THE NATURALIST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2513, 14 May 1902, Page 64

THE NATURALIST.

Tffthont 'lime-table or Hock. " Have animals any wsy of measuring time':" '"■Some of them certainly do so," said a zoologist, " although the method they use is a mystery. Take, for instance, the migrants — the birds of passage — and the hibernating animal.". The oriole has been observed to arrive in certain districts on or about the same date every year, quite irrespective of the weather ; "and many other migratory birds arc marvellously regular in their dates of departure and arrival. '• In some parts of Europe the badger ih believed to retire to its winter quarters on exactly the same date every year, and to emerge on a particular day in early spring. And 'no df'ubt there is some foundation for the belief. '"The oddest instance of exactitude in t>me of which I have heard, however, was in connection with a mouse. At exactly -i quarter past 4 every day this little creatuie woii'd leave its hole and proceed to nibble at the crust of o pot of pasie on the table of a room "As iv happened, the occupant of the room JYAS a fi&tlU'ftU&t, 3ud ha had several

opportunities of watching the mouse, which , came out punctually to the moment every , afternoon." j African Wild Animals. — Africa is known to afford a home for perhaps a greater variety of large-size animals than any other country. The elephant is still -met there in large herds, and its habit of spending most of the year in inaccessible swamps gives it considerable security. Rhinoceri are fairly numerous, and those interesting creatures, hippopotami, also abound. The rinderpest of 1893 swept away vast numbers of such animals as the buffalo, eland, (and lichi antelope, but the recovery has been so rapid that in most districts game of all kinds is reported to be again very abundant. An Albino Roe Deer. — One of the most beautiful examples of albinism in animals j ever seen in London was recently on view j in the menagerie of the Royal Zoological Society. This was the buck of* a pair of pure white roe deer, a large and very fine animal, which had its horns in the "velvet" and not quite mature. The beatiful addition made by albinism to this condition of the horn growth wa3 that the -"velvet" was vure white, and not only was the whole body snow white, with blue, shadows — not yellow ones, as in the ermine which owes its colour to seasoned- change — but thehorns looked as if covered with hoarfrost. Reason in Animals. — What other creatures feel and know still offers a wide field for investigation. Lord Avebury, unlike Descartes and other great authorities, is forced to conclude that animals possess some glimmers of reason, and that their minds differ from ours more in degree than in quality, -while lie has demonstrated that they may have senses quite unknown to us, and* see ultra-violet rays that do not affect our eyes. Our organs enable us to perceive "vibrations in the atmosphere from about 30,000 to 32,000 per second, which give us the impression of sound, and beyond 400 millions of millions per second, which give us the impression of light. The intermediate vibrations, to which we are insensible, may give to responsive organs several senses different from ours as sound is from sight. To our animal friends they may transform our familiar world into a very different place, full of music we cannot* hear, of colours we cannot see, and of sounds we cannot conceive.