Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1876 — Freaks of Nature. [ARTICLE]

Freaks of Nature.

In the Oalaxy for April, Prof. Burt G. Wilder shows that the assumption, so common in many scientific quarters, that nature acts with uniformity, is not sustained by all the facts in the possession of investigators. He gives the following among other curious illustrations; That “ one man’s meat may be another man’s poison” has been often demonstrated. Some persons are made ill by mutton even in minute quantities; others by oysters or lobsters; others by the smell of roses or of new-mown hay. On the other hand, some animals enjoy a remarkable immunity from the effects of poison. Pigeons have taken from twenty to fifty grains of opium with no apparent ill effect ; a rabbit ate digitalis and lived; and a Lungoor monkey (Presbytes entellus) is said to have survived ten-grain doses of quinine and of strychnine. These things cannot yet be explained by any known peculiarities ot structure, and so they indicate that our present means of investiga-tion,-chemical and microscopical, may be inadequate to detect differences which are readily discovered by the “physiological test.” No rule is of more, general application than that the care of the eggs and the young devolves chiefly upon the female. But with a kina of frog the male takes the eggs when laid and twists them about his 'legs, transporting them in this way until the young are hatched. Some South American fishes carry their eggs in their mouths until hatched; and we do not know how they eat meantime, .or whether they eat at all. The camel and llama are ruminating animals; that-is, they “chew the cud,” like the ox, sheep, deer, the giraffe, and many others less familiar. Now these latter move the lower jaw in one direction for a certain number of strokes, and then in the opposite direction and for about the same number of tiroes. But the camel and llama reverse the direction for each stroke. Usually, however, peculiarities of habit involve special structural arrangements. But even these may be temporary. The Aspredo, a South American fish, carries its eggs, attached to little pedicles, upon the lower surface of the body. With the Surinam toad, after the eggs are laid the male plants them upon the female’s back. Then the skin grows up between them so as to enclose e&h within a cell from which the tadpole emerges when sufficiently developed. The skin then reverts to its original condition. The pipe-fishes: and sea-horses present a double exception to the general customs of fishes- The eggs are carried in a sort of pouch upon tne lower side of the tail, re-

minding one of the arrangements In the opossum; and It is the male which has this pouch. So, as in the case of the toad already mentiohed, the one sex produces the eggs, tlie other hatches them; a more equitable division of labor tliaa iprevails in most human communities, where tlie man assumes the duties which please him, and leaves all the rest to his weaker partner. y . Among vertebrates true poison organs are almost confined to oertafn families of serpents, although the serrated spines of the cat-flshes and some skates may inflict wounds slow to heal. A Central American fish, however, the Thalassophryne, has on each shoulder a perforated spine connected with a poison sack. Wounds from these spines are said to be usually fatal. Some kinds of serpents feed upon eggs. We may imagine that if crushed within the lipless mouth, most of the contents, being necessarily raw, would be lost So the eggs are swallowed whole; but in the throat they are broken by contact with sharp tooth-like spiling, These, however, are not true teeth, but downward projections from the backbone which penetrate the gullet so as to serve the purpose ot teeth. The outward unlikeness of birds and reptiles is well indicated by popular sentiment. Yet recent studies of development and ofcorrespondingparts previously overlooked oblige us to regard the reptiles as more nearly related to the birds than to tlie other cold-blooded vertebrates —the batrachians and the fishes. Among tlie tew remaining distinctions between them, we notice the absence of teetii and of a long tail with birds; for however much elongated may be the tailfeathers of the bird, they are borne by a few rather stunted caudal vertebra). And so when, in the lithographic slates ot Solenhofen, was found a skeleton with wings and feathers like a bird, but a very long tail as in some lizards, there were some who at first hesitated to regard it as a bird at all. There are reasons for supposing that this long-tailed bird, the Archoepteryx, had teeth; and within a few years there have been found in the Cretaceous rocks crous teeth, either lodged in grooves or implanted in sockets. Nor was this so wholly unexpected, since little tooth-like papilla had long been found in the beaks of very young birds. Among spiders are some whose nets present an appearance o* geometrical regularity. I say appearance, for a, close Tuspectioh always reveals“variations aslo number and space which, if existing upon the same scale in human workmanship, would be held very discreditable to the artificer. Usually these so-called geometrical nets consist of a spiral, Mpcid line laid upon diverging radii of A few species make the viscid line as a series of loops covering the larger part of the disk, leaving one or more radii, usually at the upper part, uncovered. The nephila plumipes of the Southern States emits the viscid line from the upper sixth. The little “ triangle spider” (hyptiotes) constructs its nets of four radii, never more nor less, crossed by several (six to twelve) lines which are not viscid, but double, so as to serve the same purpose, the entanglement of prey.