THE NATURALIST.
A Trio of Kat Stoifeg. In bis "Studies in Rit-Catcfci^g" Me H. O. Barkley. tells us that ho had trained hia , dogs and ferrets so well that his services were in request as a competent and paid rat- j .catcher ; and the total of the day's earnings, j at 2d per rat, is duly entered after the deecription of each day's sport. Old ladies living in large country honees used to send for him to devise means for ridding them of dsmon rats who baffled the regular practitioner?, and the discoveries made in these I visi's are aa curious as anything yet published in the history of household pests. In one case a bout c was perfectly free from rat*, yet every night a rat came to the fowlbou?e and carried off hens' tggs or young etneks and cbiokens. Hedges, ditches, bheds, outhouses, and stables were examined with the aid of a trained dog, yet not a trace of a rat could be discovered. The dog was even made to run over the roofs of the buildings, in case the rats were lurking under the tiles. One afternoon Mr Berkley leqaested that a dog, which was tied up in a kennel in a back yard, might be removed, as its barking disturbed his dogs when at work. As soon as tho house-dog wa3 removed, one of Mr Barkley's terriers " pointed " a rat apparently under the kennel. No hole was visible, but the dog than entered the kennel and " pointed " a hole through the floor. The predatory rat was found beneath, and as there was only one bole, it was evident that it must have passed and repassed the dog when asleep every night. In another house the dogs " pointed " a sofa in a bedroom. A rat had "eaten a hole through the sacking near one of the legs, and made a nest among the springs ; a ferret was put in ; " there was a rush and a scuffla, the sofa seemed alive; then three or four small rats bolted out; another squeak and rush, and out came the mother, and then, as the ferret did not come oat, I ripped open the sacking, and found it eating a tender young rat." Church mice are common in the Eastern countiep, which were the scene of Mr Barkley's experiences; they are alleged to live on the samples of wheat and barley which fche farmers pull out of their pockets at vestry meetings, and drop on the floor and deßk. But Mr Barkley discovered, and in due course caught, a church rat. He was musing during the sermon, sitting on a bench opposite a score of village school children, when he was suddenly struck by the curious re-semblano-s or expression — not in one, but in the whole row— to that of his own dogs when they found a rat. He was reproaching himself with dreaming, when he noticed that all the eyes were turned in one direction, acd there he caw the cause — a rat just peeping out of a hole in the brick floor, and apparently listening to the sermon. It was duly caught next day.— Spectator. Tenacity ©f Life in Insects. — Mr J. O. Warburg writes to the Entomologist: — " When I was still new to collecting in South France I discovered one day, to my great joy, a large female of Saturnia pyri hidden away in come bushes. The specimen was the first I had ever caught, and I decided, on account of its large body, to staff it (a quite unnecessary operation; I have kept dozens since unstuffed). The moth was first apparently killed by being forced into a cyanide bottle, where it was left about an hour. The abdomen was them emptied, and the cavity filled with cotton wool soaked in a saturated solution of mercuric chloride. The insect, pinned and set, was discovered next day attempting to fly-away from the setting board." Can Cats Really Converse?— Theories of articulate language in the animal kingdom are advanced every day. Some of them are serious, like Professor Garner's notion of an intelligent and intelligible speech of apep, but the most interesting ate those which treat of the matter in a half-humourous way which does not tax the credulity too far. Such a one is the theory of a feline tongue, exploited by the blind author, Marvin Oiark, in his little book on " Pussy and Her Language." He declares that the " smooth and liquid passages in our poeta, which express onomatoj 03 a, ara but echoes from that most beautiful of all language?, that of a cat.' 1 The one most like it in human tongues, he says, 1b the Chinese, the sounds in each being musical, mellifluous, and pleasing to the senaoa. As in the Chinese, too, words in the cat's language have various meaning?, acoording to the inflection of the voice. The number of words tis very great, but the author has made up no complete lexicon of them as yet. The following 17 are important and frequent in the conversation which cats struggle to carry on with members of the household :— Aelio means food; lao, milk; parriere, opan," aliloo, water; bl, meat; ptteebl, mouse meat; bleeme-be, cooked xaeat; pad, food; bo, head; .pro, nail or claw; tat, limb; papoo, body; oolie, far; mi-ouw, beware; barrier), satisfaction or content; yiaou, extermination; mi-ycuw, here. Of primitive wordsitis believed that there are more than 600 in the cat tongue, and many of these are obscure, for the cat relie3 greatly on signs for making its meaning clear to those who have neglected a study of its articulate speech. Thus the last word in the foregoing list is ussd by a matronly cat in calling her family together, and she will contisne to usa it while caressing them. But the meaning of the word is never co well understood by the kittens as when uttered hi a sharp tone and repeated a number of times, more as an explosive than otherwise, far it is a warning of danger and a call for instant action from the mother cat, who is imperious in her demands for obedience. Then the word "mi-youw" is frequently varied to "wow-teionw-yow-tiow, wow-yon-ts-s-syow 1 " ending in an explosion. The .author believes that the word thus uttered signifies both defiance and a curae, "and comes near to bold, bad swearing. "—Buffalo Commercial, Herbeit Spencer defines evolution as a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity by various integrations and differentiations. We don't know abcrat that, but we are certain about the evolution of the wonderful new Waterbury Watch called " The Trump," Obtainable
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Bibliographic details
Otago Witness, Issue 2202, 14 May 1896, Page 47
Word Count
1,107THE NATURALIST. Otago Witness, Issue 2202, 14 May 1896, Page 47
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