204 



RECREA TION. 



CANINE CANNIBALS. 



" Man's truest friend " seems now and 

 then apt to resent neglect in a rather em- 

 phatic way of his own. The khelp el kamr, 

 or " desert dogs," of Southern Syria, have 

 degenerated into perfect beasts of prey, and 

 are so scandalized at the sleek appearance 

 of a pet pug that they will tear him limb 

 from limb, with all the fury of famished 

 wolves. Small parties of travellers risk 

 sharing the fate of their canine companions, 

 and, according to a report from Sidi Harat, 

 some 80 miles Southwest of Damascus, an 

 old Sheik was recently rent and eaten by 

 a pack of ravenous khelps within 100 yards 

 of his own rancho. In stress of circum- 

 stances, desert dogs do not scruple to 

 attack even the decrepit patriarchs of their 

 own tribe, a propensity which seems to ex- 

 plain the occasional appearance of a soli- 

 tary khelp, who will retire to the rocks of 

 the barren uplands and starve like the edi- 

 tor of a Texas temperance paper, rather 

 than tempt the appetites of his own kins- 

 men. 



MOSQUITO REMEDIES. 



Every hunter in Eastern Arkansas has a 

 gnat recipe of his own, but like the pan- 

 acea of the world-renouncing Buddhists, 

 those prescriptions are generally worse 

 than the evil itself. Muck-smoke makes 

 a bedroom untenable, and inunctions of 

 kerosene oil engender villainous night- 

 mares; but Dr. Otto Wiegand of Port Isa- 

 bel, Guatemala, recommends a mixture of 

 vaseline, neroli (orange peel oil) and ex- 

 tract of artemisia absinthium, as both effec- 

 tive and inoffensive. The natives use lard 

 instead of vaseline and dispense with the 

 neroli, which impresses Caucasian olfac- 

 tories with the net result of a perfume but 

 does not deceive the keener senses of tip- 

 ulary insects. They dread artemisia juice 

 as an elixir of death and recognize it in any 

 admixture, even through the tobacco 

 smoke of a Spanish-American bedroom. 



OPEN AIR MENAGERIES. 



The Darwinian pets in the zoological 

 garden of Lima, Peru, live twice as long as 

 their kinsmen in Northern prisons, though 

 they are kept in open-air cages, as we 

 would keep eagles or crows. Their diet is 

 decidedly mixed: cornbread, beans, dried 

 beef, bananas and potatoes, flavored with 

 red pepper and the cigar stumps of mis- 

 chievous visitors. Scrubbing day comes 

 only once a week, and the regulations 

 against youngsters with pea-shooters are 

 not very strictly enforced, but the more lib- 

 eral allowance of fresh air compensates all 

 that, even in winter, when the mercury on 

 that airy plateau sometimes sinks to within 

 10 degrees of the freezing point. Not lack 

 of warmth, but lack of ventilation is the 

 main cause of man and monkey-killing 



lung-diseases, and consumptives should visit 

 the railway park of Old Fort, North Caro- 

 lina, where a pair of Magabey apes have 

 been kept alive for years in a garden-house 

 without a stove — with open lattice work all 

 around, and with a few bundles of hay as 

 the only refuge from winter storms. 



BULLET-PROOF JACKETS. 



Henrick Dowe, the inventor of the mys- 

 terious bullet-proof mail coats, died with- 

 out having been able to come to terms with 

 the Government Commissioners, and his 

 secret is now in the hands of a Berlin syn- 

 dicate, who claim to have improved an in- 

 vention that may turn the tide of the next 

 international war. Bullets that strike clear 

 through 10 inches of hard oakwood fail to 

 penetrate pads z x A inches thick and might 

 bruise but could hardly kill a soldier in a 

 cap-a-pie suit of the protective fabric. Its 

 moderate weight proves its non-metallic 

 composition, and Captain Bischoff, of the 

 last Prussian commission, inclines to the 

 opinion that the outer cover, of stout can- 

 vas, conceals a network of knotted rawhide, 

 thongs. 



AQUATIC DUELLOS. 



The featherless fighting cocks of France 

 are said to have tried all forms of single 

 combat from butting matches to Texas rifle 

 matinees, but would probably draw the line 

 at the aquatic duels of the Marquesas 

 islanders. The rival Don Juans of the be- 

 nighted archipelago hurry to the nearest 

 coral reef, leap off, and meeting in deep 

 water, attack one another with the fury of 

 love-crazed fish-otters. They use short, 

 crooked daggers, and the chances of the 

 contest are complicated by their trick of 

 diving and trying to tackle their antagonist 

 from below. 



FOURFOOTED OUTLAWS. 



The boasted abundance of game in some 

 parts of Central Europe seems due to a lack 

 of enterprise on the part of the native 

 peasants, as much as to the vigilance of 

 forest wardens, for the remarkable sur- 

 vivals include creatures that have never en- 

 joyed the benefits of legislative protection. 

 Lynxes still hold their own in the Black 

 Forest and in the French Jura, and troops 

 of wolves continue to haunt the highlands 

 of the Cevennes and all the large woodlands 

 of the vast area extending from the Niemen 

 to the Ural. A still more scandalous fact 

 is their existence in the Belgian Ardennes, 

 on the road from Brussels to Paris, and 

 with densely populated mining districts all 

 around. 



A CHANCE FOR SNOW-SHOE EXPERTS. 



A better excuse can be offered for their 

 survival in the Western Caucasus. A Rus- 

 sian officer who tried to reach the head- 



