Published in the Waukegan Gazette, Waukegan, Illinois on Saturday, January 31, 1885
[Exchange.]
    Sledge-dogs need no urging with the whip when their instinct informs them that they are on unsafe ice.
    They flee onwards at the speed which alone can save and, as was experienced repeatly by Dr. Hayes, instead of keeping the sledges together in a compact body, they diverge and separate, so as to distribute the weight over as large an area as possible. When they begin to find themselves menaced by this danger, and the prospect ahead appears to them unuaually threatening, “They tremble, lie down, and refuse to go further.”
    Most arctic explorers tell of hairbreath escapes from treacherous ice, when they have owned their preservation to the sagacity of their dogs. Wrangell relates an incident of this nature:
    “Our first care was to examine the possibility of further advance; this, however, could only be done by trusting to the thin ice of the channel, and opinions were divided as to the possibility of its bearing us. I determined to try; and the adventure succeeded better than could have been hoped for, owing to the incredibly swift running of the dogs, to which doubtless we owed our safety. The leading sledge actually broke through in several places; but the dogs, warned, no doubt, of the danger by their natural instinct, and animated by the incessant cries and encouragement of the driver, flew so rapidly over the yielding ice, that we reached the other side without actually sinking through. The other three sledges followed with similar rapidity each across such part as appeared to be the most promising; and we were now all assembled in safety on the north side of the fissure. It was necessary to halt for a time, to allow the dogs to recover a little from their extraordinary exertions.”
Published in the Waukegan Daily Sun, Waukegan, Illinois on Friday, July 8, 1898
A Fourth of July Celebration Which Ended in Disaster.
    “That billygoat the boys had for a mascot on the New York,” remarked the  paymaster’s clerk, “suggests a monkey’ that my father used to tell me about that they had on a frigate in the times before the war. This momkey the sailors had picked up somewhere in the Indin ocean countries.
   The ship was stationed in the China ports for an year, and during that time the monkey was the light and joy of the whole crew. When the Fourth of of July came around, permission was asked from the harbor authorities of the port where they were to fire a salute, and preparations were made for doing it in style. The regular salute was fired, and then it was proposed that the crew sing ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and fire a gun for chorus. The gun was loaded and everything was left ready while the crew went to the main deck, where something to drink to the health of the nation was to be served before the song was sung, and the gunner was to be sent back to shoot off the chorus.
    “The programme was carried out to the letter. Then the men scattered, and somebody thought of the monkey. But he was not to be found. The cook hadn’t seen him, nor had the cook’s boy, nor would he respond to any of the calls that usually brought him flying. What had become of him no one knew until 6 o’clock, when a boat’s crew went ashore to a big spring for water. The ship lay off from this spring about a quarter of a mile, and over it was a big shade tree. When the men came to the spring, they noticed in the branches of the tree something that had a familiar look to it, and knocking it out with sticks and stones they found the pink nose of their poor little pet attached to a few shreds and patches of monkey skin.
 “That told the story of the disappearance of Mug, the monkey. He had in a spirit of sport chased himself into the mouth of that saluting cannon and when they fired it Mug went ashore.”-Washington Star.
Published in the Waukegan Daily Sun, Waukegan, Illinois on Wednesday, November 10, 1897
    Howard Reed, of Milford, Pa., started out hunting for partridges and woodcock and was followed by the house cat. All efforts on the part of the young hunter to drive the cat back home was futile; it was bound to go with him, and it illustrated its ability as a hunter by it’s “pointing” a woodcock which Reed shot. Then it “flushed” a partridge, which was also bagged by the hunter. Reed says he would not part with the cat for the best bird dog in the country.
Published in the Waukegan Gazette, Waukegan, Illinois on Saturday, February 14, 1885
[Exchange.]
    The Greeks and Romans did not know stirrups. The ancients had no saddles like ours, although a Monsieur Ginzrot tries to make out from Julius Caesar and other Roman writers, that they did sometimes employ a kind of frame like a saddle-tree, which was stuffed with wool or cloth, and then covered over with a thick, pliable cloth, and the whole was fastened on with a cingulum or zona, which answered to our surcingle or girth.
