The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, June 3, 1906, Page 5

few lone} Pacifi nder of most ancie On a er Ocean th pretensions and « eman of higt is a gent exclusive fam TTENODON=" FPUNCTATU, OFDER OF “TIHE He were plentiful, " passed’ their long As his ancest was good enoug e clings ta their views. of govern t ciings to. oifice As always been content “with such ke hias ‘never e cry of “forwasd, has stood stock still throush the e world has rushed. psst and he has been droppeéd hehind by ountry after country wuntil his place of abode is restricted te the colony of -Mew and one time within the -past h the whole of the colony was If cen- to i he has been_ banished coast witich #re ‘his strong When 1 it womeh ‘there were to be women first astonished for how went ‘into ‘business find who considered myself me to but smar milliner the nothing of ‘business that do in inderhandedness. is ‘“apable B meanness or of surprising me any more,” “said ‘a woman milliner “look at this, for example,” and ‘she exhibited = check for $45, filled -out in feminine hand, folding thé name under “This.check presents as deliberately mean a tion as could be imagined, and yet it is a dodge that has been worked upon me five times by -differept women since I started in business. x “The weman so that it couid pot betead, trans- four or whosé . meme is* on heck is the ‘wife of 4 prosperous mian, she in beautiful house. It i well knewn to that her husband lets her have 2!l the money that any woman, even one with extravagant and lives a tradespeople tastes, could possibly need. “And she is not above turning so contemptible a trick as -this. She came here Tor the first time yesterday. I recog- vet nized her at ence, was pleased to think thit 1 was going tb-have ‘her for a cus- tomer, and would have given her any amount of credit she asked for. But she gidn’t ask me for any credit. She picked out two hats that she liked, each of them costing $45 **‘Send them to my house this evening,’ i listening this | towers against enemies, He is dying slowly but surely. The world has ne time for him I » long in the C: th and soon whe de not later Te with or names, hand a this wretched réptile, who has committ the sin of inaction, and must eart the wages of sin, which is death My poitrait is pre- sented ere, ed, bred, and reared land i Ste- phens. in ¢ Strait, which séparates th land of New Island and from tb There he ‘spent 1 he began ‘to be.a big Spheno d grasshoppers, flies, p W fimilar q Lenth: smail me asm and - skil. I'ber ‘of the T w most .6f his tinie baskin; sunish! as any atara eomm nat following the \a spent in the glirious e, sprawli shady pools, drinking huge dra sld water, or to the fierce winds that howl through the Straits and hurl themselvas upon his little island home. He came” 10 me from over the seas in a wooden box and I have made him la run ana a.hut to live k netted hisn in. e run. is over vith wire netting to protect the and . which Day and night, wandering aimlessly around, or taking a bath in his trough, agajnst dogs are his natural enemies. when not asleep,- or which is always. kept filled with water, he fies on: the ground with his head slightly elevated and his eyes directed seemed. , "I sent the two hats to her, together with a receipted bill for the full amount, |$%. She gave my ! check for $45. She handed the man this check in a seiléd envelope, took the hats delivery man this and.the receipted bill for $50, and there | you.are. I had had this thing, as I say, | worked upon me before, but 1 ‘could not { think it possible that this woman would do it. I thought | some mistake. |'this forenoon. she must have made So I went up to see her 1 explained the situation to her, but she simply would not listen to me —in fact, boldly told me that 1 was try- ing to cheat her, and all but showed me [the door. That ends the transaction. am $45 out. | “There is no way to guard against such 'meanness as that. | first worked upon ago, I was so angry that I instructed my | delivery not accept any more money checks placed in sealed en- | velopes, but to open the envelope and | examine the contents before giving up the receipted bill. . He did this in a couple of |cases where regular womep customers gave him checks in sealed envelopes, and found everything all right. ' The women | became very angry over what they called | his impertinence and withdrew their pa- | tronage from me, so I had to instruct him not to open the envelopes any more, “This woman whose check I have in my When the dodge was me, man to -or she ‘said to me, ‘and I will return you a|hand gets two hats for the price of one, check.’ ““Well, thet looked even better—she was |my place any more. She will no doubt | g aving to be w fine new cash customer, it|work the same game upon other milliners {znd of course she will not come back to 3 about two years | 74 He eats so little that 1 am sometimes 'afraid that he will die of starvation. It is his custom to proclaim a t. at least He observes it with a stric| once a year could not ness that ,, lieve se been surpassed fasting of old. I be- 1t if the subject’s condition and prophets t other ion there is no record of fasting o' be vompared with my Tuatara’s. sr ‘weeks together he absolutely ab- stains from food of any kind, but he is never fatter, brighter, healthier and hap- pier than when these fasts are being observed. I have mever heard him utter more That two or three oc than ona word word he has used on only sions, when he thought he was going to be hurt “Ught* It like an exclamation of disgust, but is an expression of alarm. It séems to come from the very pit of stomach and he utters it he to that he is to mix a deep groan with a hollow Otherwise he is as silent as the sounds when rise a suggestion try croak. grave. The firgt Tuatara brought the notice of the publicewas found on Soames under Island, in Wellington harbor, New Zea- land, in 1842. Previous to that, however, stories had been told by missionaries and other of a remarkable reptile. The Maoris knew. of the Tuatara and fairly close acquaintanceship with they looked upon it as a beast and a thing to be voided. They gave it its popu travelers had a it, although uncanny Dr. Dieffenbach, a naturalist, sent out by the New Zealand Company in the early ds istence of 4 large lizard. He looked for {it in places where it had been seen and circumstances are taken into con- | It is| _of colonizatien, was told of the ex- | THE TUATALA |offered rewards for specimens. A few | days before his departure from the colony, in 1843, he was ‘fortunate enough to ob- tain a itara that had been caught on | la small island off the coast of the north island. Me took the specimen with him |and it was sent to the Britism Museum. Dr. Gray, who classed .it as a distinct genus of the family Agamidae, called it Hatteria punctata. Later on it was dis- covered that the skull of a Tuatara had { been received at the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons and that the generic name of Sphenodon had been applied to it. Sphenodon, therefore, it had to and Sphenodon (wedge-shaped tooth) has remained. Dr. Gunther found that ‘it differs in important structural charadteristics from be it | worth eating: The same thing happened on another occasion, when about twenty little lizards | were piit in the same box as two Tuataras. A . bur.ows in the earth. The burrows are from two o four feet in depth, with an | entrance about three inches In diameter, | and’ there is sometimes a small chamber at the end. " Most of the burrows are ex- | cavated by the Tuataras. but in some cases they evidently take possession of ready-made dwellings. Iri ‘the early stages of the investigations into Tuataras’ habits it was noted that they were often found in company with | petrels, a bird and a reptile being in the | | same burrow, and. to all appearances, liv- ing’in peace and friendliness. The asso- |clation of the birds and the reptiles is | probably only accidental. . It has given rise to an efroneous impression that Tua- | | taras are seldom found except in company | | with some species of petrels. Tuataras will not hesitate to prey. upon I'birds when they are hard pushed for food. | They catch birds by the head and chew at the body until they devour all the | flesh. I "The' reptiles’ toes are webbed at the | base, and they are splendid swimmers, | | swimming _freely - sometimes . with only | their nostrils above the water, and some- Away - from the trammels of civilization female Tuataras lay their eggs in holes in | the earth or sand. but in captivity they lay them ot the bare earth, or even in the water in their troughs.. Sometimes eight |or -ten eggs-are laid at a time. On some | occasions all the eggs have been laid ‘in oné night; on other accasions they have Peen laid at_intervals of a few days. There are two ways of making the nests. Most of the females favor the plan of placing their egss in a nest quite apart from the burrows in which they live. A small cavity is made, generally under the surface sofl, the entrance being. about two inches In diameter. The chamber lis run’into. the ground for five