426 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
 —_ 
[Dec. 25, 1884, 
SSsSsSSsSS—SSS=0 —0000@9©060 080000080808. 
is quite time that the mistake should be corrected and zoolo- 
gists set right. I shall, therefore, await with a great deal of 
interest the evidence which Mr, Chamberlain may bring for- 
ward to confute them, 
I give below a few citations from authors to which I could 
most readily turn, to show that, if I have blundered in 
making the statement criticized, 1 haye at least done so in 
good company. These citations are, with one exception, 
from standard scientific works. 
Richardson says (‘Fauna Boreali Americana,” p, 241, 
London, 1829): *‘The old males have, in general, the largest 
and most palmated horns, while the young ones and females 
have them less branched and more cylindrical and pointed; 
but this is not uniformly the case, and the variety of forms 
assumed by the horns of the caribou is indeed so great that 
it is difficult to comprehend them all in a general descrip- 
tion.” He further says (7. ¢.): ‘‘By the end of November 
most of the old bucks have shed their horns. The young 
males retain theirs much longer, and the females do not lose 
their horns until they are about to drop their young in the 
month of May.” The implication from this seems clear that 
the females usually bear horns. 
Audubon and Bachman (‘‘Quadrupeds of North America,” 
Vol. IIL, page 111, New York, 1856), in giving a diagnosis 
of the genus Aangifer, say; “Horns in both sexes, irregularly 
palmated, bifurcated, and rather long, canine teeth in both 
sexes, muzzle small.” Further on in the same article occurs 
the following statement; ‘The female caribou has horns as 
well as the male, but they are smaller.” And again (page 
116): ‘The female of this species has also horns, which are 
not dropped until near the month of May,” 
Professor 8. F. Baird (‘‘Explorations and Surveys for the 
Pacific Railroad,” Vol. VIII, page 633, Washington, 1857) 
quotes “‘Gray’s Knowsley Magazine” of 1850, in giving his 
diagnosis of the genus Hangifer. The portion relating to 
the horns inthis genus is as follows: ‘‘Horns in both sexes, 
elongate, subcylindrical, with the basal branches and tip 
dilated and palmated; of the females, smaller.” 
Owen (‘‘Anatomy of Vertebrates,” Vol. II., page 478, 
London, 1860) says: ‘‘The chief peculiarity in the skull of 
the deer tribe is the annual development, from the frontals, of 
the solid deciduous exostoses, which seryeas weapons during 
a portion of the year, in the males of all kinds, and in both 
sexes of the reindeer,”’ 
Captain Campbell Hardy (‘‘Forest. Life in Acadie,” New 
York, 1879, p. 120) quotes Dr. Gray’s article on the Ru- 
minantin in the ‘‘Knowsley Magazine” in giving the diagno- 
sis of the genus Rangifer. As he refers more than once to 
the horns of the doe, I may give some extracts from his chap- 
ters on caribou hunting. He says (p. 128): ‘‘Except in the 
case of the does and young bucks which retain theirs tillspring, 
itis seldom that horns are seen in a herd of caribouafter 
Christmas, The reason to which the retention of the horns 
by the female reindeer during wiuter has been attributed by 
some speculative writers, namely, in order to clear away the 
deep incrusted snow, and enable her fawns to get at the 
moss beneath, is simply wrong. The animal never uses any 
other means than its hoofs to scrape for its moss; while the 
thin, sharp prongs of the doe would prove anything but an 
efficient shovel. The latter and true mode of proceeding I 
haye often watched when worming through the bushes 
round the edge of a barren to get a shot. Both Mr. Barnard 
and the author of ‘‘'Ten Years in Sweden,” allude to the 
female reindeer using her horns in winter to protect the 
fawns from the males, thus rightly accounting for this sin- 
gular proyision of nature in the case of a gregarious species 
in which the males, females and young herd together at all 
seasons.’ Speaking of a caribou hunt which he made in 
the neighborhood of Parsboro, Nova Scotia, and of the first 
animal he had kille€d—a doe—he says (p. 155): ‘Though it 
was still early in December, we had only as yet seen one 
buck who retained his horns; the does still wore theirs. The 
one IT had just killed had an exceedingly neat little pair, 
which, but for her untimely end, would have graced her 
until the ensuing March,” 
In Judge Caton’s work on the “Antelope and Deer of Amer- 
ica,’ allusions to the antlers of the female caribou are fre- 
quent, and in his description of the woodland caribou he 
says: ‘‘Antlers of male curved, long and slender, with 
branches more or less palmated and very irregular in. form. 
