CURIOUS FACTS ABOUT ANIMALS.
The greyhound runs by sight only. This is a fact. The carrier pigeon flies his hundred of miles homeward by eyesight, noting from point to point objects that he has marked. This is only conjecture, says the Philadelphia Times. The dragon fly, with twelve thousand lenses in his eye, darts from angle to angle with the rapidity of a flashing sword, and as rapidly darts back, not turning in the air, but with a clash reversing the action of his four wings, and instantaneously calculating the distance of the objects, or he would dash himself to pieces. But in what conformation of the eye does this power consist? No one can answer. Ten thousand mosquitoes dance up and down in the sun, with the minutest intervals between them, yet no one knocks another headlong on the grass, or breaks a leg or a wing, long and delicate as they are. Suddenly a peculiar, high-shouldered, vicious creature, with long and pendant nose, darts out of the rising and falling crowd, and, settling on your cheek, inserts a poisonous sting. What possessed the little wretch to do this? Did he smell your blood while he was dancing? No one knows. A carriage comes suddenly upon some geese in a narrow road, and drives straight through the flock. A goose was never yet fairly run over, nor a duck. They are under the very wheels and hoofs, and yet they contrive to flap and waddle safely off. Habitually stupid, heavy, and indolent, they are, nevertheless, equal to any emergency. Why does the lonely woodpecker, when he descends from his tree and goes to drink, stop several times on his way and listen and look around before he takes his draft? No one knows.—Selected.