    Among the thousands of bronze remains of harness, bridle bits, buckles and horse paraphernalia in the department of “small bronzes” in the Naples museum, there is not a stirrup, not a spur, not a horseshoe. Among the equestrian statues and statuettes in bronze, marble and terra cotta, the saddles, such as I have described, is rarely to be found as a companion to those equestrian statues in marble of the Balbi [father and son], found in the Basilica [not in the theater, as most ciceroni and guides tell the traveler] at Herculaneum, are without saddles, and of course without stirrups. The Balbi ride bare-back.
    The full-size equestrian statue in bronze of Nero, discovered only half a century ago in Pompeii, represents the emperor riding without saddle or stirrups. The wonderful bronze statuette group of Alexander and Bucephalus gives us the pose of the great Macedonian seated upon his bare-backed steed, and he appears riding calmy and fearlessly into battle, dealing heavy blows with his sword with as much force as if he had stirrups to stand up in. All these are in the museum at Naples, and photographs and engravings of them are to be found everywhere, so that any reader of this article can examine for himself.
Published in the Waukegan Gazette, Waukegan, Illinois on Saturday, March 14, 1885
[Popular Science News.]
    A queer way of employing ants is reported by an English gentleman who has been traveling through one of the provinces of China. It appears that, in many parts of the province of Canton, the orange trees are infested by worms; and, to rid themselves of these pests, the natives bring ants into the orangeries from the neighboring hills. The ants are trapped by holding the mouth of a lard bladder to their nests. They are then placed among the branches of the orange trees, where they form colonies; and bamboo rods are laid from tree to tree, to enable the ants to move throughout the orangery.
Published in the Waukegan Gazette, Waukegan, Illinois on Saturday, May 16, 1885
   [Exchange]
    Im Maricopa county, Arizona, there is considerable barbed fence, and the vast flocks of wild ducks which frequent the valley often fly low, and, stricking the barbed fences, become impaled thereon. It is said that tons of ducks are gathered daily by boys from the fences and sent to market.
Published in the Waukegan Gazette, Waukegan, Illinois on Friday, August 21, 1885
[London News.]
    The origin of the rat, like the birth of Jeames Yellowplush, is wrapped up in mystery. The ancients, according to a learned writer by M. Eugene Rolland in his “Faune Sauvage,” knew not the rat. Their condition was more gracious. But it is hard to be certain about the fauna of the ancients. When they use a word meaning mouse or perhaps even the rat in their minds. Herodotus tells, on Egyptian authority, the mice who gnawed their bowstrings as the Creek Indians tell of rats in their cosmogonic legend. This legend was fairly written in red, on a skin, and was kept during the last century in the Georgia office. Where is it now?
    The Chinese have precisely the same story, only they, like the Creek Indians, assign the victory to rats, not to the mice of the old Halicarnassian. Perhaps Herodotus meant rats, he knew nothing of cats till he went to Egypt, and about rats he may have been equally in the dark. Rats are not uncommon in Shakespeare, but Buckland says, Genner [1587] first mentions the black rat. This, though older than the brown rat, is not apparently aboriginal. The Welsh name for rat means “French mouse,” and perhaps the rat came over with the conqueror. An accomplished author on micromamologic thinks the rat was brought to Europe [involuntarily, no doubt] by the crusaders. The brown or so-called “Norway rats,” devour the black ones, and are later comers.
    If a well known character was really “a rat in Pytagoras’ time,” the argument against rats being known to the ancients falls to the ground, and Shaespeare certainly thought that rats were common in the heroic age of Denmark. Rats in the zoological gardens are a good deal to be pitied. We all know the elephant of the fable. She one day trod unwittingly on a parttridge, and killed it. Soon afterward she found the nestlings of the partidge. “Poor little things!” said the elephant; “I too, have a mother;” and, with the kindest intentions, she sat down on the nest. In the same way the rhinoceros, never dreaming of harm, lies down on rats in his house, and compresses them quite flat. Such is their doom-an example, as far as it goes, of the ruthless laws of nature, and the survival of the fittest. The instint of rats teaches them to shun a falling hiuse, but not, alas! to avoid a sleepy rhinoceros.