Antlers on female smaller and less palmated.” Again on 
p. 89 occurs the following sentence: ‘The reindeer branch 
of the family present extraordinary peculiarities in their 
cornute appendages. The most striking is the fact that the 
females have antlers, though of less size thanin the males.” 
Again he says: “The old males shed their antlers usually 
before Christmas, but the young males carry them later; the 
yearlings till spring, and the females later stiil, and until 
after they have dropped their young.” It seems scarcely 
worth while to multiply quotations, so I will conclude with 
avery brief one from ‘‘Packard’s Zoology” (New York, 
1879), p. 609, In which. speaking of the deer family, it is 
stated that, ‘‘with the exception of the reindeer, the females 
or does are without antlers.” 
The Hden brothers, to whom I haye above referred, spoke 
of the horns of the does in the same way that they did of 
those of the bucks, and as if these appendages were com- 
mouly borne by the females. 
My note was written in the hope of eliciting some new 
facts, some fuller information than we now have, on the sub- 
ject of the caribou. Until Tread Mr. Chamberlain’s letter 
nothing of the kind had appeared in answer to it, though 1 
did receiye a single pseudonymous letter on the subject, 
which, if it had been signed witha name, I should have asked 
you to print. I still hope that the discussion of the matter 
may bring out some new facts, and I shall feel extremely 
indebted to Mr. Chamberlain or any one else who can con- 
tribute anything to my very slight knowledge of this inter- 
esting species. Gro. BrrD GRINNELL, 
New Yore, Dec, 19, 1884. 
QuATL 1n ConrinEMENT,—New York, Dec. 15, 1884.— 
Fiditer Forest and Stream: Being asked frequently by letter 
if quail will hatch and raise their young in a domestic life, 
will you kindly inform your readers through your valuable 
paper, that such is a fact, as we know of two instances where 
a brood of five and seventeen hatched last season are still 
living and in fine condition.—_TEnny & Woopwarp. 
Importation cr Forrian Brrps.—It was suggested in a 
recent number that foreign birds might he successfully in- 
troduced into the United States, if insteadjof being put out at 
the North, they were liberated in the South, where they 
would not have to contend against the winter’s cold, The 
same correspoudent proposes that an experiment of the kind 
be made, and suggests that a fund be provided for the same. 
THE HYDRA. 
i Ibe hydra is a very curious and interesting animal, which 
lives in streams and pools, attached to the stems and 
the under sides of the leaves of water plants. If one of these 
plants—as a duckweed, for example—is put in a glass of 
water and then placed in a window having a good light, but 
not directly exposed to the sun, in a few hours quite a num- 
ber of hydra will be likely to be found attached to the side 
of the glass, turned toward the light.” If one of them near 
the surface be carefully and gently scraped loose from the 
glass with a knife blade and then floated out into a shallow 
vessel, as a watch glass, it will be in a good position for ex- 
amination. It is quite visible to the naked eye, but of course 
can be studied to much better advantage with a microscope. 
A common hand magnifying glass will do very well, how- 
ever, The animal is yery curious, indeed, to look at. At 
first sight it appears rather like a plant, There is a cylin- 
drical trunk, fastened at one end tothe glass by a sucker-like 
disc and at the other end having six or eight branches run- 
ning out like the rays of a star, The resemblance to a plant 
is much more striking if you happen to be looking at a 
ereen-colored hydra; for they are of two colors, green and 
brown. But one does not have to look very long before 
discovering some marks of behavior that make it pretty clear 
that its kinship is with animals and not with plants. For 
presently it will be seen swaying itself about upon its long, 
flexible trunk, and thrusting out its arms as if it were search- 
ing for something—food, perhaps, And itis very likely that 
this is just what the creature is doing, for if some small ani- 
mal, as, for example, the water flea, happens to come within 
reach of its arms, it is pretty sure to be seized and eaten. 
One use, then, of these arms, or tentacles, as they are called, 
is to seize food and conyey it to the animal’s mouth, that 
organ being situated just at the base of the tentacles and 
forming the open end of the trunk, But the tentacles are 
not the only organs with which the animal is provided for 
capturing its prey. Imbedded in the ouier surface of its 
body are many yery minute cells, each one having coiled 
within it a long, barbed thread, and the animal has the 
power of suddenly uncoiling and throwing out these threads 
for the capture of its prey. The manner in which it does 
this is very much as herdsmen capture wild cattle with the 
lasso, and for this reason these cells have very appropriately 
been named ‘‘lasso cells.” As we have said, they are very 
small and it is only with a high power of the microscope and 
under favorable circumstances that they can be seen, Yis- 
itors at the seaside are familiar with the fact that jelly fishes 
liave the power of stinging pretty severely when taken hold 
of withthe hand, They do this by means of cells identical 
in structure with those of the hydra. 