or six |inclies on - lével surface, and then its | dimensions are slightly increased in order 1o receive the eggs, which are packed to- gether in layers two or three deep. It is | thought that,in most cases the eggs must | be laid qutside the chamber and carried |inside by the female, which takes them in {its niouth-or its claws and places them in | the - desired position. ‘The eggs are gen- | erally covered with soil rémoved from the times completely submerged. I TN A FAVOFITE - AT TTTULZE—. ! Some of these were -also collected and placed in the box with the s. At the end of the mainland it was found. that the little |lizards had met with the fate that befell | the foolish young lady of Riga, who went |for a ride on a tiger. There was abso- {lutely nothing left of them except the | horny “tips of their- tails, which are not by scientists. | Tuatar he voyage to every other known saurian, and that, as| far as its structure is concerned, it is \the most bird-like of all reptiles. Claim- he placed it in a distinct order of reptiles and he named that order Rhynchocephalia (snout-headed). { Later on the Tuatara became better | known to the world. In December, 1851, some officers of the Fifty-eighth Imperial Regiment, which | was then stationed in New Zealand, vis- ited Karewa Island, in the Bay of Plenty, and in one hour ‘collected no fewer than torty tuataras of all sizes, up to -nearly two feet long. My Tuatara, I may state here, is exactly 17 inches from the tip of his nose to the | tip of his tail. His head is 31-4 inches, s body is 6 1-4 inches and his tail 71-2 | inches. At that time Karewa Island was swarm- %lng with .a small lizard called ‘“Moko- | moko™ by the Maoris and Lygosoma moco | |ing that it ranks higher than a family | It was noted that ‘the little fellows be- came fewer in number day, until They | paralyzed with fear, and whenaver the Tuataras moved the poor little creatures crouched down and to hide them- selves under some dry the hox. {A ‘Tuatara was caught in the very act of eating one of them, beginring at the head and rejecting about an inch_ of the tail. 3 Tuataras have been known to fight ‘among themselves with great ferocity, tearing at each other's skin until blood flowed freely. They must be handled with care, as, when in a bad temper, they give a nasty bite. A gentleman in Auckland was bitten by a female Tuatara he was lifting up to show a friend. the reptile by the body, and, with a quick | movement of her head, she nipped a piece off his thumb. In their native state Tuataras live in . every lonly six remained. were almost tried leaves in | chamber in the work of excavation, and | the soil is pressed down upbn the treas- ures. The entrance to_the whole is then stuffed with grass or leaves. and is made to resemble the surroundings as closely as possible. The other plan is to make the nest at the end of the burrow in which the Tua- | tara lives, the tunnel being extended into |the earth for a foot or so. A “small | chamher is scooped- out at right angles to the main tunnel.” In that chamber the eggs are placed and -covered. with soil. When this plan. is adopted the eggs are probably ‘laid in the main tunnel and are afterward taken to the nést chamber. The sheil of the egg is- flexible, tough, elastic and rather rough’ externally. In | its outer portion it contains a’ consider- [ able quantity of calcareous matter. The inner surface is smooth and white and has a faint milky or pearly color. Dr. Dendy, while professor of biology at Canterbury College, Christchureh,. car- ried out a number of very interesting ex- periments with eggs sent to him by the lighthouse keeper on Stephen's Island. Almost a whole year is taken up with the hatching of the egss, which are gemerally laid in Noveniber. Development. is much 4 more ‘rapid in the early stages than in the later ones. By March a good advance has been made, but the .development of the embryo is then suspended for the win- ter months and js resumed again in the | spring. It is stated that this hybernation of the embryo inside the egs has. been .ob- served in.only one other vertebrate ami- | mal, the common European tortdise. Dr. Dendy reports that when the eggs are newly-laid.they are rather more.than. an inch long and are broadiy .oval in | shape. They are_almost “entirely _filled | with yellow volk and contain very lttle albimen ‘or ‘“white.” As the ‘time for hatching approaches the eggs swell con- | siderably; - doubtless by _absorption: of | moisture -through the leathery egg sheil. A very high state of tension is-reached, and his