HOUNDS.
Two hounds belonged to a gentleman in Lancashire, and he, wishing to make them a present to a friend, sent them to Kilkenny, the place where he lived in Ireland. But the hounds apparently did not like their new quarters, and, no doubt, missed their old master; for after a few days they disappeared, and could not be found or heard of, until at last their master got a letter from their former owner in Lancashire to say that the hounds had returned to him. It was afterwards discovered that they had gone to the North Vale in Dublin, jumped on board a steamboat, which fortunately was going to England, and had found their way to their old home.
Some dogs take offence very easily. I know one absurd, diminutive creature, who has the greatest dislike to being talked about, and directly he hears any one mention his name even, he gets up and walks out of the room in the most dignified way possible, looking round all the time, as much as to say, "How dare you talk about me?"
Another dog belonging to a friend took great offence because he could not have his own way. He is a nice old dog, very old and quite blind, and has always lived with the same master, to whom he is quite devoted, accompanying him everywhere, and at night keeping guard on the mat at his bedroom door. A short time ago his master went on a visit to a house about sixty miles distant from his own home, and as usual his old favorite went with him. When night came, the old dog, having found out his master's room, posted himself, as he had always been accustomed to do, at his door. But the servants of the house, not knowing his ways, drove him downstairs. The next day the dog was gone; but was heard of soon afterwards, having returned to his own home. He had taken offence at not being allowed to sleep where he liked, and had found his way back, in spite of the distance and his blindness.
THE CALIFORNIA ROADRUNNER. (Geococcyx Californianus.)
A very singular and yet a very little known bird is the roadrunner chaparral cock, or, as it is known in Mexico and the Spanish sections of the United States, the paisano.
It belongs to the cuckoo family, but has none of the bad habits by which the European cuckoo is best known. It is a shy bird, but is not by any means an unfamiliar object in the south-western portions of the United States and in Mexico. Sometimes it wanders up into middle California, but not often, seeming to prefer the more deserted, hotter, and sandier parts of southern California, and from there stretching its habitat as far east as middle Texas.
It is not by any means a brilliantly colored bird, although some of its hues are very beautiful. The prevailing color of the roadrunner is olive green, which is marked with brown and white. The top of the head is blue black, and is furnished with an erectile crest. The eyes are surrounded by a line of bare skin.
It is not a large bird, being seldom twenty-four inches long, with a tail taking more than half of that length. The tail, indeed, is the most striking feature of the bird, being not only so very long, but seemingly endowed with the gift of perpetual motion, since it is never still, but bobs up and down, and sidewise, too, into every possible angle, and almost incessantly.
But while its tail is most striking, its legs are most remarkable, being not only long and stout, but wonderfully muscular, how muscular nobody would be able to imagine who had not put them to the test.
A traveller in Mexico tells of going out with his ranchero host to hunt hares with a brace of very fine hounds. Going over a long stretch of sandy plain, relieved only by pillars and clusters of cactus, the Mexican called the attention of his guest to an alert, comical-looking bird, some distance from them.
With the remark that the gentleman should see some rare coursing, the Mexican slipped the leashes of the straining hounds, which sprang off as if used to the sport, and darted after the bird. For a moment it seemed to the stranger a very poor use to put the dogs to, but he was not long in changing his mind.
Instead of taking wing, the bird tilted its long tail straight up into the air in a saucily defiant way, and started off on a run in a direct line ahead. It seemed an incredible thing that the slender dogs, with their space devouring bounds, should not at once overtake the little bird; but so it was. The legs of the paisano moved with marvellous rapidity, and enabled it to keep the hounds at their distance for a very long time, being finally overtaken only after one of the gamest races ever witnessed by the visiting sportsman.
The roadrunner, however, serves a better purpose in life than being run down by hounds. Cassin mentions a most singular circumstance among the peculiarities of the bird. It seems to have a mortal hatred of rattlesnakes, and no sooner sees one of those reptiles than it sets about in what, to the snake, might well seem a most diabolical way of compassing its death. Finding the snake asleep, it at once seeks out the spiniest of the small cacti, the prickly pear, and, with infinite pains and quietness, carries the leaves, which it breaks off, and puts them in a circle around the slumbering snake. When it has made a sufficient wall about the object of all this care, it rouses its victim with a sudden peck of its sharp beak, and then quickly retires to let the snake work out its own destruction, a thing it eventually does in a way that ought to gratify the roadrunner, if it has any sense of humor. Any one watching it would say it was expressing the liveliest emotion with its constantly and grotesquely moving tail.
The first impulse and act of the assaulted snake is to coil for a dart; its next to move away. It quickly realizes that it is hemmed in, in a circle, and finally makes a rash attempt to glide over the obstruction. The myriad of tiny needles prick it and drive it back. The angry snake, with small wisdom, attempts to retaliate by fastening its fangs into the offending cactus. The spines fill its mouth.
Angrier still, it again and again assaults the prickly wall, until, quite beside itself with rage, it seems to lose its wits completely, and writhing and twisting horribly, buries its envenomed fangs into its own body, dying finally from its self-inflicted wounds. After the catastrophe, the roadrunner indulges in a few gratified flirts of its long tail and goes off, perchance to find its reward in being run down by hounds set on by men.
John R. Coryell, in Scientific American.
Man is hard to satisfy. Poverty is the only thing he can get enough of.