COURTESY OF THE VOLTA REVIEW.

TROPICAL FIG TREE WITH AERIAL ROOTS. PHOTOGRAPHED ON THE ISLAND OF CERAM.

sea-beach is running away! It is no exaggeration to say that the beach was alive with hermit crabs. They seemed as numerous as the sands of the sea, and were of about the same color. Their shells ranged in size from a pin's head to that of a horse chestnut, and they were in constant motion, thousands upon thousands of them, crawling up and down the blades of grass, and swarming over the trunks of the trees along the edge of the jungle.

"The moving sands, with a background of trees whose roots were apparently all above ground, and which were covered by tree-climbing fish, formed the most fantastic picture that it has ever been my fortune to look upon."

By great good luck, Mr. Fairchild's photographs came out in excellent shape. Satisfactory pictures are rarely obtained in the tropical jungle, owing to the fact that the moist and miasmatic atmosphere is likely to ruin the films.

As for the fish in question, it is known to science as Periophthalmus, of the family of the gobies, and is one of the curiosities of nature. Its expanded ventral fins serve the purpose of feet, enabling the creature to walk, with the help of the highly developed pectoral fins the latter being utilized as arms. The fish, of course, lives in water, but

its gill openings are so small as to conserve the supply of moisture, the gills being kept wet, and the animal is thus enabled to stay for quite a while out of its native element.

The creatures are of a dully slaty color, about nine inches long when full grown, and remarkably active-progressing on land by short but rapidly repeated jumps. This they manage by bending the hinder third of the body sharply around to the left, then straightening it very suddenly, and at the same. instant lifting the front half of the body clear of the ground by means of the armlike pectoral fins, which act like the front flippers of a sea lion. These fins, indeed, are very like arms in structure and use, the bones being of great length.

Fishes of this strange species were seen and described not long ago by Mr. William T. Hornaday, a famous naturalist, who is now superintendent of the Zoological Garden in New York. In his very fascinating book, called "Two Years in the Jungle," he says that the creatures, when he caught sight of them, were hopping about on a mud flat.

"Although apparently stranded," he writes, "they seemed perfectly at home, and went jumping around over the mud in every direction with the greatest indifference to their sudden change of element. In reality they were feeding on tiny crustaceans left on the bank by the receding tide. When I tried to beguile my Malay boatmen into catching some specimens for me, they declared it impossible, on account of the depth of the mud and the swiftness of the fish."

But Mr. Hornaday is not known as one of the greatest living natural history collectors for nothing. He wanted at least one or two of those remarkable fishes, and by hook or crook he meant to get them.

"They (the Malays) were thunderstruck," he goes on to say, "when I pulled off my shoes and told them to put me ashore. Seeing that I was really going, my young man Francis, like a good boy, did not hesitate to follow, and we stepped out of the sampan into mud and water hip deep.

"We sank into the mud to our knees at every step. Bidding Francis choose the largest fish, we went for them. There were probably a dozen in sight, hopping spasmodically about, or lying at rest on the mud, but when we selected the nearest large specimens and made for them, they developed surprising energy and speed, and made straight for their burrows. Owing to the soft and yielding nature of the mud, their leaps were short, about six inches being the distance gained each time, but they were so rapid, the mud so very deep, and our progress so slow, that they always succeeded in getting into their holes before we could reach them.

"Their burrows were simply mud holes, going straight down to a depth of three or four feet, but large enough in diameter to admit a man's arm easily, and of course full of water.

"Although the mud was soft, it was not sticky, and we were able to use our hands for spades very effectively. By

digging a big hole two feet deep, and standing on one's head in the bottom of it, we were able to reach an arm down two feet farther and seize our fish at the bottom of the burrow.

"My first fish was hard to get, and hard to hold, but, in the immortal words of 'The Shaughraun,' 'begorra, 'twas worth it.'"

But Dr. Hornaday's troubles were by no means over yet. Continuing his story, he says:

"As I remarked before, our living specimens were hard to hold. When I was trying to pass a string through the gills of my first fish, he struggled out of my grasp, and the moment he touched the mud, started at his best speed for the water, twenty yards distant.

"I was horrified at the thought of his getting away, and, falling upon my hands and knees, I pursued him frantically on all fours. My stolid and everrespectful Malays actually shouted with laughter to see the master go over the mud like crocodile. mud like crocodile. However, I overhauled my fish in fine style. A few minutes later I saw Francis execute the same brilliant maneuver, for the same cause, and it certainly was a most laughable spectacle.

"We got seven fine specimens altogether, and of all the muddy beings you ever saw-but I will draw the veil."

