MISS CULTURE (of Boston): Why, it is a feline vessel, a Grimalkin craft.
CAPTAIN:Oh, yes; we call ’em cat-boats.—Ocean.
JONES: Ramrod, they say that it takes a temperature of 64° below zero to kill a wild goose.
RAMROD: Well, what of it?
JONES: Oh, I was just thinking that you won’t be likely to get any wild geese this season, that’s all.—Burlington Free Press.
THE following extracts from Mr. H. H. Johnston’s paper in the Fortnightly Review for October will interest sportsmen. Mr. Johnston grows enthusiastic over the new territory ceded by the Sultan of Zanzibar to the Imperial British East African Company:
“The animal products of this region are typically African, and at the time of my journeyings therein it was a sportsman’s paradise.... Buffaloes, which abound so as to be dangerous, provide very eatable beef. Rhinoceros are so numerous in the interior that the horns are an important item in trade, for they may be sold on the coast for three or four rupees each (say 6s.). Hippopotami are abundant in the rivers and lakes.... The elephant abounds in the neighborhood of Kilimanjaro and Kenia to the extent of many thousands. He here becomes quite a mountaineer, and ranges through the magnificent forests that clothe the upper slopes of these giants among African peaks. The natives waylay his forest tracks with artfully devised pitfalls and traps, preferring this more cowardly way of procuring their ivory to facing the elephant in the chase.... Lions’ skins are less easy to obtain from the natives, as that animal is rarely killed by them; but sportsmen might shoot him to a considerable extent, as he is both common and bold. Monkey skins of the handsome variety of bushy white-tailed Colobus, which is alone found in this region, are valuable.
“Ostriches are exceedingly numerous throughout this district of East Africa; the species which is here represented is the Struthio Danaoides of Captain Shelley’s determination. It differs from the widespread Struthio Camelus in the color of the soft parts and naked skin, and the size and markings of the egg. When living in Taveita, in the summer and autumn of 1884, I and my men used to largely subsist on their eggs, which were brought us in numbers by the natives, and sold for about a pennyworth of cloth each. Of course, to any ornithologist, this country is exceedingly interesting, and there is an abundance of guinea-fowl, francolin, pigeons, and bustards.”