experiments show that at that stage a small incision ‘through the egg | shell is sufficient’ to cause 1t to. split open with almost explosive: violence. He found that in the later stages of development a patch of horny epidermiis on the snout of the young animai forms:a sharp cutting instrument, which lie be- | lieves is used for the purpose of making the necessary incision in the egg shell. He states that.the earlier stages of de- | drawings of the tortolse embrya resem- bling in a remarkable degree drawings of the embryo of the Tuatara. In other re- spects also the Tuatara' embryo agrees with the tortoise embryo. In.general and different sorts of business houses that ‘deul in women’s wear, and 1 cannot be- |lieve, from the way she treated me this {morning, that she will suffer the least compunction of conscience over her catty | meanness. “Her dodge, of course, is merely another | version of the old money in the envelope dodge that professional swindlers used to employ before it became too stale. 1 would not, of course, permit my delivery man to accept payment in that way from a strange woman, one who received the goods sent to her at a hotel, for instance, That old scheme was worked time and | knows. | again years ago, as everybody But this woman presumed upon her |credit, and upon my knowing that she was what we call ‘good,’ to cheat me out of just half the amount of my bill. “I couldn’t begin to name half of the downright dishonest things that some women will do in their efforts to get the best of milliners. Not long ago a woman who had been a customer of mine for some tine came to me in a state of great apparent distress. 1 had a bill of $120° against her. k ‘My husband is very angry over that bill,” she told me. ‘He declares that I am borowing money and having my trades- people put the borrowed money on their bills for goods, and he is perfectly unrea- sonable. Now, here is what I wish you'd do for me. Cut your bill down to $75 and I will pay you $50 now and the rest later, and you give me the bill receipted in full so that I can show it to him and tell him how good you had been to me in chopping down the bill. Then I can get some more hats.” “1 told her that I couldn’t cut the bill lown at all—that it was a just bill, and s0 on, ROVE EASY M ARK FOR THEIR DESIGNING PATRONS | “‘Well, she said then, ‘I will pay vou|three hats an even $450—he isn’t really | denial, or, worse, come storming down the $50 now and then won't you let me him? And I'll send you the remainder of the amount in a couple of weeks.’ “I didn't like the sound of this, either, naturally enough, since I've been fooled so often by these dodges. ““*No,’ said I; ‘T will do this: pay me the $50 now and I shall let you have the bill receipted in full if you will maining $70." “She agreed, and I took her $50 and handed her the bill for $120 receipted in |full. Then I sat down to make out the personal note for the remaining $70 for her to sign, when she calmly turned and |into her automobile before I had a chance to realize what was happening. There ‘would have been no use in my flying out after her, especially when the store was full of people, and so I simply let her go, with a plece of paper showing that she had pald me a full $120 when she had really only given me $50 on account. That's another one that, I think, it would be pretty hard to match for meanness. “Last fall 2 woman whom 1 knew to be perfectly good, so far as what we call the blue book Showed, came to my place for the first time and selected three very expensive hats. Ome of them cost $130, the second $85 and the third $80. . “She gave a gasp when I told her the aggregate cost of the three hats she had picked out. *“‘Oh, I know that my husband would neéver agree to that bill in the wide world,” she sald. * * ‘But do you need all three of the hats at the same time?” I asked her. ‘Per- haps if you took them separately, at short intervals, and he received the three separate bills he would—" A * ‘No,’ she interrupted, ‘we’ll do it this way: Make out the total bill for the You | let me have your personal note for the re- | walked out of the place. She was stepping | |stingy, but he thinks that even $150 for have the bill receipted in full just to show | a hat is a frightful price. And rn pay“ | you the difference now and he'll never | know about it—I must have those three hats." “So we arranged it that way. She paid | me the difference, $145, and the hats were sent to her. The bill followed a month or so later and Her husband’'s check for | tHe $150 promptly came back. About three days after receiving her husband's check the woman got out of her carriage and came in to me. #‘0I am so embarrassed,’ she .said Hastily. ‘T am to do a little shopping and I've left both my pocketbook and my checkbook at home, and I haven’t the time to drive down to my husband’s office. I'd be so obliged if you'd let me have—oh, $100 say, until tomorrow and I will drop by and let you have it back— or, better, T'll send you a check this evening.’ “Why, certainly I would. I let her have the $100 without a thought of any wrong intent on her part. But she didn't ‘drop by’ the next day nor did she send me any check for the $100 loan, and it wasn't long before I became reducea to the belief that she had deliberately chiseled me out of that hundred just be- cause it seemed so easy and simple for her to do it. She has bought her mil- linery elsewhere since then, and I've found out that she has told everybody that I overcharged her frightfully, but that she ‘found out a way to get even with me.’ The last part of her assertion is perfectly true. “I have no way to get the hundred from her. Of course, I have absolutely nothing to show for having loaned it to her. I could write a statement of the transaction to her husband if I were fool- ish enough to do tnat, but I'm not. He'd simply send me back a flaming letter of {here himself and accuse me of no end of things, and I know better than to do any- thing of the sort. So I simply pocketed my $100 loss and. let it go at that. | *“Women who do not belong to the wealthy class, but who are regular cus- tomers, do just as mean things on a smaller scale. It is no uncéommon thing for a woman of this class who is dis- satisfied with her stock of hats to come down here and pick out, say, ‘a pretty evening ha ““I'll take it if my husband likes it," she says. ‘Send it up, and I'll show it to him this evening, and if he approves of it, I'll_take it." “Thert wears it to’the theater, or to a party, and returns it in the morning, | with a note to the effect that her hus- Iband doesn’t like the hat. How do we know that she has worn the hat? Why, by the hatpin marks in it, bless your simple heart! There are not hatpin jabs in a hat when it is sent out of a milliner's establishment, for the pins are not used in trying on hats. “We don’t often say anything in a case of this sort. It isn't good policy. But if one woman repeats the trick two lor three times then, of course, we have to say something to her abqut it. and in almost every case she flares up and de- clares with all the solemnness in the world that she wouldn't think of doing such a thing, and then quits the estab- lishment. “‘One night at the opera I saw six of my hats on the heads of women—hats that had been sent to them ‘on their hus- bands’ approval,’ that is to say. They were all expensive hats, too. Well, every blessed one of those hats came back on the following morning, accompanied by notes to the effect that their husbands didn’t llke them. To one of those women —she had done the trick several times be- fore—I said, the next time she visited the RITAECR - T A features, however, the earlier stages are similar to those of other vertebrates with heavily yolked egszs. At the stage at which hybernation takes place. the Tuatara embryo shows specially interesting characteristics. Although there is still a very large quantity of unused yolk in the yolk sac, it is far advanced in development. The limbs are wel formed, the tail is long. and the head is large and like the head of a tertoise. On the snout there is the sharp pointed shell cutter. and the body is marked with: longitudinal and transverse bands or stripes of alternate gray and white, a pat- tern which is completely lost in the adult. Dr. Dendy adds a comment to the effect that the Tuatara conforms to what seems to be a general law of coloration among the higher vertebrates, as it has beem observed in many different types that the vouns anfmal is striped even when the adult is not. and he tuinks that there is good ground for believing that striping was the first kind of pattern to make its appearance in tne ancestors of existing vertebrates. Omne of the most interesting features of the hybernating stage, however, is the plugging up of the nostrils by a dense growth of cellular tissue. As far as has been recorded. the only other creaturs in which this embryenic character has been observed is the Kiwi. or Apteryx, New Zealand's remarkable struthious bird. - A question has been asked as to why this feature should belong exclu- sively to the Tuatara, which is the type of a very