It lives entirely away from houses, commonly taking up its abode in wheat or hay fields, where it builds a round grass nest about the size of a cricket-ball, in which it brings up its young.
The mother, fearful lest her son should share his father's fate, flies to the woods, either alone with one attendant, or with a small body of faithful retainers, and there brings up her son in ignorance of his name, his parentage and all knightly accomplishments.
Cupellation brings up the gold to about 900 fine.
Larger quantities of deposit may be conveniently collected by means of the dredge, which can be worked in any depth and brings up large stones, concretionary nodules or fossils, of the existence of which a sounding-tube could give no indication.
The dredge often brings up large numbers of nodules formed upon sharks' teeth, the ear-bones of whales or turtles or small fragments of pumice or other volcanic ejecta, and all more or less incrusted with manganese oxide until the nodules vary in size from that of a potato to that of a man's head.
