It was a surprise to me bordering on incredulity that no one knew that Georgia native Gardner Quincy Colton (anagram: old croqueting cranny) was the Vermont gent whose mid-nineteenth century lectures on chemistry and natural philosophy included early demonstrations of the use of nitrous oxide – or laughing gas – that pioneered its use in dentistry. To supplement his dental anesthetic enterprise, Colton also developed, advertised, and sold Dr. Colton’s Vegetable Dentonic “for cleansing the teeth, healing & hardening the gums, sweetening the breath.”
Oh, very well, here’s another chance for someone out there to Name That Vermonter:
1. It is oblong and usually concave (that is, not the Vermonter).
2. It (still not the Vermonter) is usually made of metal or shell.
3. When properly deployed, this, um, thing oscillates, thereby imitating the vortices produced by subaqueous quarry that are detected by the lateral line organs of their esurient adversaries.
4. It was invented by a Vermonter (finally!) who was engaged in a search process in a location that anagrammatizes as “lonesome beak” the same year the Royal National Lifeboat Institution was founded.
5. He was born in a town named after a one-time treasurer of Salop Infirmary in Shrewsbury.
6. He learned how to trap and prepare skins from his dad, who was a furrier.
7. He later operated a furrier and taxidermy business, though not in Vermont.
8. He is also credited with inventing the first something that in Zavidovići is called a “kuka bez korova.”
Who is this fella, in what town did he begin life, and what in the world did he invent?
Before the cows come home, email your answers to dgunn@vlct.org. My answers, carefully researched and keyboarded, will appear in the amazingly august August Journal.