BN
Published in the Waukegan Gazette, Waukegan, Illinois on Saturday, August 29, 1885
[Baptis Weekly]
    A sheperd once, to prove the quickness of his dog, who was lying before the fire in the house where we talking, said to me in the middle of a sentence concerning something else, “I am thinking, sir, the cow is in the potatoes.” Through he purposely laid no stress on these words and said them in a quiet, unconcerned tone of voice, the dog, who appeared to be asleep, immediately jumped up and leaping through an open window, scrambled up the turf roof of the house, from which he could see the potato field. He then [not seeing the cow there] ran and looked into the farm yard, where she was, and, finding that all was right, came back to the house. After a short time the shepherd said the same words again and the dog repeated the outlook, but on the false alarm being a third time given the dog got up and , wagging his tail, looked his master in the face with so comical an expression of interrogation that he could not help laughing at him.On which, with a slight growl, he laid himself down in his warm corner with an offended air, as if determined not to be made a fool of again.
Published in the Waukegan Gazette, Waukegan, Illinois on Saturday, October 3, 1885
[Gentleman’s Magazine.]
    The way the Arabs catch sharks is very curious and interesting, and is somewhat similar to playing a heavy salmon, only no rod is used. A hook of soft iron wire is made very sharp and baited with a lump of garbage of some kind, usually a piece of shark too rancid even for a slave, and the line, which is small and very slackly spun, is wound round for some small little distance from the hook with thin sheet lead, both to protect it from the teeth of the fish and to act as a sinker, and the other end is made fast to a huge calabash which acts as a float. When a shark takes the bait he tows the calabush about, but can not sink it for any length of time, and the fishermen then set off after him in their canoe, and when they get hold of the line they play their captive until he is actually drowned.
    The shark that was now on the hook was proving a tartar, and before the two boats came near the canoe which was playing him was capsized, and the half dozen men who formed her crew thrown into the water. “Give way, my lads,” said the lieutenant, and both boats dashed away, the crews straining every nerve to save the swimmers from their dangerous position, the water literally swarming with sharks, and in a few minutes the men were picked up and their canoe righted. The Englishmen, like all their nation, fond of sport, next went after the float, which could be seen being towed hither and thither as the shark tried to free itself from the incumbrance, but the Arabs, when they saw their intention, shouted and gesticulated to prevent them from doing so, and a second canoe put off from the dhow to assist in playing the shark.
    With some little trouble the line was again secured, and after about two hours hard work, during which Johnny Shark several times nearly mastered his captors, he was at length killed and dragged upon the rocks, where the English, as he was such a monster, had the curiosity to measure him, when he proved to be the enormous length of thirty-three feet ten inches. This was the largest shark they had ever seen, though both boats had had oars dashed at by the ravenous brutes, and on one occasion the same whaler, when boarding a dhow at night from the ship, had her rudder carried away by one.
Published in the Waukegan Gazette, Waukegan, Illinois on Saturday, August 1, 1885
An Ohio Farmer Attacked by Them and Overpowered.
    Dayton, Ohio, July 29.-Mr. Isaiah Burncrat, a farmer living near Chambersburg, a small country village a few miles from here, had a most wonderful experience Tuesday, narrowly escaping being killed by ants. He was picking blackberries in a wild patch in a dense wood, when suddenly he disturbed millions upon millions of large black ants. They were under a thin covering of earth which he stepped on, and almost instantly they crawled up his pant-legs, and when he tried to knock them off they showed fight. Before he could get out of the heavy growth of brush he was covered from head to foot with the pestiferous insects. They bit him, and crawled into his nose, ears, and mouth. He yelled for help, but soon became blinded with the myraids of ants on his head and face, and before he reached the edge of the wood fell hapless to the ground, utterly at the mercy of the insects, and was only saved from death by the timely arrival of a brother. The insects were common black ants of very large size. Burncrat was bitten by them all over the body, but, while very sore, it is thought, providing the bites are not poisonous, will recover. The case is without precedent in this section of the country, and it is believed had not aid arrived when it did the ants would have not only killed but eaten their victim.