Having thus noticed the general form of our animal, and 
haying observed how it gets its food, let us look at it a little 
more closely, It can readily be seen that its trunk is hollow, 
the cavily extending from the mouth through the entire 
length of the body and also into the tentacles, We may say 
then either that the animal has no stomach or that its stomach 
is identical with the general cavity of the body, At any 
rate it is in this cavity that the food swallowed by the ani- 
mal undergoes a kind of digestion. As the walls of the 
body are transparent it is easy to see what happens to the 
food after it has been received into this cavity. By a kind 
of dissolving process the nutritious parts are separated from 
that which is indigestible, and the iatter is expelled from the 
body by the same path it entered it—the mouth. ~The par- 
ticles of food may be seen to float about in what appears to 
be a thick fluid, and a little careful observation will show 
that this fluid has a definite motion, that it is constantly 
moving upward or downward erpueh the whole length of 
the body and even into the arms. It is by this means that 
the food is conveyed to all parts of the body, and it therefore 
answers to the circu..tion of the blood in the higher animals, 
It used to be a question of much dispute as to what causes 
this movement of the fluid. For a long, long time this ques- 
tion remained unanswered, but now it is well known that 
the movement is due to the vibrations of little hairs, called 
cilia, which project out from the inner surface of the body 
into the fluid, These little hairs are constantly in motion, 
and by moving more rapidly in one direction than the other, 
propel the fluid along. It is precisely the same wave-like 
motion observed ina field of grain when blown by a strong 
wind; the movemetts of the stems of the plants correspond- 
ing tothe movements of the cilia, It may be interesting to 
note in this connection that ciliary movement is very com- 
mon in all forms of animal life, and is even found in some 
of the lower plants. Perhaps it may not be generally known 
that in the human body the exudation of the mucous mem- 
brane which lines the cavity of the nose is propelled forward 
to the opening of the nostrils by means of cilia, _ 
Looking again at the hydra, with a little care it can be 
seen that the body wall of the animal is made up of two 
coats, an inner and an outer, and if it is a green hydra we 
are examining, it will be noticed that the coloring matter is 
confined entirely to the inner coat. This coloring matter is 
chlorophyll, the very same substance that gives to plants 
their green color. It used to be thought that chlorophyll 
was confined entirely to the vegetable kingdom, and for a 
long time its presence or absence was used as a hasis of sep- 
arating plants from animals, But we see that this rule does 
not apply in the case of the hydra. " . 
If while one is looking at a hydra the glass containing it 
be given a sudden jar, a very remarkable change will occur 
in the appearance of the animal, Very quickly and very 
suddenly the arms will be drawn in until they are reduced to 
merely little knobs forming a row about the mouth, and at 
the same time the entire body of the animal is contracted so 
that it has the appearance of a rounded tubercle or button 
lying at the bottom of the vessel, 1f left: perfectly quiet, in 
a short time it begins to expand, and soon attains its original 
size and form. When fully extended, its trunk is from one- 
fourth to one-half an inch in length, and its tentacles about 
half the length of the trunk. 
_ Doubtless the most wonderful quality of the hydra 
is its power of resisting injury or mutilation. As long 
ago as 1774, Trembley, a naturalist of Geneva, Switzerland, 
found that he could cut a hdyra in two, or even slice it 
across Into quite thin rings, and each piece would grow 
into a new and perfect animal. He found also that it could 
be divided lengthwise and each piece would become a new 
hydra, or that, if shortly after division the two parts were 
united, they would grow together again, And most won- 
derful of all, he found that a hydra could be turned inside 
out and appeared to suffer no inconvenience from the 
inversion. It is also said on good authority that if the 
lower part of the body of one hydra be inserted into the 
mouth of another the two will grow together into one 
animal, Itis remarkable, too, how quickly the creature re- 
coyers from such mutilation. Not more than a few minutes 
elapse before tentacles begin to appear on the cut end, and 
when divided lengthwise and the parts united, in an honr 
or two the animal will take and retain food. 
