The remarkably attractive Number of the _Magazine of Natural History_
for the present month enables us to checker our sheet with a page or
two of facts which will be interesting to every inquiring mind.
Hail at Lausanne.
"At Lausanne, on the 14th of July, 1831, about 8 P.M., we witnessed
one of those hail-storms which, every summer, cause such ravages in
the south of Europe. A great proportion of the hailstones were as
big as hen's eggs, and some even bigger: seven nearly filled a common
dinner plate. They were mostly oval or globular; but one piece,
brought to us after the storm, was flat and square, full 2 in. long,
as many broad, and three quarters of an inch thick, with several
projecting knobs of ice as big as large hazel nuts. This mass exactly
resembled a piece of uniformly transparent ice, but the oval and
globular masses had the same conformation as has often been described
in these hailstones, and on which Volta founded his ingenious but
untenable theory of their formation. In the centre of each was a
small, white, opaque nucleus, the size of a pea, and evidently one of
the hailstones usually seen in England, to which the French give the
name of _grésil_, confining the term _gréle_ to the larger masses of
ice now under our observation. This nucleus of _gresil_ was
enclosed in a coat about half an inch thick of ice considerably more
transparent than it, but still somewhat opaque, as though of snow
melted and then frozen again, and externally the rest of the mass was
of ice perfectly transparent, and as compact and hard as possible,
resounding like a pebble, and not breaking when thrown on the floor.
The inhabitants of Lausanne, aware that the cinereous and puffed up
appearance of the clouds charged with this tremendous aerial artillery
portended more than a mere thunder-storm, had adopted the precaution
of closing their Venetian shutters; but such windows as were deprived
of this protection had almost every pane broken: and much damage was
done to the tiles of all the houses, and to the gardens and vineyards;
but less than might have been expected, owing to the short duration of
the storm, which did not last longer than seven or eight minutes, and
to the circumstance of the hailstones not being very numerous."--(W.
Spence.)
Cedar Wood.
"The _cedar_ has been recommended, among other woods, for the purpose
of constructing drawers for cabinets of insects. Let the inexperienced
collector be warned that this is, perhaps, the _very worst_ wood that
can be employed for the purpose; a strong effluvia, or sometimes
a resinous gum, exudes from the wood of the cedar, which is apt to
settle in blotches on the wings of the specimens, especially of the
more delicate Lepidóptera, and entirely discharges the colour. The
Rev. Mr. Bree once had a whole collection of lepidopterous insects
utterly spoiled from having been deposited in cedar drawers; and
he has understood, also, that the insects in the British Museum,
collected, he believes, chiefly by Dr. Leach, have been greatly
injured from the same cause. Possibly, however, cedar wood, after it
has been thoroughly well seasoned, may be less liable to produce these
injurious effects."
Habits of the Common Snake in Captivity.
A Staffordshire Correspondent writes thus familiarly:
"This has been a remarkably good season, both for vegetables and
animals. It has been a singular time for adders, snakes, and lizards;
I never saw so many as I have seen this year in all my life. I have
been trying, a great part of this summer, to domesticate a common
snake, and make it familiar with me and my children; but all to
no purpose, notwithstanding I favoured it with my most particular
attention. It was a most beautiful creature, only 2 ft. 7 in. long. I
did not know how long it had been without food when I caught it; but
I presented it with frogs, toads, worms, beetles, spiders, mice, and
every other delicacy of the season. I also tried to charm it with
music, and my children stroked and caressed it; but all in vain:
it would be no more familiar with any of us than if we had been the
greatest strangers to it, or even its greatest enemies. I kept it in
an old barrel, out of doors, for the first three weeks: during that
time, I can aver, it ate nothing; but, after a very wet night, it
seemed to suffer from the cold. I then put it into a glass vessel, and
set it on the parlour chimney-piece, covering the vessel with a piece
of silk gauze. I caught two live mice, and put them in to it; but they
would sooner have died of hunger than the snake would have eaten them:
they sat shivering on its back, while it lay coiled up as round as a
ball of worstep. I gave the mice some boiled potatoes, which they eat:
but the snake would eat neither the mice nor the potatoes. My
children frequently took it out in their hands, to show it to their
schoolfellows; but my wife, and some others, could not bear the sight
of it. I one day took it in my hand, and opened its mouth with a
penknife, to show a gentleman how different it was from that of the
adder, which I had dead by me: its teeth being no more formidable
or terrific than the teeth of a trout or eel; while the mouth of the
adder had two fangs, like the claws of a cat, attached to the roof of
the mouth, no way connected with its jaw-teeth. While examining the
snake in this manner, it began to smell most horridly, and filled the
room with an abominable odour; I also felt, or thought I felt, a kind
of prickly numbness in the hand I held it in, and did so for some
weeks afterwards. In struggling for its liberty, it twisted itself
round my arm, and discharged its excrements on my coat-sleeve, which
seemed nothing more than milk, or like the chalkings of a woodcock.
It made its escape from me several times by boring a hole through the
gauze; I had lost it for some days at one time, when at length it was
observed peeping out of a mouse-hole behind one of the cellar steps.
Whether it had caught any beetles or spiders in the cellar, I cannot
say; but it looked as fierce as a hawk, and hissed and shook its
tongue, as in open defiance. I could not think of hurting it by
smoking it out with tobacco or brimstone; but called it my fiery
dragon which guarded my ale cellar. At length I caught it, coiled up
on one of the steps. I put it again into an American flour barrel;
but it happened not to be the same as he had been in, and I observed a
nail protruding through the staves about half way up. This, I suppose,
he had made use of to help his escape; for he was missing one morning
about ten o'clock: I had seen him at nine o'clock; so I thought he
could not be far off. I looked about for him for half an hour, when I
gave up the hunt in despair. However, at one o'clock, as the men were
going from dinner, one of them observed the rogue hiding himself under
a stone, fifty yards from the house. 'Dang my buttons,' said he, 'if
here is not master's snake. He came back and told my wife, who
told him to go and kill it. It happened to be _washing-day_: the
washerwoman gave him a pailful of scalding soapsuds to throw on
it; but whether he was most afraid of me or of the snake is still a
question: however, the washerwoman brought it home with the tongs,
and dropped it into the dolly-tub. It dashed round the tub with the
velocity of lightning; my daughter, seeing its agony, snatched it out
of the scalding liquid, but too late: it died in a few minutes. I
was not at all angry with my wife: I had had my whim, and she had had
hers. I had got all the knowledge I wanted to get; I had learned that
it was of no use for a human being, who requires food three times a
day, to domesticate an animal which can live weeks and months without
food: for, as the saying is, 'Hunger will tame any thing;' and without
hunger you can tame nothing. I have also learned that the serpent,
instead of being the emblem of wisdom, should have been an emblem of
stupidity."
"The stench emitted by the common snake, when molested, is
superlatively noisome; and is given off so powerfully and copiously,
that it infects the air around to a diameter of several yards. This I
witnessed on observing a bitch dog kill a rather large snake; in which
act two points beside the odour effused were notable. The coils of the
snake formed, as it were, a circular wall; and in the circular space
between it, the snake sunk its head, as if for protection. The dog's
efforts were to catch and crush the head; and, shrivelling up her
fleshy lips, 'which all the while ran froth,' she kept thrusting the
points of her jaws into the circular pit aforesaid, and catching at
and fracturing the head. During the progress of these acts, she, every
few seconds, snorted, and shook off the froth, of which she seemed
sedulously careful to free herself, and barked at the conquered snake.
The dog was a most determined vermin-killer, and in rats, &c., quite
an accomplished one; but snakes did not often come in her way."--J.D.
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