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Anecdotes of Natural History. 



ANECDOTES OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



"JV. /if." System of Arrangement. — A naturalist, travelling in the 

 interior of Pennsylvania, stopped at a very neat, clean tavern, and 

 was agreeably surprised to find the chimney-pieces, cupboards, 

 &c., crowded with specimens of minerals and fossils, each of them 

 having a label with N. K. on it. Puzzled by these letters, he sought 

 for information of a smart-looking woman, who was the landlady. 

 She informed him that her nephew, who was gone to Kentucky, 

 was the owner of these specimens, and that he had pasted some 

 long names upon them, he had learnt from the doctors in Phila- 

 delphia ; but they were so hard to pronounce when her neigh- 

 bours asked her questions about them, that she had taken them 

 off, and had put N. K. upon every one of them. The naturalist as- 

 senting to all this, asked her the meaning of N. K. " So, you don't 

 know what the meaning of N. K. is ?" said she. " Upon my word, 

 I have not the least idea," he replied. " Well," said she, " I 

 thought the Philadelphians knowed every thing ; however, if 

 you don't know, Pll tell you : N. K. means ' Nayterul Kurossitys.' " 



A Case where the Specimens required no Labels of Locality. — It is 

 stated in the memoirs of Sir Stamford Raffles, that Dr. Hors- 

 field, during a tour in Sumatra, having given the geological 

 specimens he had collected to his coolies to carry, wished to ex- 

 amine them after the day's journey. The Doctor seeing their 

 baskets full of other stones than those he had given to them, ex- 

 pressed himself angrily ; when they very simply stated, that 

 seeing he was anxious to collect stones, they, preferring to travel 

 with empty baskets, had thrown those he gave them away, and 

 had filled their baskets again at the end of their day's journey. 



Preparations to receive a Royal JVaturalist, by the Lord of the 

 Castle of Rahenstein^ in Franconia. — Dr. Buckland has fully de- 

 scribed the cave of Kiihloch, in Franconia, in his Reliquiae Di- 

 luvianae, page 137, et seq. In 1829, two English geologists, Mr. 

 Egerton and Lord Cole, being on a scientific tour in Germany, 

 paid a visit to that ancient deposit of the remains of extinct ani- 

 mals. The following extract of a letter from Mr. Egerton to Dr. 

 Buckland, will tell the melancholy story of this second punitive 

 visitation upon the mammifera within the dominions of the Lord 

 of the castle of Rabenstein. 