The hydra appears to be a yery voracious animal. It 
feeds only on animal organisms, such as small worms, erus- 
tacen and insects, Sometimes two hydre seize the same 
worm, and a very amusing struggle ensues. It will also 
devour bits of meat given il, 
Another interesting feature of the hydra is the manner in 
which it produces its young, If a hydra be watched for a 
few days in summer, there will be seen to appear on the side 
of its body a knob or tubercle. This will continue to grow, 
and in a short time will he a perfect animal. Meanwhile 
other knobs haye made their appearance, so that young 
hydras in all stages of growth and all attached to the same 
parent can be seen at the same time. After a while the 
young hydré detach themselves, and fastening their sucker 
to the stem or leaf of some plant, begin a career of their 
own. It very commonly happens that before detaching 
themselves another young hydra has bezun to grow from 
their own body, so that for a time three generations of 
hydre have a common body. While united in this way, 
the body-cayity of the main or parent hydra communicates 
with those of the young animals, and food caught by any 
one member of the family is shared with all. The method 
of reproduction is called gemmation or budding, and is very 
common among the lower forms of animal life. .The hydra 
also has the power of reproducing itself by a sexual process, 
Ifa hydra is examined witha very high power of the 
microscope, both the inner and outer layers of its body will 
be seen to be made up of cells; so that the entire animal, in 
point of structure, is simply an aggregation of cells, very 
much as a honeycomb is. Now each of these cells is very 
much, if not precisely, like an ameeba, a deseription of which 
lately appeared in these columns. Like an amceba, each cell 
is capable of assimilating food and throwing off waste mater- 
ial from itself; it shows irritation when touched, is capable 
of dividing itself and so producing others, for it is in just 
this way that a hydra grows; and finally, if a single cell is 
separated from the others, it will throw out pseudopodia just 
as an ama@ba does. «A hydra then may be regarded as a col- 
lection of ameebs. But the animal, as a whole, is more 
highly organized than the amceba, for it has several sets of 
cells set apart to do special work and thereby form organs. 
Thus come cells are especially employed in grasping, others 
form a mouth, and still others serve to propel the fluid con- 
tained in the body-cavity. 
This setting apart of cells to do a special work is what is 
called differentiation. 5. 
Jouns Horxins University, Noy. 22, 
Game Bag and Gun. 
THE MYSTERIOUS ’COON. 
HIS§ is one of the coldest and most disagrecable days of 
the whole year, The north wind, as it comes howl 
ing down Mission street, brings with it clouds of sand from 
the dunes north and west of the city that fills the air like dry 
fine snow, and collects in drifts upon the plank sidewalls 
several inches deepin afew hours. The few pedestrians 
seen upon the streets haye their overcoats buttoned Close 
under their chins, and with hats drawn down and heads 
bent forward, are hurrying along, vainly attempting to keep 
the sand out of their eyes and from under their shirt collars. 
Climate is one of our favorite hobbies on the Pacific coast, 
but. we draw it very mild upon occasions like the present, 
Sitting in a comfortable chair by a coal fire this mornin & 
I was meditating upon the best way to put in the day. It 
was too unpleasant for a ramble, and some in-door occupa- 
tion, therefore, seemed to be the only available means by 
wich to kill time in the most satisfactory manner. While 
in this dilemma my eyes fell upon a Forest AND STREAM 
lying on the table, and the enigma was immediately solved; 
so here goes for a little chat with your readers. 
It was a happy thought of brave old ‘“‘Nessmuk” and other 
admirable writers of your journal when they suggested that 
each of us give some account of the curious incidents and 
remarkable shots that now and then occur in the experience 
of all those who spend a large or even a small portion of 
their leisure hours with the rifle and shotgun, either on the 
broad prairies of the West, the swamps and tangled forests 
of the South, or the cloud-capped peaks of the Rocky Moun- 
tains and the Sierra Nevadas. Every old hunter can bring 
to mind incidents so curious in their nature that they are 
forever after indelibly impressed upon his memory; and off- 
times they are of a class so inexplicable and mysterious that 
unless fully explained by later developments or a more ma- 
ture experience, they ever remain a source of wonder and 
conjecture. I remember a little incident that occurred to 
me several years ago, which although trifling in itself and 
almost ridiculously simple when its trne character was re- 
vealed, is nevertheless a good illustration of what I have 
said; and with the hope that it will stimulate others to relate 
their experience, I give it for what it is worth. 
The fall of 1866 found me in Portland, Oregon, where I 
had gone with the intention of spending a few weeks, before 
the winter rains set in, hunting, fishing and camping in the 
Coast and Cascade ranges, Our party, with the exception 
of myself, was composed entirely of old residents of Port- 
