i5 2 
THE GUIDE TO NATURE 
“Fleeced” by Fallacious Fleas. 
Through the kindness of H. E. Zim- 
merman of Kansas City, Missouri, we 
were favored a few weeks ago with 
what he regarded as a microscopical 
curiosity — that is, fleas in skirts and 
trousers. From time to time informa- 
tion has reached this office of some one 
who has been “fleeced” by fallacious 
fleas. It appears that many of our 
friends think that somebody in Mexico 
or elsewhere has acquired remarkable 
manipulative skill in putting skirts and 
trousers on fleas so that they may look 
like bride and groom. Other charac- 
ters are also imitated. 
The facts are that fleas are not thus 
clothed. A little black material is se- 
lected for the groom and a little whitish 
material, somewhat similar to pith, for 
a bride attired in white, and an entire 
flea is cemented on to represent the 
head. It requires only a casual exam- 
ination, even with the low power 
pocket lens, to detect the fraud. 
And as to skill, there isn’t any. Any 
one who can use a pocket lens and a 
pair of pocket pliers could pidl out ma- 
terial of almost any kind and arrange 
it in this way. At the very best, even 
if the fleas were thus clothed, the re- 
sult would be crude in comparison with 
the delicate work that nricroscopists 
are accustomed to perform and con- 
sider as only ordinary operations. Mi- 
croscopic objects, although beautifully 
prepared, are not sensational enough to 
attract the average person’s attention, 
but to them a flea in skirt or trousers 
is a wonderful thing, as it surely would 
be! 
Were ever five letters compact into 
another word as sweet as April? The 
very syllables seem to drip with fresh- 
ening showers ; to glisten with sudden, 
relenting shafts of sunlight, and to 
glow and pale with the rainbows which 
span the drifting, purple clouds. The 
songs of mating birds are in them ; the 
scents of the quickening earth ; the 
taste of spiced buds ; the touch of light 
breezes; the sights of the infinite 
awakenings and unfoldings of the 
world about us. For every sense its 
own delights ; for every letter a thou- 
sand new sensations ; for every day a 
new heaven and a new earth. — “A 
W hite Paper Garden,” Shafer. 
Sawfish Mother and Young. 
National Geographic Magazine, 
Washington, D. C. 
To the Editor ; 
Our aquarium endeavored to secure 
in a big net a porpoise to see if it could 
be kept alive in an outdoor tank, and 
when hauling it in we were surprised 
to find that a sawfish had become en- 
tangled. A successful effort was made 
to bring this specimen in alive, and it 
was placed in the thirty-six foot tank 
inside of the aquarium, in which were 
several barracudas and groupers. 
We tempted the sawfish with dif- 
ferent varieties of its natural food but 
it would not eat or move around in the 
tank, excepting perhaps once in twenty- 
four hours it would move a few feet 
but always along the bottom. Four 
days after it was placed in the tank we 
were surprised to find that it had given 
birth to nine young, each about one 
foot long, six inches of which was saw, 
and nature had provided that each little 
saw was enclosed in a glutinous veil, 
thus protecting the mother and the 
other offspring from the saws. 
At the end of three weeks the mother 
died, either from starvation or a broken 
heart, but the little fellows, knowing 
nothing else, began to eat what was 
offered, little shreds of spiny lobster 
and cut up mullets, thriving and grow- 
ing very nicely, not being interfered 
with by the other fish, and taking a 
good deal of exercise swimming the 
length of the tank, generally near the 
floor. After three months, during 
which time they had grown to a little 
more than two feet in length, they were 
attacked by some sort of parasite and 
one by one died in spite of all we could 
do in the matter of change of water 
and change of tanks. 
That is the brief story of our expe- 
rience with the family of sawfish. 
It is also interesting to note that 
other fish, namely, five barracudas, the 
most vicious fish to be found in the 
Gulf Stream, become so tame in cap- 
tivity that while cleaning out the tank 
they do not object in any way to the 
attendants rubbing their backs with a 
long handled brush and will even now 
and then come up and take food almost 
from the hand. As you are aware, the 
barracuda is known as “The Tiger of 
the Sea” and will strike at anything 
