1885.] 
Analyses of Books. 
691 
the turret-chamber, which had been in the meantime cleaned and 
most carefully examined. The rest of the story we give in the 
words which we here find : — “ He [the steward] was waked by 
a scream that made his blood freeze. What had happened he 
was unable to say : all he remembered was, that in his last 
agony the unfortunate man [the Count’s son] had thrown his 
head to and fro and pressed both his hands over his temple, 
where they remained even now, firmly interlocked and rigid in 
death. When they at last succeeded in unclasping his hands 
they found under his fingers, with its sting imbedded in the 
seams of its victim’s skull, an unknown animal, which can now 
be seen in a vial of spirits of camphor in the Museum of Odessa. 
In shape the nondescript appears like a cross between a leech 
and a lizard, but its tail, like that of a scorpion, terminates in a 
sharp point. Where it came from — if it had lurked in the fissures 
of the ceiling, or entered by some secret aperture — has never 
been explained.” Further light is here evidently wanting. If 
such a creature exists, might it not be the cause of the two 
mysterious deaths said to have occurred in a mansion in one of 
the West-end squares ? 
