[Illustration]
JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT.
"Thirty days has September, April, June and November; all the rest have
forty-three, except February, which is leap-year every four months." I
may not repeat this correctly, but I heard a little boy saying
something of the kind. Perhaps you all know the jingle better than I
do, so I'll say no more about it.
NATURE'S PADDLE-BOATS.
A little bird has told me such a strange thing! It's about a kind of
jelly-fish which he called a "Globe-Beroe," I think; but you can find
out for yourselves, if I caught the name aright or not.
This jelly-fish looks like a tiny ball of the clearest ice. All around
it, much after the fashion of the lines of longitude on a geographical
globe, are eight bands a little less transparent than the rest of the
body. On each of these are thirty or forty small paddles, in shape like
the floats upon the paddle-wheels of a steamboat; and it is by means of
these that the little creature pushes itself along in the water. The
paddles are alive, and move either swiftly or slowly, one at a time or
all together.
Not only can this natural paddle-boat send itself along, but it can
also cast anchor.
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