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Page 8
One of the strangest things about the moving at Katonah, is that the
villagers are trying to take their shade trees with them, as well as their
houses.
One of the residents had some very fine trees in his garden, and he hated
to leave them behind him, so he decided to try and see if they could not
be moved.
The neighbors made the greatest fun of him, but he did not care, and set
to work as soon as the ground was frozen hard enough, to allow of the tree
being moved without disturbing the earth around the roots.
The procession of houses is now varied by a great tree, forty feet high,
which is moving down the road in the same quiet, stately way as the cat,
and the barber's shop, and the yellow cottage.
GENIE H. ROSENFELD.
INVENTION AND DISCOVERY.
A great sea monster has been washed ashore on the coast of Florida, and
men who study natural history are much interested in it. What is left of
the creature is said to weigh eight tons, and no one can tell exactly what
kind of a fish it is, because it appears to have been tossed by the waves
for a long time, and has been partly destroyed by them.
Those people who have seen it think that it is a kind of cuttlefish, but
that the arms, or tentacles, as they are called, have been broken away
from it. These arms must have been from one to two hundred feet long. It
is now only a huge body without much shape to it. Photographs and careful
descriptions of it have been sent to the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington and to Yale College, and the scientific men there expect to be
able to decide what it is by comparing it with other known kinds of
mollusks. Scientists study these things so carefully, that they can tell
what the exact size of an animal was, and what it looked like, if but a
small portion is left; we may therefore expect to hear all about this
great creature ere long.
The size of this wonderful creature can be better realized, when we learn
that it took four strong horses, a dozen men, and three sets of tackle to
move it.
At first it seemed impossible to believe that such a terrific monster
really existed. Sailors have told so many yarns for the sake of making a
good story, that people are a little afraid to believe the wonderful tales
of the sea, but THE GREAT ROUND WORLD took pains to find out
that this eight-ton cuttlefish story was true, so we need have no doubts
about it.
The cuttlefish, which supplies the bone we buy for our canaries, is a very
terrible fish indeed.
The bone, as we call it, is not really bone, but a sort of half-formed
shell which the cuttlefish wears under its skin.
It has a large round body, surrounded by eight arms, which are many times
the length of the body, and which it can twist or turn in any direction.
The mouth is in the centre of these arms. Professor Winchell describes
this ugly creature for us. He says:
"Staring out from either side of the head (the head and body are really
one) is a pair of large, glassy eyes, which send a shudder over the
beholder. At the bottom of the sea the creature turns its eight arms down,
and walks like a huge submarine spider, thrusting its arms into the
crevices of the rocks, and extracting thence the luckless crab that had
thought itself secure from so bulky a foe. Each of the arms is covered
with what are called suckers. Each sucker consists of a little round horny
ridge, forming a little cup, which is attached to the arm by a stem. When
the arm is pressed upon an object, the effort to escape from the grasp of
the arm causes a suction which effectually retains the object."
Professor Winchell goes on to tell that these cuttlefish or octopods
sometimes attain a very great size, and that sailors tell wonderful
stories about them. In one of these stories, the captain of a ship
declared that, while sailing off the African coast, he sent three of his
men over the side of the ship to scrape it. While they were at their work
one of these monsters reached its long arms up from the water and drew two
of them into the sea.
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