The island of Ceram, by the way, where the sea-beach is "alive," and the Periophthalmus fishes climb trees, is inhabited, Mr. Fairchild says, by Malays and "a handful of Dutch.

HE rural constable, with chin whiskers and big tin star, is not the only eagle-eye on the lookout for scorchers these days. There's a silent, less conspicuous watcher quietly roosting upon the cylinder of the gigantic machines that nightly haul ten heavy coaches through the Missouri cornfields, across the Illinois prairies and into Chicago by way of the Burlington system. The terror of the auto scorchers generally goes to sleep when he feels like it, so there is an interim of peace, but the little monitor in front of the great black engine never gets weary. In the one case the derelict humbly follows the chin whiskers, tin star and club before the police court, and there explains that by no possible means could he have been

running more than two miles an hour, in full respect to the town ordinance. In the other case there is no explaining when the "defendant" is confronted by the accusing tape, which shows that on such and such a tangent, or around a certain curve, he was swinging along at a greater rate than fifty miles per hour.

Some years ago, before the road put its little detective on watch, the writer enjoyed the thrilling experience of riding westward from Chicago on the headend with a friend who was something of a scorcher when conditions were right. The engine was a balanced compound with four seventy-eight-inch drivers. This machine could handle eleven or twelve passenger coaches all right on the level, but the load was too great on heavy grades. In consequence the en

OLIVER LUCIUS. ROAD FORE MAN OF THE BURLINGTON RAILROAD, BROOKFIELD DIVISION, Mo.

gineman, in order to hit the card right, had to do some lively hustling on the level, and down hill. On this occasion, after crossing the Mississippi and striking some solid rock ballast, the driver "let her go." By figuring on the white mile posts sweeping by it was ascertained the train was making the rise of eighty miles an hour, not a dangerous rate on

a straight track, but it was held to on curves for a long distance. The tall engine careened as it hit the curve and the cab oscillated from side to side as though it might, with a little encouragement, jump out on the right-of-way. The roar of the engine at that speed was deafening; everything about it seemed to be popping off, or making some sort of noise; far ahead in the gloom of the boiler the bell clanged like a hammer striking an anvil, while the short stack abaft the electric headlight spouted fire.

To reduce the liability of accidents from excessive running it was decided to change the motive power. A Pacific type of engine, known on the Burlington system as Class S-1, was adopted. This is a simple engine with six seventy-twoinch drivers, four small wheels forward and a trailer under the cab. The S-1 was so powerful that it could maintain its speed, with the Chicago-Missouri Limited of ten or twelve coaches, up grade, around curves or anywhere you put it. This removed the necessity of excessively fast running on the level and down gentle declines. The next move was to put a check on "sprinting" engines. It was decreed that the rate should not exceed fifty miles per hour under any circumstances. According to the card the east-bound Limited, No. 56, averages 36.2 miles per hour across Missouri. The west-bound, No. 55, averages 35.6. This takes no account of station stops, which means the speed while running must be considerably greater than the figures given.

"The object of the speed indicator," explained Mr. Oliver Lucius, road foreman of the Brookfield division, "is to insure a greater uniformity of speed. It is safer, and much more pleasant for the passengers. These big engines were put on for that very purpose. With a smaller

engine you lose on grades and have to run faster at other places to catch up. It was carefully figured that no engineman on this division need exceed fifty miles an hour to hit the schedule. The curves, bridges and every department of the track are constructed so as easily to stand that sort of running with the heaviest engines and trains.

"At first the enginemen didn't like the idea of having a tally kept on every mile they run; said they knew how to handle their engines to the best advantage so as to make the card. But they're getting so they rather like the innovation. You see the recorder has connection with a gauge in the cab by which the engineer can tell at any time exactly how fast he is running. The small wheel on the recorder, which is connected with the forward wheel of the truck, makes six hundred revolutions in a mile. While measuring the distance traveled it also gives the rate of speed at which each mile was run, registering the observance of slow orders and all stops.

"The engineman has the record right

in front of him, and knows exactly where to set his lever to maintain his speed. There is no guesswork about it.

"The locomotives now hauling the Limited into and out of Chicago and Kansas City will handle a ten-coach train on the level, fifty miles per hour, working only six inches of steam, and using the balance of the stroke expansively. They can, if necessary, make eighty miles an hour with an ordinary train, but that sort of running is in violation of the rules."

Here a veteran engineer, who was standing by, spoke up:

"The other night we had a lot of baggage at Bucklin and were held there seven minutes and a little farther down the line we lost three minutes. That put us ten minutes to the bad, and when I got to Shelbina, there was a message from the dispatcher wanting to know whether I had gone to sleep. Now, I had been running up to the limit, and could easily have caught that ten minutes by going beyond it, but there was your little spotter on the front end."