Many surprising -questions are put to many people, suck as
doctors, policemen and even journalists'. Here' are some modern instances. I was asked last week (by a most highly distinguished publisher) whether as a naturalist I could tell him how far a tortoise was provided with a defence against rats. His pet tortoise had, it seems, been destroyed by rats. That most famous observer of the tortoise, Gilbert White of Selbome, threw no light on the subject. Again, a village- doctor was asked by a patient to tell het what was the right dose of .brandy for a sick bullfinch ! The answers to both these questions were doubtless found less satisfactory than the reply of a policeman in the Strand to an Afgentine lady who asked him where she could buy a male chameleon. He told her at once, and she got her chameleon a few hundred yards from the spot.
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