Item 01: Malcolm Shore Stanley correspondence, 8 December 1916-28 October 1918 - Page 62
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[Page 62]
S.A. Museum
Aug. 19/1917
Dear Mr. Stanley
It's not a bit of use for me to decide that you won't want to be bothered with letters, for directly something unusual turns up a mental memoranda labelled "Mr Stanley would be interested" is enlarged. The enclosed cutting is in reference to one such memo. You would be doubly interested too I think in an instance which concerns these same creatures. When the Museum specimens were bought the original owner had one which appeared to be dying, and this he gave to our man thinking that that stage of its career might interest him. He brought it back to Adelaide & instead of it being this shape [see image for sketch] it had continued swelling something like this [see image for sketch]. It had no control of its actions & if you touched it, rolled helplessly in the water. It died, or everyone thought so, but when its owner fingered it, he thought it not quite dead, so getting hold of a very fine glass tube he inserted it into the creature, with the result that some blockage was removed, and quite a large quantity of water was drawn away. The thing lay quite flat, & was replaced in the water. The last I heard of the patient was that it was relishing its natural food - worms etc. Evidently its organs were not working correctly & it could only swallow water. A sort of drowning internally. These