Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/391

Rh spines covered with a poisonous mucus. This mucus causes the most severe pain when introduced into the system. My attention was here drawn to a sharp coughing sound, which I found proceeded from two specimens of the "Fiddler" Ray (Trygonorhina fasciata). Botany Bay is a great place for many species of Sharks, Kays, and other Flat-fishes. One Ray was procured from that locality which measured fifteen feet from "wing" to "wing."

What a hideous monster is human ignorance! We have in this city bubonic plague (Pestis bubonica). In some of the factories hundreds of workmen have destroyed their dinnerbaskets. One may well ask, "What connection is there between dinner-baskets and plague?" None whatever. That is to say, not any more than there might be with hundreds of other articles in daily use. The reason of their destruction is as follows:—Some of the men have discovered in their baskets the larvæ of the beetle which attacks this kind of ware. The beetles were there all the time, but the men had "no eyes to see" till they became possessed of the plague scare. As they did not know what the larvæ were, they came to the conclusion that their occurrence in the baskets must have something to do with the plague. Speaking of ignorance reminds me that I once observed an itinerant microscopist exhibiting to a wondering crowd a small bottle containing small fresh-water crustaceans of the genus Cypris, but he informed them that the animals were—Hydatids. Returning to the plague. As a consequence of our visitation by this dread enemy, an enormous amount of disinfectant has been poured daily into our drains and sewers. A great quantity of this has found its way into some of the bays of our harbour, and it has had the effect of asphyxiating thousands of fishes. The presence of all these fishes floating at the surface forms a unique and most unpleasant spectacle.