162 



NATTJBAL SCIENCE NEWS. 



ly accepted. The perfect egg has 

 a solid shell all about it, one point 

 excepted, where the fertilizing 

 particles are to enter into the egg 

 and give it life. The natural de- 

 posisting of eggs by the female 

 was an operation of some little 

 time, and every egg had an oppor- 

 tunity to become perfect, and had 

 only the one vulnerable point. 

 With the artificial process, how- 

 ever, the eggs were discharged all 

 at once, and naturally in different 

 stages of completeness. In the 

 less perfect ones, defects in the 

 shell allowed vivifying particles to 

 enter at two or more different 

 places, and two or more embryos 

 began their growth upon the same 

 nucleus, which with later develop- 

 ment became the curious twins. 



But there is another discovery 

 by Dr. Garman, a most remark- 

 able one, which sounds like ro- 

 mance, that some fishes come in 

 rights and lefts, for all the world 

 like a pair of slippers, neither 

 complete witnout one of the op- 

 posite kind. This is very new dis- 

 covery, and it is very doubtful 

 whether even all the fish men in 

 the different museums have yet 

 read about it, for the proof of it 

 finds place in a volume of Pro- 

 ceedings of the Museum in Cam- 

 bridge, hardly two months pub- 

 lished. 



The poet Moore in his researches 

 in Persian lore, made one day a 

 great find, and has translated for 

 us a poetical description of 



Sweet birds that fly together 

 With feather always touching feather, 

 Linked by a hook and eye. 



These wonderful birds lacked 

 each of them a wing, and so were 

 not complete until they could find 

 mates that lacked an opposite 

 wing. This is a pretty fiction, 

 and of course outside the bounds 

 of possibility. But Nature is in- 

 ventive even beyond the dreams 

 of man, it is not possible to invent 

 a form so curious that some one in 

 a congress of naturalists would not 

 be able to give the name of 'the or- 

 ganism that looks like it: The 

 ridiculous drawings of great horrid 

 fishes which the Chinese make for 

 ns, which surely cannot resemble 

 anything on earth, in the seas or 

 in the water under the earth? 

 But they do; and if one is permit- 

 ted to examine the priceless pict- 

 ures made by the hand of the elder 

 Agassiz himself, which are pre- 

 served in one of the attics of the 

 Museum, he will find that the 

 great naturalist is quite in accord 

 with the Celestial in the queer 

 shapes which he has depicted. 



These queer fishes which Dr. 

 Garman has studied belong to the 

 genus Anableps, the haunts of 

 which are in warm waters from 

 South to Central America. There 

 are severnl odd things about them. 

 In the first place they bring forth 

 their young alive instead of de- 

 positing eggs in suitable places 

 and leaving the rest of it to good 

 fortune. In the second place they 

 have a very curious eye; it is the 

 exact counterpart of the divided 

 spectacle lens which is so com- 

 monly in use, one half for farsight 

 and the other for reading. This 

 is literally true, the eyeball of the 

 fish is divided into two portions 

 by a black curtain, so that there is 

 an upper half eye and a lower half 

 eye. The division begins very 

 early in the development of the 

 young fish, there being first a lit- 

 tle encroachment of the black bor- 

 der into the eyeball, ahd, having 

 entered it, finally stretches clear 

 across horizontally. So the fish 

 has two half eyes in each socket. 



Anableps is a fish of rather large 

 horizontal proportions, and as he 

 swims, his head lies partly out of 

 the water, the water line being in 

 fact just at the division in his eye. 

 The upper eye he uses for vision 

 through the air, seeking for food 

 in the vegetables floating on the 

 surface. The lower half of his 

 eye he uses for vision through the 

 water, and thus gets timely warn- 

 ing of the approach of his enemies. 



One would think these oddities 

 quite enough for a comparatively 

 insignificant little fish, a few inches 

 in length, and not making much fig- 

 ure in society, but it is this same 

 genus which exhibits rights and 

 lefts. The proof of thisipeculiarity 

 depends upon close scrutiny and 

 the dissection of the animal, but 

 its anatomy leaves no possible 

 question in the matter. 



A right Anableps is doomed to 

 wander about in lonesomeness 

 through the seas filled with Anab- 

 leps of his own pattern, and can 

 never be happy until some oppo- 

 site example, opposite in sex as 

 well as one-sidedness, is found to 

 share his home. And here comes 

 in a most curious bit of statistics. 

 Of the specimens which it has 

 been possible for Dr. Garman to 

 inspect, a number sufficiently 

 large to be tolerably representa- 

 tive, three-fifths of the males are 

 rights and two-fifths are lefts, 

 while of the females, three-fifths 

 are lefts and two-fifths rights. 

 The three-fifths of the males that 

 are rights will find in three-fifths 

 of the females that are lefts most 



congenial companions, while the 

 two-fifths males that are lefts will 

 find a mate for each in an equal 

 proportion of females that are 

 rights. This balance in nature is 

 by no means the least remarkable 

 feature in the story. — Boston Com- 

 monwealtli. 



Needle Holders. 



There is nothing nicer for dis- 

 secting needles than the crochet 

 needle holders which may be pro- 

 cured from any store that deals in 

 fancy goods. Common needles of 

 any suitable size may be inserted 

 and when the needles are broken 

 or useless, new ones may be quick- 

 ly inserted. These holders are in- 

 expensive and will last a life time, 

 while needles permanently mount- 

 ed in handles when broken render 

 the entire tool useless. — The Mic- 

 roscope. 



The Largest Black Diamond. 



This diamond weighs 3,100 car- 

 ats, and is, therefore, the largest 

 ever known. The Jagersfontein 

 diamond, which was found in 

 South Africa about two years ago, 

 and which was said to be the larg- 

 est in existence up to that time, 

 weighed about 970 carats. The 

 stone was found in the Carbon dis- 

 trict, the old diamond field of Bra- 

 zil. It is of the class known as 

 "black diamonds," or commercial- 

 ly as carbon, which are used in 

 diamond drills and for similar pur- 

 poses, their color not adapting 

 them to ornament. 



At the present time the stone is 

 in the hands of the jewelry firm of 

 Kahn & Company, of Paris, and 

 the Brazilian government is nego- 

 tiating for its purchase for the Na-r 

 tional Museum. The stone was 

 offered to Messrs. Bishop & Com- 

 pany, but they declined to pur- 

 chase it, as it is difficult to say 

 how such an exceptionally large 

 stone will turn out when cut into 

 commercial sizes, and the price 

 demanded was too great. The 

 value is placed by experts at be- 

 tween $30,000 and $40,000. The 

 price paid for it by the present 

 owners is somewhat uncertain, one 

 account putting it at $26,000, while 

 another says that they paid 52s. 

 3d. (English) per carat, which 

 would make the price nearly $40,- 

 000, or not far from its probable 

 maximum value.- — Scietitific Amer- 

 ican. 



