ical
zones.

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ZOOeLOGICAL MYTHS

(FROM FACTS AND FICTIONS OF ZOOeLOGY.)

BY ANDREW WILSON.

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When the country swain, loitering along some lane, comes to a
standstill to contemplate, with awe and wonder, the spectacle of a
mass of the familiar "hair-eels" or "hair-worms" wriggling about in a
pool, he plods on his way firmly convinced that, as he has been taught
to believe, he has just witnessed the results of the transformation of
some horse's hairs into living creatures. So familiar is this belief
to people of professedly higher culture than the countryman, that the
transformation just alluded to has to all, save a few thinking persons
and zooelogists, become a matter of the most commonplace kind. When
some quarrymen, engaged in splitting up the rocks, have succeeded in
dislodging some huge mass of stone, there may sometimes be seen to hop
from among the debris a lively toad or frog, which comes to be
regarded by the excavators with feelings akin to those of
superstitious wonder and amazement. The animal may or may not be
captured; but the fact is duly chronicled in the local newspapers, and
people wonder for a season over the phenomenon of a veritable Rip Van
Winkle of a frog, which to all appearance, has lived for "thousands of
years in the solid rock." Nor do the hair-worm and the frog stand
alone in respect of their marvellous origin. Popular zooelogy is full
of such marvels. We find unicorns, mermaids, and mermen; geese
developed from the shell-fish known as "barnacles"; we are told that
crocodiles may weep, and that sirens can sing--in short, there is
nothing so wonderful to be told of animals that people will not
believe the tale. Whilst, curiously enough, when they are told of
veritable facts of animal life, heads begin to shake and doubts to be
expressed, until the zooelogist despairs of educating people into
distinguishing fact from fiction, and truth from theories and
unsupported beliefs. The story told of the old lady, whose youthful
acquaintance of seafaring habits entertained her with tales of the
wonders he had seen, finds, after all, a close application in the
world at large. The dame listened with delight, appreciation, and
belief, to accounts of mountains of sugar and rivers of rum, and to
tales of lands where gold and silver and precious stones were more
than plentiful. But when the narrator descended to tell of fishes that
were able to raise themselves