On one occasion the author found a hen disposed to set in a horse-trough. She had but eight eggs under her, and he added five more. The next morning he noticed that she had discarded five of the eggs; they were replaced, and were again hustled to the other end of the trough. He next marked the eggs, in order to discover whether she objected to the five eggs with which he had supplied her. At his next visit he found that she had once more rejected five eggs, two of which were marked and three not marked. She would accept but eight eggs, and was left to incubate in peace. _How Rats and Mice use their Tails._ To test the correctness of the popular belief that rats and mice use their tails for feeding purposes, when the food to be eaten is contained in vessels too narrow to admit the entire body of the animal, a writer in "Nature" made the following experiments: Into a couple of preserve bottles with narrow necks he put as much semi-liquid fruit jelly as filled them within three inches of the top. The bottles were then covered with bladder and set in a place frequented by rats. Next morning the covering of each bottle had a small hole gnawed in it, and the level of the jelly was lowered to an extent about equal to the length of a rat's tail, if inserted in the hole. The next experiment was still more decisive. The bottles were refilled to the extent of half an inch above the level left by the rats, a disk of moist paper laid upon the surface, and the bottles covered as before. The bottles were now laid aside in a place unfrequented by rats, until a good crop of mould had grown upon one of the moistened disks of paper. This bottle was then transferred to the place infested by the rats. Next morning the bladder had again been eaten through at one edge, and upon the mould were numerous and distinct tracings of the rats' tails, evidently caused by the animals sweeping their tails about in the endeavor to find a hole in the paper. _Kicked by a Camel._ The camel's kick is a study. As it stands demurely chewing the cud, and gazing abstractedly at some totally different far-away object, up goes a hind leg, drawn close in to the body, with the foot pointing out; a short pause, and out it flies with an action like the piston and connecting-rod of a steam-engine, showing a judgment of distance and direction that would lead you to suppose the leg gifted with perceptions of its own, independent of the animal's proper senses. I have seen a heavy man fired several yards into a dense crowd by the kick of a camel, and picked up insensible.—_Keane._ _Crocodiles of the Nile._