STORIES OF ANIMAL LIFE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3184, 1 April 1911, Page 9

STORIES OF ANIMAL LIFE.

LESSONS TO JUVENILES

In his closing lectui e ait tli© London Institution. Mr. F. Martin-,Duncan dealt with ‘Autumn and Winter, the Web of Life.’ His juvenile audience listened with intense interest to the stories he had to tell of animal and insect life, the nature within them, and the intelligent, sense they displayed. By photographic views the children wandered in imagination through the beech woods to th© rabbit-warrens, where, in tine shortening days of the autumn, brer rabbit was endeavoring to fatten on the diminishing vegetation and prepare for the lean winter: Interesting was the description of the telegraphic code familiar to rabbits. Before they emerged from their burrows the. old buck went out and scented right and left. Then, if the course was clear,' he stamped heavily With liisi hind legs three times, and out. came the colony. In order to watch rabbits one must studv their habits and ways. On the first sign -of fear or alarm they, like all wild animals and birds, remained for a part of a second absolutely rigid ; what was called in wood law “freezing.” Therefore, in stalking a rabbit, at the least sign of fear one must instantly stop in his track, perhaps with one. leg off the ground and persistent fly “dancing round his nose.” The courtship of spiders and their quaint marriage customs added another touch of humor. This was one of the funniest sights of the countryside, said the lecturer. Madam Spider was coy and bad-tempered ; the “gentleman” was less than half her size, and very nervous in his wooing. If he was too pressing in his attentions he would probably be devoured. If the wooing was successful! and they had married, an hour or two after the marriage bells had ceased the ooipse of Mr. Spider might be found hanging up iu the “lady’s” larder; she had got tired of him and sucked his blood. Plants, it was explained, knew a good deal a-bout aviation, and had various kinds of fly-ing-machines. The children of parent flowers and fruit-trees had to be conveyed away as far as possible, or else the parent would be stifled. The seed of the cotton-grass, the dandelion, ancl the thistle were wafted away on a feathery parachute. Some years'ago he saw a quantity of thistle-down floating on the wind and eventually alighted on the pavement in St. Paul’s Churchvard. It had evidently travelled a long distance. Speaking of the barnowl and bats, the lecturer remarked that lie did not know why things that went about at night should have a bad character. The owl did a great deal of good in killing vermin, and the bat was a most skilful creature. A remarkable photograph of a toad, taken bv the lecturer was thrown on the screen. It showed reflected in the toad’s eye the landscape which .the frog was gazing upon and this, it was stated, was probably the origin of the legend of the Middle Ages that the toad possessed a jewel which was a talisman that threatened the owner of the toad with all sorts of ills