LOSING A VACUUM.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 38, 19 September 1891, Page 402

LOSING A VACUUM.

The teacher of the Longdale High School, was a young; man, with an ardent love of science, and the boys and girls had all caught something of his spirit. Twenty homes inLongdale gave evidence of the experimental work which was being carried on by the young people, and mothers and aunts held indignation meetings over the bugs and toads and snakes and birds, alive and dead, that appeared in unexpected places. One day Frank Newman found an unusually handsome mud-turtle, nearly as large as his hat, in which he carried it home. That evening after tea, there was an excited meeting of young people on the lawn. Tennis was forgotten, as the boys discussed ways and means of preserving this turtle’s fine shell. Finally they decided to go and ask their teacher’sadvice. Mr Dean was full of interest. He told them that he had once cleaned a shell of this sort very easily, after he had killed the turtle by putting him under a glass receiver, and pumping out the air with an air-pump. Next day, therefore, the zoology class assembled after school in Mr Dean’s class-room to witness the experimentFrank Newman put the big tortoise under the receiver, and Mr Dean pumped out the air until thd creature Jay limp and lifeless, sprawling out of its shell. * It is a painless death,’ said the professor. • We willleave him here until morning, jo be sure that life is extinct, before we remove the body from the plastron and carapace.’ On bis way to the class-room, early the next morning, Frank Newman met the janitor, with his dust-pan full of fragments of glass. ’Sure, Masther Newman, it’s throuble you’re makin’ with yer animals and the glass bells,’ said he. * That big, expinsive one in Misther Dean’s room is smashed in slivereens by that shelled baste you left shut up—and here they are I’ * But he was dead !’ cried Frank. * How could he break the receiver !’ * Faith, I fetched him to life, the poor craythur I I found him there a gaspin’ when I went to sweep out the room, yesther evenin’, just afthur ye’d gone, and I thought you’d been forgetting him, so I saved his life fur him ; and then look how he broke the glass bell !’ ‘ You saved his life for him ! How ?’ * Sure, and I just slipped a thin book under one side of the glass, to give him a bit of fresh air. And to pay me, he had to go and hump himself up, and kick over the bell and smash it, bad hick to him !’ * Where is he now !’ * He’s found the bad luck,* said Mike, with a slow smile. * I was some mad, to spake the thrutb, when I saw what he

had done, and before I stopped to think, I’d picked him up -from the floor, where he waa prancing about, and give him a fling out of the window. And there I see one of tbim little rascals from the Patch a-licking off down the road wid him.’ • Well, Mike, I hope that in future you’ll not meddle with •our experiments,’ said Frank, with some irritation. ‘We left the turtle over night in the receiver because we wished it to be there. If you had not let in the air the accident would not have happened. You see, we had a vacuum,’ •he concluded, condescendingly. * Sure, was the craythur a vacuum !’ said Mike, with great respect. * I thought ’twas just a common mud-turtle !’