FANCIERS’ JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 
551 

BG=- No GRrounp ror A Suiv.—A very curious case oc- 
curred on Tuesday morning in South Trenton. A rat had 
been caught in a trap, and the trap was taken into the middle 
of the street. A large New Foundland dog was waiting to 
pounce upon the rats soon as he was let out. A small rat ter- 
rier came up in time, and just as the ratstepped out of the cage 
the rat terrier seized him. The large dog seized the small 
dog, and actually killed both rat and dog. A suit was 
threatened, but the parties were told that nothing could be 
done.—State Gazette. 
ges Buffon, the great French naturalist, becomes quite en- 
thusiastic in his description of the humming-bird. ‘‘ Of all 
animated beings,’ he says, ‘the humming-bird is the most 
elegant in form and splendidin coloring. Precious stones and 
metals, artificially polished, can never be compared to this 
jewel of nature. The emerald, the ruby, the topaz sparkle 
in its plumage, which is never soiled by the dust of the 
ground; for, its whole life being aerial, it rarely lights on 
the turf. It dwells in the air, and flitting from flower to 
flower, it seems to be itself a flower in its freshness and 
splendor.’’ 
gq Once a man who had the marvellous gift of shaping 
a great many things out of orange peel, was displaying his 
abilities at a dinner party before Theodore Hook and Mr. 
Thomas Hill, and succeeded in counterfeiting a pig, to the 
admiration of the company. Mr. Hill tried the same feat; 
and after destroying and strewing the table with the peelings 
of a dozen oranges, gave it up, with the exclamation, ‘‘ Hang 
the pig! I can’t make him.” 
‘¢ Nay, Hill,’ exclaimed Hook, glancing at the mess on 
the table, “you have done more; instead of one pig, you 
have made a litter.”’ 
g@s> A Frenchman has discovered a method of taming and 
removing bees, and securing honey by tapping on the sides 
and top of the hives. We remember trying it in our youth- 
ful years, before we had heard of the Frenchman. We tap- 
ped on a hive belonging to an old farmer one night, and the 
bees came out first-rate, but we didn’t care to stay to remove 
the honey somehow. It seemed to us almost any place in 
the world would be desirable when compared to the vicinity 
of that hive. In this experiment, as in the one conducted 
by the Frenchman, the bees possessed all their usual activity 
and vigor. So did we.—Utica Herald. 
g@s~ A business man on Hssex street has a pair of canary 
birds that seem to believe in large families. The record of 
this worthy pair for 1874 shows well thus far. On the 26th 
of January the mother bird commenced to lay eggs, and in 
four days she had four eggs in the:nest; none of them were 
productive. On the 23d of February she commenced laying 
another four, which were not hatched. On the 25th of 
March she laid the first egg of the third four, two of which 
produced little birds, which only lived a few days. On the 
27th of April she began a nest of five eggs, four of which 
became birds. On the 26th of May she laid the first of six 
more eggs, and five of them were hatched. On the 26th of 
June she commenced another batch of five eggs, four of 
which were hatched. On the 25th of July she began again 
_ and laid an egg daily for six days, and on these she is stil] 
~~ sitting. Thus we have a total of thirty-four eggs, fifteen 
offsprings, thirteen living and seven of them singers, and 
six eggs to be heard from! If anybody’s canaries make a 
_ better showing, let us hear the story.—Salem Register. 

nes~ A county clerk in a rural town had a pet calf, 
which he was training up in the ways of the ox. The calf 
walked around very peacefully under one end of the yoke, 
while Mr. Clerk held up the other end. But, in an unfor- 
tunate moment, the man conceived the.idea of putting his 
own neck in the yoke, to let the calf see how it would seem 
to work with a partner. This frightened the calf, and, 
elevating his tail and voice, he struck a ‘‘dead run”? for the 
village, and Mr. Clerk went along, with his head down, and 
his plug hat in his hand, straining every nerve to keep up, 
and erying out at the top of his voice: ‘‘Here we come! 
blast our foolish souls! Head us, somebody !”’ 
pe@s- The following are prices paid for noted American 
horses: Kentucky, $40,000; Norfolk, $15,000; Lexington, 
$15,000; Kingfisher, $15,000; Gleneig, $10,000 ; Smuggler, 
$15,000; Blackwood, $30,000; Jay Gould, $30,000; Dexter, 
$43,000; Lady Thorne, $30,000; Jim Irving, $30,000 ; Gold- 
smith Maid, $20,000; Startle, 20,000; Prospero, $20,000; 
Rosalind, $20,000; Lulu, $20,000; Happy Medium, $25,000 ; 
Clara G., $30,000; Pocahontas, $35,000; Edward Everett, 
$20,000; Auburn Horse, $13,000 ; Judge Fullerton, $20,000 ; 
Mambrino Bertie, $10,000; Socrates, $20,000; George Pal- 
mer, $15,000 ; Mambrino Pilot, $12,000 ; Flora Temple sold, 
when aged, for $8,000, for brood mare ; $25,000 was offered 
and refused for Tom Bowling last summer; $30,000 was 
offered and refused for Bassett in his three-year-old form; 
$25,000 will not to-day buy Baywood or Asteroid; $40,000 
was offered and refused for Woodford Mambrino, and $30,- 
000 for Thorndale. 
pa@g~ A recent letter from Sargeant, Kansas, to the Topeka 
Commonwealth, contains the following : 
‘¢Large numbers of wild horses abound on the prairies 
between the Arkansas and Smoky Hill Rivers. They are of 
all sizes and colors, and are the wildest of all wild animals. 
They usually roam in bands from six to twenty, and will run 
at the sight of a man two miles away. A great many do- 
mesticated horses, as well as mules, which have strayed 
away from their owners, have taken up with the wild ones. 
After running with them for awhile they become as wild as 
their untamed companions. Various methods have been 
adopted to catch them, but they have generally proved fruit- 
less. A scrubby colt or a broken-down mule are, as a gen- 
eral thing, the only reward for all the time and labor. Set- 
tlers on the frontier would hail their speedy extinction as a 
blessing, for when domestic animals get with them their re- 
covery is simply out of the question. Ever since the first 
emigrant turned his footsteps toward the Pacific, this coun- 
try has been infested with a thoroughly-organized gang of 
highwayman and horse-thieves, and few have reached their 
destination without losing stock. They hover around the 
emigrant trains like vultures over a carcass, waiting for a 
favorable opportunity to pounce upon their unsuspecting 
prey. I know of one outfit, the ‘Chicago Mining Com- 
pany,’ that left this place in the spring for Silver City, that 
had nearly all their stock, some seventy-five head, stolen be- 
fore they got half way to their destination. The expedition 
had to be abandoned, and most of the parties returned, 
sadder but wiser men. Seldom or never is a horse-thief 
arrested; and if by some hocus pocus one is gobbled, it is 
simply impossible to convict him, as he always has a host of 
‘friends’ ready and anxious to prove bis innocence. But 
their day has come. The country is being settled by a class 
of people that will protect themselves against these outlaws, 
and compel them to seek other climes to carry out their 
nefarous work.” 
