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EXTRACTS FROM FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS. 
Of this class of animals I found*seventy-five distinct species, belonging to forty- 
three genera, most of which abound in caverns. The part of the country which I 
investigated lies between the Rio San-Francisco and the Rio Paraopeba. This 
district forms a plain 2,000 feet above the level of the sea, and is traversed by a 
chain of mountains only from 300 to 400 feet high. This chain is composed of 
Secondary Limestone, stratified in horizontal layers, having all the characters of 
Zechstein and Hochlen Kalkstein of the Germans. It is internally hollowed out 
into caverns, and crossed by cracks in every direction ; and its interior is more 
or less filled with a red earth, identical with that which forms the superficial 
stratum of the country, and which is from ten to fifteen feet thick. This is often 
so ferruginous that its particles of Iron are transformed into a Pisolithic mineral, 
like that of the Jura. This earth has undergone some modifications in the ca¬ 
verns, for it contains angular or rolled fragments of the calcareous rock, particles 
of Lime deposited by the water which filters through the cracks, and it is im¬ 
pregnated with Saltpetre. The fossils lie in this earth, and are disposed pell- 
mell in the middle of it. They are all fragile, of white fracture, often petrified, 
adhere closely to the sockets in which they lie, frequently present calcareous 
spath, are broken, crushed, or otherwise mutilated, and bear marks of teeth, 
showing that they have been carried there by the ferocious animals which inha¬ 
bited those caverns, and also by a species of diurnal bird. 
2. Remarkable Anecdote of a Dog. —At a convent in France, twenty pau¬ 
pers were served with a dinner at a certain hour every day. A Dog belonging to 
the convent did not fail to be present at this meal, to receive the odds and end s 
which were now and then thrown to him. The guests, however, were poor and 
hungry, and of course not very wasteful, so that their pensioner did little more 
than scent the feast of which he would fain have partaken. The portions were 
served by a person at the ringing of a bell, and delivered out by means of what 
in religious houses is called a tour , which is a machine like the section of a cask, 
that by turning round upon a pivot, exhibits what is placed on the concave side, 
without discovering the person who moves it. One day this Dog, who had only 
received a few scraps, waited till the paupers were all gone, took the rope in his 
mouth, and rang the bell; his stratagem succeeded. He repeated it next day 
with the same good fortune. At length, the cook finding that twenty-one por¬ 
tions were given out instead of twenty, was determined to discover the trick, in 
doing which he had no great difficulty, for lying concealed, and noticing the pau¬ 
pers as they came for their different portions, and seeing no intruder except the 
Dog, he began to suspect the truth, which he was confirmed in when he saw the 
animal wait with great deliberation till the visitors were all gone, and then pull 
the bell. The matter was related to the community, and to reward the Dog for 
his ingenuity, he was permitted to ring the bell every day for his dinner, on 
which a mess of broken victuals was always served out to him. 
