MISCELLANY.
Mont Cenis Railway.—Pending the completion of the great Mont Cenis tunnel, a temporary railway on inclined planes is to be carried along the present road over the mountain. The French Government, on its portion of the line, will use locomotives with a peculiar mechanism, to produce adhesion, on a middle rail placed between the two ordinary rails. On the Italian side a traction carriage will be employed, which will wind the carriages up by means of a drum acting on a heavy fixed cable laid along the line. The mechanism of the traction wagon will be put in motion by an endless wire rope actuated by water-wheels at the base of the incline.
Homes without Hands.—A new book by Mr. Woods, with the above title, gives an account of the habitations, "which are never marred by incompetence or improved by practice," constructed by various animals, classed according to their principles of construction, and illustrated by some excellent engravings, from drawings made expressly for the work. The author first describes the homes of the burrowing mammalia, and then proceeds to those of the social birds and insects. The mole appears to take the first place in Mr. Wood's list of mammalia. "This extraordinary animal does not merely dig tunnels in the ground and sit at the end of them, but forms a complicated subterranean dwelling-place, with chambers, passages, and other arrangements of wonderful completeness. It has regular roads leading to its feeding grounds; establishes a system of communication as elaborate as that of a modern railway, or, to be more correct, as that of the subterranean network of metropolitan sewers." … "How it manages to form its burrows in such admirably straight lines is not an easy problem, because it is always in [{859}] black darkness, and we know of nothing which can act as a guide to the animal." The real abode of the mole is most extraordinary. "The central apartment is a nearly spherical chamber, the roof of which is nearly on a level with the earth around the hill; and, therefore, situated at a considerable depth from the apex of the heap. Around this heap are driven two circular passages, or galleries, one just level with the ceiling, and the other at some height above. The upper circle is much smaller than the lower. Five short descending passages connect the galleries with each other, but the only entrance into the keep is from the upper gallery, out of which three passages lead into the ceiling of the keep. Therefore, when the mole enters the house from one of his tunnels, he has first to get into the lower gallery, to ascend thence to the upper gallery, and so descend into the keep." The mole appears unequalled in ferocity, activity, and voracity. The fox prefers to avoid the labor of burrowing, and avails itself of the deserted home of the badger, or even the rabbit; for, though it needs a larger tunnel than the latter, the cunning animal finds its labor considerably decreased by only having to enlarge a ready-made burrow instead of driving a passage through solid earth.
Of the weasel tribe, the badger is the most powerful and industrious excavator; there are several chambers in its domicile, one of which is appropriated as a nursery, and is warmly padded with dry mosses and grass. The rabbit, like the eider duck, lines her nursery with the soft fur from her own breast; but Mr. Wood deprecates this being set forth as an act of self-sacrifice, and held up as an example of such to human beings, and declares it to be as purely instinctive as the act of laying eggs.
The Wealth of Mexico.—M. Laur, the engineer deputed by the French government to explore the mineral wealth of Mexico, and who has already published several reports in the Moniteur, has completed his task. These reports, according to a paragraph in the Moniteur Belge, are shortly to be published in a more extended form, giving the exact situation, extent, and richness of the principal mineral veins of that country. It is hoped that under the new administration many of the old workings, abandoned during the civil wars, will be resumed, and that they will prove as valuable to the empire as they were during the early days of the Spanish occupation.