The sirens are quiet and hardy animals, and small ones could be easily kept for pets in a glass aquarium box, if provided with a little mud and sand under the water, and with some stones upon which the creatures could crawl when they wished to be above water. Like all the carnivorous amphibians the sirens will eat bread and milk and raw veal, instead of their usual food. While chiefly confined to marshy places or still waters of the South, occasional specimens of the siren families have been found as far north as Illinois,[68] and no doubt could live in any locality in the United States, if protected from their enemies. For their own part they are helpless, and fall a prey to whatever attacks them. Their teeth are far down in the throat so they cannot bite; their tails are weak so they cannot strike; they have even no nails on their toes wherewith to scratch. Instead of nails they have a little horny cap on each of the toes, rendering it broader, and so less likely to stick fast in the mud when they crawl out upon a bank. FOOTNOTES: [68] The menobranchus abounds in all the “five Great Lakes,” especially in Lake Michigan.--O. S. WESTCOTT. LESSON XXXV. A STRANGER FROM MEXICO. “And he banned the water goblin’s spite For he saw around in the sweet moonshine, Their little wee faces above the brine, Giggling and laughing with all their might, At the piteous leap of the fairy wight.” --DRAKE. One day when I was studying in the Brighton Aquarium, England, I had been examining fish-scales through a powerful microscope, and turned to lay my paper of notes on a glass case near at hand. As I did so I remarked “that there were three fish in the case swimming around some kind of a leafless plant, on which hung a few round, small pods.” [Illustration: PEARL CRADLES.] When I returned to the microscope I found my mind obstinately fixed on the contents of the glass case. “That was surely not a stiff sea-plant, but the dead branch of a land-plant.” “I wonder what fish those were?” “Those were very odd-looking little pods!” So I thought, until I concluded to take a second look at the objects so obtrusively present to my mind. Lo! the branch had not merely a few little pods, but some pods were on every one of the numerous tine divisions of the branch, except one long one near the bottom. These pods were pearly, flat, semi-transparent, of the size of shirt buttons, and in the centre of each was a black dot answering to the button’s eye. As I observed them, the three “fish” kept swimming round and round the branch, in and out, and I noticed that this piece of dry plant was securely fastened to the bottom of the tank. But what! The lately bare lower twig had now four pellucid pods upon it! Surely the fish were placing these upon the twigs! The pods were then egg-cases.