Curiosities of natural history / by Francis T. Buckland.

Francis Trevelyan Buckland

Date:: 1903

Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Curiosities of natural history / by Francis T. Buckland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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cannibal survivors, eating and pulling away, each for himself. After this, I left them much to themselves, and their numbers diminished considerably; the cook’s opinion being, as usual, that that omnivorous creature, ‘ the cat ,’ had a hand in it; bringing forward as an argu- ment, which is not strictly zoological as applied to tad- poles, that the ‘ cat is fond of fish.’ By the discovery of skeletons, murders are often brought to light; so it was in the case of Tadpole v. Cat; the skeletons of the murdered froglings I found in abundance at the bottom of their tub: and beautiful skeletons they were, the form of the little creatures being graphically shown in a framework of delicate gristle, the various parts still united together, but separating on the slightest touch. I have sometimes seen capital skeletons of small animals in ponds, the flesh having been eaten away by tadpoles. In the United Service Museum are some very elegant skeletons of birds made somewhat in the same way; they were brought home from the Arctic regions, and were made by the sea-lice: the birds were let down into the sea to an immense depth, and left there twenty-four hours ; they are beautifully clean and white. Common shrimps are capital skeleton-makers: these little creatures are wonderful scavengers, and eat up the vegetable and animal refuse of the ocean. Behind the ancient fort at Tilbury, opposite Gravesend, is a considerable extent of flat ground, intersected by deep ditches. In these ditches I found swarms of shrimps feeding on the weed along the banks: though I could see them plain enough, I found it very difficult to catch them ; for the moment my hand-net touched the surface of the water they vanished—shooting away like little meteors; and even when I did get them in the net they