The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1857-02-04
Curious Facts of Natural History.

| curious Fact5 OF N NaturGl History.
A single female house-Ay produces in
a season 20 00s0,320.
Some female spiders produce nearly
1000 eggs,
DR. Bright publi,hed case Of an egg
producing an insect 80 years after il
must have been laid.
Abou. thirty fresh.wator springs are
discovered under the sea, on the south Of
the Persian Gulf.
A wasp's nests usually contains Is, 900
or 10000 coils.
The Atlantic Ocean is estimated no
three miles, and the Pacific as four miles
deep.
There are siz or seven generations of
gDats in a summer, and each lays $50
cggs,
There arc about 0 600 oclls in souare
foot Of honey.comb. 5000 bees weigh
pound
A swarm Of bees contains from 1000
to 10000 in natural atate, and from
10000 to 10000 in hive.
The bones of birds are hollow, and
filed with air instead Of marrow.
A COW eats 100 pounds Of greon food
every "a hours, and yields Eve quarts,
or ten pounds of milk.
Tish ara common 10 tho seas of Sur.
imam with four eycs--t-7o Of them on
horns which grow on the top Of their
heads
Two thousand nine hundr cd silk.worms
produce one pound Of silk hut it would
require 27,000 spiders, all females, to
produce ono pound OF web.
Captain Beaufort saw, near Smyrna,
in lS4l, cloud OF locu5ts l6 miles long
and 500 yards deep, containing, % he
calculated, 100 billions.
Lcwephoeck reckoned 1000 divi.
sions in tho corner (outor coat Of tho eye)
OF a butterfly, each one of which he
thought possessed crystalline lens
Spiders, etc, are similarly provided for.
The spring of a watch weighs 0l5 of
a grain pound of iron makes 10000.
The pound Of stosl costs 3D. a single
spring, 2d so that &C, 1000 produce safe
With Wow to collect their webs for
silk, a. 900 spiders were once obtained.
but they soon killed each othor Manu-.
facturers and war mover thrive togther.
Spiders have four paps for spinning
their threads, each pap having 1000
holes, and the fine web itself the union
of4 600 threads. No spider spins more
than four webs, and when the four is
destroyed they seize on the webs of 9th
ers.
Every pound Of cochineal contains
10000 insects boiled to death, and from
600,0 TO 700,010 pounds arc annually
brought to Europe for scarlet and Grim
son dyes
A qucen-bce will lay 200 eggs daily
for so or GO days, and the eggs are
hatched in three days A single queon-
bee has been stated to produce LOG, 900
bsos in season.
The quantity Of water discharged into
the sea by all the rivers in the world is
estimated at sc cubic miles in q day
hence it would take above $1,000 years
to create circuit of the whols sea.
through clouds aud rivers.
River water contains about 90 grains
of solid matter to every cubic foot
Hence, such a river a, the Rne carrie,
to the sea every day l45,os0 cubic feet
of sand or stone.
Mole'hills are curiously formed by mn
outer arch iinpervious to rain, and an in.
ternel platform With drains and covered
ways on which the pair and young reside
The molos live on worms aud roots, aud
bury themselves in any soil 10 few
minutes.
Few insects live more than year in
their perfect state. Thoir first state is
the egg, then tho caterpillar, then the
ehrysaiis or pupa and finally the pro-
creative form. And in these changes |
there Gro infinite degrees and varieties
of transition, all OF which constitute the
pleasing and very instructive study of |
Entomology.