 instance, give credence to their being mules, I 

 am at a loss to imagine. Our Creator, all-wise, 

 has ordained it that mules, beyond the first 

 generation, cannot exist — thus preventing a race 

 of monsters. I do not know whether you are 

 aware of it, or not, Mr, Editor, but there is a 

 very fine breed of tail-less pigs, and another breed 

 almost destitute of hair or bristles. Both these 

 are by breeders highly esteemed. — Verax. 



[Your favors are herewith exhausted. Please 

 commence de novo. Our readers peruse your 

 reminiscences with delight. There is. a reality 

 about them that invests them with a perpetual 

 freshness. A long life has brought you 

 acquainted with a multitude of pleasing "facts."] 



Deformity in the Canary. — I have read with 

 much interest the communication in Vol. II., 

 page 395, of our Journal, about deformity in the 

 canary. I beg to suggest, that the cause of this 

 distressing succession of misfortunes, was the 



