AN OLD TRAVELLER'S TALE

Evening Star, Issue 22572, 13 February 1937, Page 8

AN OLD TRAVELLER'S TALE

The Zoo is proud of a new company of elms, rare newt-like animals some lOin long. The olm, mainly white, is a creature of darkness, passing its life, with the gills of a tadpole and the lungs of a salamander, in the deep waters running as subterranean streams and rivers under the mountains of Dalmatia, Carinthia, and Carniol. Never seeing the light, it still retains its eyes, but they are sightless, mere useless dots, yet sufficiently sensitive to enable the animal to shun a light brought near it in captivity. Prolonged light in such circumstances darkens the livid skin of the creature to black. Doubtless, if they could be induced to face life in daylight on land they would undergo a great change and become a form of newt or salamander unknown to us—as the axolotl, when forced by shrinking waters to face changed conditions, astonishes us by becoming a land animal, the arahlystoma. But such a thing has never happened in the case of the olm so far as science has been able to ascertain. The pecularities of these strange creatures suffice in themselves to invest their first coming to England with a special romance, but the whole story is a masterpiece of adventure and boyish devotion. „ . ■ When Sir Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, was a youth ■ he was sent _to Germany to study medicine, but finding the language difficulty beyond him, he spent the money on a short course of travel in the Near East.

One of his experiences was a visit to the wonderful caves at Adelsberg; he made the long journey underground by the side of a black and forbidding stream which seemed to him a very

low fire. As you will see from the illustration, the branch must be whittled where it is to be bent. When you are a crowd in one big camp it is, of course, the usual thing to gather round the camp fire of an evening, when the brighter ones vie with one another to entertain the camp. No. sis an illustration of an excellent lantern for such occasions. It is made from an empty tin affixed to a stick of a suitable height; through the side opening the light shines on the performer without discommoding the audience. Finally you see a lantern (No. 6) for lighting the tent itslef. It is only a makeshift in case your electric pocket lamp fails you, and you must be extremely careful in using this lantern, or any other candle light, in a canvas tent. It is made from a bottle, the bottom of which has been removed before the bottle is planted in the ground upside down

river of death. From the waters of that stream camo a pair of olms. He had to get them home in a bottle, first by steamer from Trieste to Venice, then I'rom Venice to Milan by coacti, next from Milan to Geneva, again by coach, and by similar means to , Boulogne. * Fortunately, it was summer, for the thin suit he was wearing had to act as covering to Galton and Iris olms as well. Olms live in a constant temperature, the water never varying from the normal of streams unsunned and unchilled; but now in this journey tney had to cross the snowy Alps in a bottle. The probability was that they would freeze to death at their first experience of such conditions. So the gallant youth carried his chilly bottle of life inside his calico coat day and night, to the horror and indignation of his fellow-passengers. The journey from Milan to Boulogne lasted seven days and eight nights, and in the cramped position he was forced to occupy in preserving Ms bottle of treasure he suffered * great pain. . Nevertheless, he was constant to his self-imposed task; be got his cargo home, the first olms ever seen in England. He presented them to King’s College, where he had been trained, and there, after one had'died, the second lived in great honour for years. We ought to bo able to add that the survivor, at last ending its days in peace, remains a treasured specimen in the college museum. But no; the end was a tragic anti-climax. The creature which had passed unscathed from the eternal gloom of a subterranean stream, up over the Alps to bo the brightest living treasure at the college, ended ingloriously. A cat saw it at last, snatched it from its bowl, and had the one and only elm in England for its silent supper.