Entries from August 2006 ↓

Charles E. Coffin, of Muirkirk, Md., has lately placed at the disposal of the Woman’s College Museum for study and description, in connection with other collections from the same region, a remarkable saurian tooth, recently exhumed from his iron mines in Prince George county. It measures three inches in length, and the herbivorous dinosaur to which it belonged was not less than twenty-five feet in length. The dentine of the tooth, with its beautiful polish and characteristic transverse markings, is almost perfectly preserved, and the delicate serrations of its edges are as sharply defined as when the reptile was imbedded in the lignitic clays of the Potomac formations. The mine from which the tooth was excavated is the same as that from which Professor O. C. Marsh, of Yale, several years ago obtained a considerable collection. These remains were so highly prized by this distinguished investigator that several men and an engineer were employed for a number of weeks in making excavations for the same, says Baltimore American. Though the Maryland dinosaurs were huge animals in comparison with reptiles now living, they are but dwarfs beside some of the gigantic species which inhabited the western North America in jurassic time. During a recent visit to the Woman’s college, Professor Marsh remarked that one of the fossil species he discovered in the west could stand on the lawn in front of Goucher hall and eat with comfort from the roof. This “terrible lizard” was 100 feet long, and the largest animal ever known to inhabit the earth.

Councilman Samuel Bell, a horse importer of Wooster, O., has a Minorca pullet that takes as much delight in catching rats and mice as a rat dog. The hen was raised with a litter of fox terriers, and from being associated constantly with the dogs has acquired their hatred for rodents. She will tackle the largest kind, and while she has never killed a large one, will keep them at bay until the dogs come to her relief. She has killed many half-grown ones. She seems to know that the big rats are too much for her. It is in dispatching mice that she is at home, and two to four picks from her bill always lay the mouse out. A funny part of the hen’s accomplishment is that she will stand for hours on watch for mice, and when one appears, pounce on it with the fury of a cat.

Among the most remarkable of nature’s wonders the subterranean pit at Jean Nouveau, near Vaucluse, France, which reaches a depth of 540 feet, while nowhere more than 12 feet wide, has only recently been explored. The French Society of Speleology (cave study) erected a derrick at the mouth of the pit, which begins with a funnel 15 feet wide at the top and narrows down to 3 feet at a depth of about 20 feet. From here down the crevice in the rock, for such it is, extends vertically, getting wider as it gets deeper, until a depth of about 475 feet it is 12 feet wide. At this point the shaft opens into a roomy cave in which just beneath the opening of the vertical pit a thick layer of clay, containing remains of bones, both human and animal, were found. The explorers found no evidence that the place had ever been visited by man, but tradition has it that criminals were thrown into the “bottomless pit,” as it was popularly called in the neighborhood, and the remains in the cave just beneath the shaft tend to corroborate this belief.

The descent made into the shaft was exceedingly difficult; it established the fact that there must be a further cave below the one now known, but the crevice through which it is accessible is choked up with debris and bolders [sic] so that it will be a very difficult matter to penetrate further into the cave than has been done. The deepest point reached in this crevice is 593 feet underground. Great quantities of water rush through the shaft every time there is a storm, still no trace of water was found in the cave explored, which proves that some other subterranean exit must exist.

On Lebanon itself, as well as in Cypress, cedars, we believe, have been known to attain to the height of a hundred and thirty feet, with proportionate bulk; whereas the largest in this country seem never to have exceeded the height of seventy-five feet, a difference which some naturalists have attributed to the colder and more ungenial climate of England. But there are mysteries in vegetation as well as in other things. The cold of Lebanon is in winter more severe than that experienced in England, though, on the other hand, the heat of summer is much greater, and these variations of temperature may possibly be necessary to develop the cedar in its full beauty and dimensions. The cypress in nearly all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean grows to a great height, though it increases so slowly in bulk, that many ages are necessary to bring it to perfection. The wood of this tree is of rare beauty, closeness and durability, for which reason it was selected by the Egyptians for the manufacture of mummy coffins, many of which, after having lain in the earth several thousand years, are still to all appearance as tough and serviceable as ever.

There is a sort of mythology in natural history which constructs its fables and legends after quite as marvelous a fashion as that habitually followed by the founders of wild creeds. Thus, not content with appealing to genuine history, in proof of the lasting qualities of cypress-wood, the old naturalists go back to Semiramis, and refer gravely to the bridge, all of this timber, which she is supposed to have thrown across the Euphrates, and which lasted no one knows how long. So, again, the philosopher Plato, when selecting the most durable material on which to write his laws, rejected brass, as of too fugitive a nature, and gave the preference to cypress wood. The cause of durability in this wood is what no one has explained, nor is it perhaps susceptible of explanation. It is easy to say that the timber in question is pervaded by a bitter juice, which repels all kinds of worms, so that it never presents, like many other kinds of wood, the appearance of being moth-eaten. To account, however, for its lasting qualities, we can only assume that Nature, by composing it of the finest particles piled slowly upon each other, pressed close and agglutinated by the laws of its organization, designed it to outlive temples and pyramids.–Chambers’ Journal.

