takes up, and it is an intended victim at which he takes aim and which he strikes; his movements are admirably co-ordinated to obtain a precise effect. Another fish, the Chelinous of Java, also acts in this manner. He generally lives in estuaries. It is, therefore, a brackish water which he takes up and projects by closing his gills and contracting his mouth; he can thus strike a fly at a distance of several feet. Usually he aims sufficiently well to strike it at the first blow, but sometimes he fails. Then he begins again until he has succeeded, which shows that his movements are not those of a machine. He knows what he is doing, what effect ought to be produced, and whether this desired result has happened, and he perseveres until the insect has fallen. These facts are unquestioned; the Chinese preserve these curious fish in jars, and amuse themselves by making them carry on this little exercise. Many observers have witnessed and described it. THE DEATH-FEIGNING INSTINCT --W. H. HUDSON Most people are familiar with the phenomenon of “death-feigning,” commonly seen in coleopterous insects and in many spiders. This highly curious instinct is also possessed by some vertebrates. In insects, it is probably due to temporary paralysis occasioned by sudden concussion, for when beetles alight abruptly, though voluntarily, they assume that appearance of death which lasts for a few moments. Some species, indeed, are so highly sensitive that the slightest touch, or even a sudden menace, will instantly throw them into this motionless, death-simulating condition. Curiously enough, the same causes which produce this trance in slow-moving species, like those of Scarabæus, for example, have a precisely contrary effect on species endowed with great activity. Rapacious beetles, when disturbed, scuttle quickly out of sight, and some water-beetles spin about the surface, in circles or zigzag lines, so rapidly as to confuse the eye. The common long-legged spiders (Pholcus) when approached draw their feet together in the middle of the web, and spin the body round with such velocity as to resemble a whirligig. Certain mammals and birds also possess the death-simulating instinct, though it is hardly possible to believe that the action springs from the same immediate cause in vertebrates and in insects. In the latter, it appears to be a purely physical instinct, the direct result of an extraneous cause, and resembling the motions of a plant. In mammals and birds, it is evident that violent emotion, and not the rough handling experienced, is the final cause of the swoon. Passing over venomous snakes, skunks, and a few other species in which the presence of danger excites only anger, fear has a powerful, and in some cases a disabling, effect on animals; and it is this paralyzing effect of fear on which the death-feigning instinct, found only in a few widely separated species, has probably been built up by the slow cumulative process of natural selection.