Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/577

 Popular Science Montlihf

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��sighting danger causes the valve to open spasmodically, thus al- lowing an inrush of water or air. Sometimes the pullers die while still inHated, and they remain in that shape, being often driven ashore by the wind and dried on the beach by the sun.

The Japanese make lanterns of them when the\' find them in that condition. The\' cut out the back and suspend a candle from a wire into the fish bo<l\.

���A fragment of yartta showing the sponge-like construction of the interior in which resinous substance is secreted

��as shown in one of the accompanying il- lustrations which are published by courtesy of the New York Zoological Society. The light shows as brightly through the stretched skin as through a piece of oiled paper.

Some of the puffers are covered with spines which become rigidly erect when the skin is inflated. This species is also known as the sea porcupine. All the puffers have hard, strong beaks like parrots, which are well adapted for crushing the shells of the crabs and mollusks upon which they liv^e. At cer- tain times of the year, probably during the months that contain no "R," they are considered poisonous in the tropics, so much so that the gall of a Japanese species was formerly used to poison arrows.

��The appearance of the yareta from a distance is that of a huge recumbent sheep

The Strange Vegetable of Peru That Resembles a Sheep

ACURIOl'S plant growing in Peru is known to the native as "Yareta" or "vegetable sheep." It grows abun- dantly among rocks at high altitudes along the Andes of Bolivia and Peru, where it constitutes a conspicuous fea- ture in the landscape because of its peculiar manner of developing the so- calletl "polster," or cushion formation.

The "yareta" forms hillocks or small mounds often three feet high and some- times several feet in diameter. More- over, the entire mound is made up of a single plant, not of a colony of indi- viduals, and it attains this enormous size and extreme compactness by a process of repeated branching, so that the ulti- mate branches are closely crowded and the outer surface is continuous.

The flowers of the "yareta" are very thin, only about one-eighth of an inch long, and are borne in small dusters near the tips of the branches. The fruit re- sembles a miniature caraway seed. The natives use the plant as fuel.

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