FANCIERS JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 
30 

tems Wnteresting and Amusing, 

THE dog tax in England amounted to $1,510,098 last 
year. 
FASHIONABLE poodles, in New York, have adopted the 
Elizabethan ruff. 
A Day in the moon is fourteen times as long as a day on 
earth. What a place in which to give a six months’ note !— 
but what a bore to the Lunatics, when they work by the 
day ! 
A WOMAN living near Altoona recently entered a stable 
attached to the house in which she lived, when a horse 
caught her by the nose and bit it off. 
A TITUSVILLE paper says a man called at one of our shoe 
stores yesterday and vainly essayed to get on either num- 
bers 11, 12, or 13 shoes. The storekeeper then suggested 
that he should put on a thinner pair of stockings and try on 
the box. 
THE bear of the arctic region does not hug, but bites his 
opponent, declining to eat his captive until life is extinct. 
Like a cat he plays with his victim, whose only refuge when 
attacked is to ‘‘ play dead,’’ so that when the bear retreats 
to enjoy the prospect of his meal, the gun can be got ready 
for him when he returns. 
A RUSSIAN naturalist claims to have found living mam- 
moths in Siberia. He has seen five sinall ones, twelve feet 
high, eighteen feet long, and having tusks eight or ten feet 
in length. The brute haunts great caves, and feeds on grass, 
etc. It may as well be mentioned that the grass in Siberia 
is small, but the caves must be large. 
Ir 1s worth mentioning that three of the produce of the 
imported Jersey cow Duchess, belonging to Mr. C. L. 
Sharpless, Philadelphia, have been sold for an aggregate of 
fourteen hundred dollars, and Mr. 8., has a daughter, Duch- 
ess 8d, and a son, Chelton Duke, that he would not part 
with. The service charge for Chelton Duke is $100. 
Tue following piece of Oriental flattery is quoted by the 
Moniteur (Paris): ‘An American diplomatist, Mr. Wade, 
having lately died at Pekin, the Chinese attributed his de- 
cease to the inexpressible emotion which he experienced at 
seeing the august face of the emperor.” [The above Mr. 
Wade was no relative of the Editor of this Journal, or he 
would not have died from any such cause. | 
Near Knoxville, Tenn., it is said there is a mule which 
has been but one time outside of its stable in twenty years, 
and then it was taken out by the soldiers during the war, 
and as they could not use the animal, it was immediately 
replaced. It is said that its hoofs have grown to the length 
of about 12 inches, turning up at the ends, while its mane 
reaches to the ground. 
One of those miserable boys whose sole object in life 
appears to be the making of extraordinary faces at honest 
and industrious store clerks, mistook a roll of oil cloth for 
a roll of carpet, hanging in front of a Main street establish- 
ment, Saturday evening, and making a sickening grimace 
at the clerk, who stood in the door, doubled his fists and 
struck the inoffensive roll a tremendous blow. Then he 
put the fist under the other arm, and doubling up his body, 
ambled swiftly away, while the clerk retired to the store to 
dry the tears of a new found joy.—Danbury News. 

A WRITER in Harper’s Bazar says: ‘We do not believe 
there is much human affection wasted upon the spider; 
nevertheless it is a very useful creature, and should not be 
despised. Its specific office is to prevent the dangerous 
multiplication of winged insects. Entrapping flies is its 
forte, and it has been remarked that ‘if spiders should 
strike, and for a'single month in summer refuse to set their 
traps, we could hardly defend ourselves against armies of 
noxious insects that would take possession of our dwellings.’ 
Nevertheless there may be such a thing as too many spiders 
in the world—a possibility against which Nature has pro- 
vided. When spiders are thickest and busiest catching 
flies, a large, peculiar looking fly appears upon the stage of 
action, and adroitly seizes the spiders wherever found. 
These spiders are stowed away in secret cells to be food for 
young flies. Thus there is compensation all around.”’ 
Tue Chinese have trained cormorants to fish for them. 
The birds are tied to floats, and have collars around their 
necks to keep them from swallowing the fish they may 
catch. When the cormorant rises to the surface with a 
fish in his mouth, the fisherman catches the float with a 
hooked stick, draws the bird to him, and secures its prey. 
The cormorant is made to work from eight to ten hours a 
day, and is fed on small pieces of the fish he catches. Some- 
times he strikes for more wages or fewer working hours, 
but the yelling of his master frightens him to such an 
extent that he instantly resumes work. Isaac Walton 
would probably have no greater liking for this method of 
fishing than Californians have for other Mongolian eccen- 
tricities; and yet after all it has its advantages. Isaac 
Walton was a ‘‘ Micawber,’”’ waiting for a bite, but the 
Chinaman takes the bite himself or gets the cormorant to 
do it for him. 
A NEWFOUNDLAND CuTTLE FisH.—On the 26th of Octo- 
ber, two fishermen who were out in a small boat, observed 
some object floating at a short distance, which they sup- 
posed to be a large sail or the debris of a wreck. On reach- 
ing it one of the men struck it with his “ gaff,’’ when imme- 
diately it showed signs of life and reared a parrot-like beak, 
which they said was as big as a six-gallon keg, with which 
it struck the bottom of the boat violently. It then shot 
out from about its head, two huge, livid arms, and began to 
twine them round the boat. One of the men seized a small 
axe and cut off both arms as they lay over the gunwale, 
whereupon the fish backed off to a considerable distance 
and ejected an immense quantity of inky fluid that dark- 
ened the water for a great distance around. The men saw 
it for a short time afterward, and observed its tail in the 
air, which they thought to be 10 feet across. They estimate 
the body to have been 60 feet in length, and five feet in 
diameter, of the same shape and color as the common squid, 
and moving’ in the same way as the squid, both backward 
and forward. As usual in the cuttle-fish, the under surface 
of the extremity of the arm is covered with sucking disks, 
the largest of which are an inch and a quarter in diameter. 
A WELL-ORGANIZED man or woman cannot live long and 
happily without congenial employment; and so it is of im- 
portance that young men and women should find out early 
what they can do best, and then prepare themselves to do it. 
Most of our happiness comes from work done in the spirit 
of love; most of our unhappiness from work done in the 
spirit of hate. 
