APPLIED ZOOLOGY. 



ELIZABETH B. PITMAN. 



I used to dote on clams; I don't any more. 



My brother took up the useful study of 

 zoology, last term, and as we were having 

 clams for luncheon, the other day, he re- 

 galed us with several edifying and appetite- 

 destroying facts about them. The most 

 startling fact, and the one which effectually 

 spoiled my taste for clams, is that a clam 

 has an ear. And where do you think the 

 foolish bivalve, in its anxiety to economize 

 space, wears its solitary ear? Do you give 

 it up? Why, in its foot, by all that's truth- 

 ful! Each clam has one long, tough foot 

 modestly adorned with an ear. Ough ! Feet 

 and ears! I shudder for each and every clam 

 swallowed in the days when I was ignorant 

 and happy. Now I am miserable, not for 

 my lost love of clams, alone, but for the sus- 

 picion, firmly rooted in my mind, that the 

 study of zoology aids and abets the cannibal 

 instincts. 



Only yesterday I caught my brother eying 

 me as though he would have liked to cut a 

 little window in my side to see my heart beat. 

 To divert his interest from my anatomical 

 details I offered to treat him to icecream 

 soda at the corner drugstore. Of course he 

 accepted, and we were no sooner seated be- 

 fore the counter than he darted to a show- 

 case paved with sponges. Unfortunately, he 

 had been studying that morning the internal 

 economy of the festive sponge, and I listened 

 to his outburst of knowledge on the subject 



with a weakening relish for the soda-water. 

 I am looking, now, for a drugstore where 

 there is no display of sponges to spoil one's 

 thirst. 



This morning, I happened to mention that 

 a party of us intended driving to the Pointe, 

 to-night, for a frog supper — there's nothing 

 I love better than a frog supper — whereupon 

 my brother, pulling something wilted and 

 speckled-green from his pocket, began to 

 rave over the gracefulness of the frog and the 

 general beauty of its construction. He de- 

 plored his not having a good fresh, un- 

 cooked specimen to study and would I 

 bring him one? It was something of a shock 

 to see a frog in its every-day clothes for the 

 first time; therefore, our supper is post- 

 poned, indefinitely. Frogs are so much 

 nicer looking in their batter and cracker 

 bloomers that I am sorry I know them 

 otherwise. 



Of course my brother being young will 

 soon forget his knowledge of zoology, but 

 it's too late in life for me to lose mine. I'll 

 carry it to the grave. The poet, Gray, when 

 composing the " Ode on a Distant Prospect 

 of Eton College," must have had a brother 

 there taking a course of zoology, for he 

 closes the poem with the heartfelt lines: 



— " Where ignorance is bliss 

 'Tis folly to be wise." 



And so it is! 



AMATEUR PHOTO BY WM. H. FTSHER. 



FORSTERS TERN. 



(Eggs about half size.) 

 185 



