In Germany, an unusual number of white varieties of animals are noticed this winter. A white chamois was shot in the Totengebirge, a white otter was caught near Luxemburg, white partridges were shot near Brunswick, and a white fox was killed in Hessen.
In the eleven years from 1873 to 1884, the number of lions killed in Algeria was two hundred and two, for which a premium of four hundred pounds has been paid by the government. The number of panthers destroyed in the same period is twelve hundred and fourteen, and the money paid by the government seven hundred and twenty pounds. About four hundred pounds has been paid for eighteen hundred and eighty-two hyenas, and sixteen hundred pounds for twenty-seven thousand jackals. The large felidæ are almost extirpated principally in the western provinces, and the lion of the desert is fast becoming a thing of the past.
A BARRACK GHOST STORY.
‘Prisoner, have you any objection to be tried by me as president, or by any member of this court-martial?’ asked the field-officer who had been detailed for the duty of presiding over the court.
‘No, sir,’ I answered; for it was my most unenviable situation that morning to be brought to the courtroom for trial, having been ‘put back’ by my commanding officer a few days before on a charge of having been asleep on my post while on sentry; an offence characterised in my indictment as ‘conduct in prejudice to good order and military discipline.’
The members composing the court were then sworn, and the trial proceeded in the cumbrous fashion peculiar to military tribunals, the president laboriously writing down every word of the evidence as it was uttered. The sergeant who had been in charge of the guard at the time of my alleged offence was the principal witness against me, and he began to describe, with grotesquely ungrammatical volubility, how he had found me stretched on the ground asleep; but was at once pulled up short by the president, who ordered him to say what he had to say in as few words as possible.
‘Was the prisoner sober?’ asked one of the officers when the sergeant had finished his evidence.
‘Quite sober, sir,’ replied the man of stripes.
The men who composed the relief having corroborated the sergeant’s statement, I was called upon for my defence.
I therefore narrated to the court, that shortly before my two hours on duty had expired, I saw a white figure carrying a drawn sword pass close to my post; and that, being of a nervous, excitable temperament, I was so frightened that I fell to the ground in an unconscious state, and only recovered when I was roused by the sergeant of the guard.