[The Arena][], Volume 4, Issue 1 (June 1891), edited by B. O. Flower.

The is the first issue of this volume — the rest is making its way through Distributed Proofreaders.

Bookphile

The Bucyrus, O., Journal says: Our readers are aware that a large portion of the cranberry marshes were burned over last fall, and that portions remained burning for many weeks if not months. The owners have been digging and ditching, draining and fencing, at all seasonable opportunities, during the winter. Last week, while some workmen were digging upon a knoll that had been burned over, for the foundation of a barn, they found the earth still warm as they penetrated deeper, and a hollow sound induced the belief of a cavity, and cause them to prosecute their researches. Suddenly one of the spades struck through, and out squirmed a large rattle snake. This made them cautious, and further search revealed a hole four feet by three, and three deep, in which were 17 huge rattlesnakes, and divers smaller fry, besides one or two large frogs. Inspection revealed the further fact that there must have been other large frogs, and smaller snakes that had served as food, for the survivors through the long winter. The snakes had evidently been used to this retreat for winter quarters. The fire had driven them and other reptiles, in there, early in the season, and while the warmth had prevented them from their usual torpor, the small fry had kept them all alive and kicking.

A correspondent of a Coldwater paper gives the following particulars concerning the strange disappearance of Ottawa Lake, in Bedford township, Monroe county.

For some days past Ottawa Lake has presented a very exciting scene. The occasion was this: Those living near the lake observed for some days previous that the ice on the lake was falling. Soon they discovered that the fish were crowding to the holes in the ice where they watered their cattle. They increased in numbers, large and small, the former having their mouths wide open, and so exhausted that the people caught them with their hands.

As many teams daily visited the lake, hauling stones from the shores for building purposes, the news soon spread to a distance all around. The work of quarrying and hauling stones was soon abandoned, and in a short time scores of teams and hundreds of men might be scene on an about the lake. The men with hand-spikes, crow-bars and axes, were busily engaged in cutting and raising huge pieces of ice, and then stooping down and lifting the fish, some of which were dead, some alive, and some frozen fast in the ice, for the water having departed from the lake by some subterranean passage, the vast sheet of ice lay on the bottom.

For three days immense quantities of fish were carried away, principally pickerel and bass, while vast quantities of white fish were left to rot on the ice and in the mud–for mud and ice is all that is left of Ottawa Lake, numerous pieces of ice being left standing on edge, like so many grave stones. The lake, or rather its bed or grave-yard, presents a novel scene. Some say the water will soon return by the same source by which it departed, bringing a fresh supply of fish with it, for Lake Erie is supposed to be its headquarters. It will be well if it does, otherwise sickness may be feared in the burying ground of Ottawa Lake. In the meantime the farmers will greatly feel the loss of the departed waters.

About seven years ago, I am told, this lake departed in the same way, and old men say it departs and returns periodically.

The copiousness of the English language perhaps was never more apparent than in the following character, by a lady, of her own husband:–

“He is,” says she, “an abhorred, barbarous, capricious, detestable, envious, fastidious, hard-hearted, illiberal, ill-natured, jealous, keen, loathsome, malevolent, nauseous, obstinate, passionate, quarrelsome, raging, saucy, tantalizing, uncomfortable, vexatious, abominable, bitter, captious, disagreeable, execrable, fierce, grating, gross, hasty, malicious, nefarious, obstreperous, peevish, restless, savage, tart, unpleasant, violent, waspish, worrying, acrimonious, blustering, careless, discontented, fretful, growling, hateful, inattentive, malignant, noisy, odious, perverse, rigid, severe, teasing, unsuitable, angry, boisterous, choleric, disgusting, gruff, hectoring, incorrigible, mischievous, negligent, offensive, pettish, roaring, sharp, sluggish, snapping, snarling, sneaking, sour, testy, tiresome, tormenting, touchy, arrogant, austere, awkward, boorish, brawling, brutal, bullying, churlish, clamorous, crabbed, cross, currish, dismal, dull, dry, drowsy, grumbling, horrid, huffish, insolent, intractable, irascible, ireful, morose, murmuring, opinionated, oppressive, outrageous, overbearing, petulant, plaguy, rough, rude, rugged, spiteful, splenetic, stern, stubborn, stupid, sulky, sullen, surly, suspicious, treacherous, troublesome, turbulent, tyrannical, virulent, wrangling, yelping dog-in-a-manger.”