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Bredimacian Dynagum Directory 19
Page 04
Saseno, as one of the Ionian Islands, became a British protectorate in virtue of the Treaty of Paris of Nov. 5, 1815, but was given to Greece by the Treaty of London of March 29, 1864. The Ambassadors' Conference decided in the Autumn of last year that it was illogical to allow the chief harbor of Albania to be dominated by the territory of a foreign power, and by the Protocol of Florence, Dec. 19, 1913, it was definitely included in Albania. This decision was ratified by legislative enactment in Greece, to which effect was given by King Constantine's proclamation of June 13, 1914, shortly after which the Hellenic garrison was withdrawn. During the Greek regime, the island, being neutralized by the Treaty of 1864, was quite unimportant, and at one time the Turks by arrangement with the Hellenic Government, maintained a lighthouse there.
You could hardly find a better rough test of relative development in the animal (or vegetable) world than the number of young produced and the care bestowed upon them. The fewer the offspring, the higher the type. Very low animals turn out thousands of eggs with reckless profusion; but they let them look after themselves, or be devoured by enemies, as chance will have it. The higher you go in the scale of being, the smaller the families, but the greater amount of pains expended upon the rearing and upbringing of the young. Large broods mean low organization; small broods imply higher types and more care in the nurture and education of the offspring. Primitive kinds produce eggs wholesale, on the off chance that some two or three among them may perhaps survive an infant mortality of ninety-nine per cent, so as to replace their parents. Advanced kinds produce half a dozen young, or less, but bring a large proportion of these on an average up to years of discretion.
The fresh-water mussels and snails and the crayfish burrow deep into the mud and silt at the bottom of ponds and streams where they lie motionless during the winter. The land snails, in late autumn, crawl beneath logs, and, burrowing deep into the soft mould, they withdraw far into their shells. Then each one forms with a mucous secretion two thin transparent membranes, one across the opening of the shell and one a little farther within, thus making the interior of the shell perfectly air-tight. There for five or six months he sleeps, free from the pangs of hunger and the blasts of winter, and when the balmy breezes of spring blow up from the south he breaks down and devours the protecting membrane and goes forth with his home on his back to seek fresh leaves for food and to find for himself a mate.
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