Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/57

]

latter penetrate the coats of the intestines and "migrate into the body, more especially into the striated muscles, where, unless the animal in which they are contained should previously die, they are, after a time, encysted, and wait for the moment when they may be eaten by another man or animal to undergo the same changes as before.—The Zoologist.

?—That the cat was domesticated among the Egyptians, we have pregnant evidence, not only in their custom of shaving their brows when their cats died a natural death, but also in the mummies found in their catacombs, and in the figures of these animals on the monuments of that ancient country—perched on the top of the sistrum, for instance, and supposed to represent the moon—probably from the following mythological legends:—

Jove, tired of state affairs and Juno's tongue, sought, one day, a little relaxation in the company of his pretty Latona twins, Apollo and Hecate. To amuse them, he bade them try their had at creation, and do something towards filling the empty globule, now called earth. Apollo set his wits to work and produced. No one likes to be outdone; so, as Diana saw at a glance that there was no going beyond her brother's handiwork, she tried to turn the laugh against him, and concocted a sort of H. B. of her brother's production in the form of an ape. No one likes to be laughed at, so Pol cut his sister's fun rather short, by turning up a ramping lion. Di, however, was not to be frightened, and played another card of ridicule in the shape of a cat. Apollo, upon this, got into good humour, and, determined to beat his lively antagonist at her own weapons, made a mouse, which Hecate's cat immediately ate up. The lovely sex always have it hollow in matters of finesse.

Her success at this game seems to have pleased the Goddess of Hunting; for when Typhon and his giant host pressed the gods so hard that they were compelled to flee into Egypt, and save themselves from his fury by shooting their souls into the bodies of quadrupeds and birds, she chose the form of a cat for her metamorphosis; whilst her brother was glad to escape into the person of a crow, and her papa into the woolly carcase of a ram.

No, say others, that is a fable; but the reason why the cat was sacred to Hecate is this: The triple night consequent on Jupiter's visit to Alcmena set all Olympus a wondering; and it was not suffered to become dull for want of exercise, soon discovered the liaison. The months rolled on. The Queen of Heaven sent for the Parcæ, and gave them her imperial orders, which they sternly obeyed, and poor Alcmena had a weary time of it. Her gossip, Galinthias, after scolding, beseeching, and saying and doing all that a kind woman, almost at her wits ends, from witnessing the agonies of her bosom friend, could, to make an impression on their stony hearts, had recourse to a little deception. She persuaded the Fates and Lucina, that it was the will of Jove that Hercules should be born. They believed her, and dissolved the spell. The good Galinthias, however, paid dearly for her friendly ruse: she had provoked the fiercest of all vengeance—that of a deceived Queen, and was turned into a cat. Hecate, though a bit of a prude, was so struck with commiseration, that she chose the metamorphosed dame as her consecrated attendant. Accordingly it was said that the number of the cat's offspring was a gradual progression—one, two, three, four, and so on, always augmenting, till a litter of seven was produced, and the total amounted to twenty-eight, the days of a lunation, and that the pupil of the cat's luminous eye dilated and diminished as the moon waxed or waned.—Recreations in Natural History.

.—Having repeatedly placed one of these creatures (Dorr-beetles), weighing 15 grains, under a weight equal to 4,796 grains, sufficient, it would be considered, to crush its body, 319 times its own weight! it heaved it up and withdrew, and the same pressure being placed on its leg, was immediately disengaged by the powers of the other. Man effects his objects by the reasonings of his mind, mechanical agencies, or the strength of others; had he depended upon mere animal power to accomplish his wishes, in order to equal the means of a common beetle, he must have raised his body from an incumbent pressure of perhaps 20 tons.—Knapp's Journal of a Naturalist.

.—Mr. Thomas Moore, of Liverpool, had a fine specimen of the Death's-Head Moth brought to him alive on the 26th Sept., 1863, by two fishermen who had captured it in their boat when about 30 miles south of the Isle of Man, between 6 and 7 p.m. on the previous day. Fishermen are not remarkable for delicacy of fingers, nor does a fishing-boat afford very promising material for entomological purposes. Jack and his mate, however, were equal to the occasion and brought their prize safely into port, and in excellent condition, enclosed in a Pecten shell.

.—The curious galls called "Knoppern," are produced in the North of Europe, on the acorn cups of the Turkey oak (Quercus cerris), altering and deforming them very much, as may be seen in our figure. The insect which causes this malformation is a species of Cynips, said to be Cynips quercus-calycis. The galls are very astringent, and are employed in dyeing silk.

.—I placed a Ligurian Queen in a box having a perforated zinc communication, for some hours on the top of a stock from which the queen had been removed two days. I then admitted to the box one bee at a time, and they behaved very well until half a dozen had joined the queen, when they seized and attacked her, and I could not separate them from her without taking her up in my fingers, and actually pulling the bees from her. This took place four times, when, seeing that the bees would not accept her, I put her over another stock, and when I admitted the bees in this instance they received her joyfully. I then offered the stock that had rejected the queen in question another of the imported Ligurian Queens, and in this case the bees received her in a friendly way and conducted her in triumph into the hive.—W. Carr, in Gardener's Chronicle.