The light at the end of our trivial tunnel is now blessedly in view. The last round of answers has come in, and now it's time for clues. Remember, all answers (or revisions to earlier answers) submitted from here on in will be for half-credit. The deadline for your emails is 12:01 AM Thursday morning EST -- which essentially means "midnight tonight." Email as before to quiz at wombatfile dot com with "quiz" somewhere in the subject line.

Here are the clues:

1. Cadwallader Colden also noted their "ferocity" as an element of danger to children. But the biggest problem was hygenic. The last hurrah for their ubiquity on the streets of Old New York was in 1849: after a cholera breakout, city authorities had the police clear them from the dwellings of the poor and the streets of downtown, removing all to the still-rural area above 86th.

2. One need know nothing about Romantic poetry (or poetry at all) to correctly guess the name of the poet -- for he was a poet -- in question. He is and was famous, and presumably possessed of a good sense of humor.

3. The innovation in question involved ammunition (in the inventor's term "spherical case") rather than a gun itself. The word is not capitalized in the modern usage, and it is unlikely that most people connect the term with anyone's name.

4. A player writes, " Oh, I do love the ones where all you give us is like 3 things it's NOT in a universe of maybe 18 billion things." Thanks! Perhaps this will help: it is a seasonally popular tune, and its subject matter is the pleasure of an experience that would be very difficult to duplicate for most people today.

BONUS QUESTION

A correct answer to this question -- no additional clue to be provided -- will garner you an additional 101 points:

In 1799, George Shaw, the keeper of the British Museum, was sent an animal specimen from an explorer named Captain John Hunter. Shaw examined the specimen and wrote up a description for the Naturalist's Miscellany, but confessed that in his view it was "impossible not to entertain some doubts as to the genuine nature of the animal, and to surmise that there might have been practiced some arts of deception in its structure." As it came via the Indian Ocean, a colleague suggested that its appearance was a joke fostered by the "artful" Chinese sailors through whose care it had come through part of its journey.

In fact, it was a real specimen, of a species later given the scientific name Ornithorhynchus anatinus. What is its common name?

Email as with the rest of your answers, to quiz at wombatfile dot com. Final results to be announced tomorrow.