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 out of the water in flight, the old lady’s credulity began to fancy itself imposed upon; for she indignantly repressed what she considered the lad’s tendency to exaggeration, saying, “Sugar mountains may be, and rivers of rum may be, but fish that flee ne’er can be!” Many popular beliefs concerning animals partake of the character of the old lady’s opinions regarding the real and fabulous; and the circumstance tells powerfully in favor of the opinion that a knowledge of our surroundings in the world, and an intelligent conception of animal and plant life, should form part of the school-training of every boy and girl, as the most effective antidote to superstitions and myths of every kind.

[Illustration:  FLYING FISH.]

The tracing of myths and fables is a very interesting task, and it may, therefore, form a curious study, if we endeavor to investigate very briefly a few of the popular and erroneous beliefs regarding lower animals.  The belief regarding the origin of the hair-worms is both widely spread and ancient.  Shakespeare tells us that

                                  “Much, is breeding
  Which, like the courser’s hair, hath, yet but life,
  And not a serpent’s poison.”

The hair-worms certainly present the appearance of long, delicate black hairs, which move about with great activity amidst the mud of pools and ditches.  These worms, in the early stages of their existence, inhabit the bodies of insects, and may be found coiled up within the grasshopper, which thus gives shelter to a guest exceeding many times the length of the body of its host.  Sooner or later the hair-worm, or Gordius aquaticus as the naturalist terms