Lord Monboddo relates the following anecdote of a serpent: "I am well informed of a tame serpent in the East Indies, which belonged to the late Dr. Vigot, once kept by him in the suburbs of Madras. This serpent was taken by the French when they invested Madras, and was carried to Pondicherry in a close carriage. But from thence he found his way back to his old quarters, though Madras was above one hundred miles distant from Pondicherry." _Queer Legend about Fish._ Most of the flat-fish, such as the flounder, plaice, sole, &c., are white or colorless on one side and dark colored on the other. Naturalists account for this by saying that these fish live at the bottom of the sea, dark side uppermost, to prevent their being easily seen by the ocean monsters that devour them. The Egyptians give another explanation. They tell that Moses was once cooking a flat-fish, and when it had been broiled on one side, the fire or the oil gave out, and Moses angrily threw the fish into the sea, where, though half broiled, it became as lively as ever, and its descendants have retained its parti-colored appearance to the present day, being white on one side and brown or black on the other. _An Old Pike._ In the year 1497 a pike was captured in the vicinity of Mannheim, Germany, with the following announcement, in Greek, appended to his muzzle:— "I am the first fish that was put into this pond by the hands of the Emperor Frederic the Second, on this third day of October, 1262." The age of the pike, therefore, if the notice spoke the truth (and the enormous dimensions of his body left little doubt on that point), was more than two hundred and thirty-five years. Already he had been the survivor of many important changes in the political and social world around him, and would have survived perhaps as many more, had it not been for his capture. His carcass, which weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, and measured nineteen feet, was sent to the museum at Mannheim, where it now hangs, a light, desiccated skeleton, which a child might move. _Colossal Shells._ One of these in particular has acquired a certain celebrity on account of its size and the peculiar use to which it has been put. It is the gigantic Tridacna, commonly known as the "font," because it is sometimes employed in churches to contain the sacred water. The great Tridacnæ, which are only detached from the rocks by cutting their cable with an axe, sometimes weigh more than five hundred pounds. The natives of the Molucca Islands eat them like we do oysters, to which they are analogous, and the flesh of one is a sufficient meal for twenty people. Their thick valves, which are sometimes five feet long, serve as troughs for the inhabitants, which nature offers ready cut and polished, and which they often use for feeding pigs, or convert into bath-tubs for their children. Buffon speaks of a shell, the diameter of which was equal to that of a carriage-wheel, and which was used for a mill-stone.