"This photograph shows the remarkable work of what are known as dam-building beavers. The little animals sometimes construct barriers of brushwood and clay in creeks to form their winter habitations. Occasionally they use pieces of timber of quite large size. The logs which are shown in this picture were actually cut by their sharp teeth, and were found in the swamp occupied by a beaver colony near Stroudsburg, Pa. The work was done so nicely that the wood appears as if hewn with an axe. Pieces of this size were used to strengthen the dam and were gnawed from limbs of trees, some of which were over six inches in diameter. As will be noted, one bears a remarkable resemblance to a horse's hoof."—Mr. D. A. Willey, Baltimore.
CATALEPTIC RIGIDITY.
"This is a rather uncommon photograph of a man whilst under hypnotic influence, lying on an upturned stool, bearing the weight of three people on his body. His feet are resting on one leg and his neck on the other without any support between. The photograph was taken without the knowledge of the subject."—Mr. E. E. Vinnicombe, Gloucester Row, Weymouth.
OLD-FASHIONED SURGERY.
"The accompanying photograph of a mural tablet in St. Sampson's Church, Guernsey, the inscription on which is in French, brings the surgical skill of to-day into striking contrast with that of a hundred years ago. For the benefit of those who do not care to try their eyesight in reading the small type, or who do not understand French, I have translated the latter and more interesting part of the inscription into English, as follows: 'This monument is erected to their memory, and also to that of their eldest son, Thomas Falla, Lieutenant of the 12th Regiment of Infantry, who died at the siege of Seringapatam, April 6th, 1799, aged eighteen years, six months, twenty-five days, as the result of a wound of a solid cannon ball weighing twenty-six pounds, which had lodged between the two bones of one of his thighs. The said wound having become considerably inflamed, the surgeon of the regiment, after he had examined the injury, was unaware that the ball was enclosed in it, and it was only after his death, which took place six hours after the event, that it was extracted, to the surprise of the whole Army.' The solid cannon ball referred to, of twenty-six pounds in weight, must have been five and three-quarter inches in diameter; it is astounding to contemplate that the regimental surgeon was unable to detect the presence of this huge mass of iron in the unfortunate officer's thigh."—Mr. Arthur D. Moullin, "Cintra," Swanage, Dorset.