ancient reptile, ana to the Kiwi, which is the oldest and most generalized type of living birds; but ne dnswer has been made to the uestion. The young reptil slowly. To o age have not increased in size during a whole vear. A full grown Tuatara niust be fairly well advanced in years. An un- usually large one was kept by ~ome Maoris in an old sweet potate pit on an island for more than three gemerationt of men, Professor W. B, Spencer mads the im- portant discovery of a small eye deneath the skin on the top of the bead of & Tuatara. The eye-ifke organ is provided with a well marked nerve. This parietal for pineal eye, as it has been called. | shows a higher perfection of structi: im {the Tuatara than in any other known type of animal. This item was the sub- ject of special investigation by Dr. Dendy when he took the Tuatara in hand. and qis-work in this direction is exceedingly interesting. His obsecvations. taken in conjunction with the observations of other men in regard fo different types of . lizards, justify the conclusion that the ancestors of existing vertebrates, in addition - to the ordinary paived eres, possessed a pair of parietal eves, which were placed side by side on the top of the head. Wild pigs, dogs. cats. aad bush fges are the chief enemies that have pursued™ the Tuatara to his dest-uction. When his venerable ‘and istinguisnad position is considered, it is not surpising that many attempts are musle to seét up claims of relationship with him. There are Rhynchosauraus, Plesiosaurus, and the famous old swimming Ichthyosaurus. besides Homoeosaurus. Claims of kin- ship have been made oa behalf of all these ancient mariners. wno were on the top Tung. of the socfal ladder im their | day, :before birds and manmals came into being: | An.American professor Las lately gone to mueh labor to prove that the remote ancestors of the great race of Ichthyo- saurus must have closely resembled the lying- Tuatara.. He states that ia the Triassic Period an ancestral Ichthyosaur~ us, who, probably, ha:.l some ulterior me= tive for ‘leaving the land. begua to Jose his .land-moving form, aad to fii himself tor ‘an exclusively aquatic life. The theorist says that this was brought about by a change or a modification of the bending limbs of the walking Tuatars | into broad, .fattened paddies for watsr 1 propuision. Adaptations alse tosk place |in_other parts of Ichthyusaurus's. bony | frame,” and the short heal of the Tua- {tara was transformed into the lons, slender, fish-like smout of the great buk extinct ancient mariner. Whether these theories are correct of | not, they show that extrawrdinarv’ inter- lest is taken in the Tuatara’s life-history. | He'ls a link between the presemt and | the dark. mysterious past. into which men are.trying to pry. He was once & He grasped | velopment are like those of the tortoise, Power in the land—it may be prasumed for good—but he has now been called to sleep with his fathers. On a lonely is- land in a distant part of the world, he awaits his dismissal from Ged's bright | universe. store, ‘But I saw the hat on your head at the opera that night’' She almost went into hysterics she was so angry with me, and of course, I lost her trade. | But I didn’t mind that, And, by the way, few of the milliners send any hats ‘on approval’ except to the very cream of their customers during horse show week. | They long ago found dut what a poor scheme that was. | “Milliners and dressmakers frequently get badly stung, as the saying goes, | through the announcement In certain | newspapers of purely fictitious marriage engagements. I was one of the victims last year, when certain theatrical and gossipy publications more than hinted at an engagement between a ‘show girl’ and a very well-known New York man of great wealth. “The announcement had hardly beem put forth before this young woman was on her travels in a big motor car hired| for the occasion to visit the milliners mantua-makers, The rich man to whom she was said to be engaged was abroad at the time, and so there was no| immediate denial of the story. “Milliners and dressmakers know is going on in the circles to which they| cater, and 1 read of this engagement. | So. when the young women appeared i my place and got $00 and more of beautiful things all over New York. the strength of this engagement before it reached the he was traveling in cabled an instant denial of the that was too late let her have the a cent could be simply stated that the ‘engagement fallen through.' It was the first I had been bitten in think I may safely venture te ke e