The Advanced Book of Reading Lessons Forming a Supplement to the Fourth and Fifth Reading Books of the Authorized Series

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ball, much after the fashion of the " life preserver" of this country. Sometimes he swings it round his head like a lasso, and hurls the loaded end at his adversary, retaining the other end so as to draw back the weapon after the blow has taken effect, or in case of missing. But when he is chasing game, he employs the bolas in a very different way. Having ridden as near as he judges expedient for his aim, and still whirling the bolas round his head, he launches one of the balls at his intended victim, following it immediately with the other. The two balls circle through the air, and they are thrown with so excellent an aim that a portion of the cord comes on the creature's back, neck or legs. The weight of the balls instantly wraps the cord round the embarrassed creature, and the more they turn the tighter the cord becomes, so that in most cases the animal is so entangled as to be brought to the ground at once, even if the heavy balls do not stun it, as they twist round the body. But, in any case, the bolas impede the course so much that the hunter easily comes up with his chase. Some hunters use a third ball, attached to one end of a cord, whose other end is fastened to the centre of the chief rope, so that there are three of these terrible weapons revolving at the same time. The facts that have been ascertained respecting the eggs of the Rhea, and the mode of their maturing, will probably afford a key to the difficulties concerning those of the African ostrich; for their habits are so very similar, that there is good ground for supposing the Rhea may be, as it were, a telescope through which to observe the ostrich. -- My Feathered Friends. PELOPIDAS AND EPAMINONDAS. (b. c. 379.) Thebes a, this time possessed two great men, not perhaps the first or the l...