WALTON’S KITTY AGAIN.

Dear Jack:  A while ago I told in ST. NICHOLAS something about “Walton’s Kitty,” that loves music and climbs upon any one who sings to her, putting her head as close as can be to the lips of the singer.  Now, here is another true story about this same cat: 

In the summer, Walton’s aunt used to set the milk in a cool closet, in a pitcher with a long, narrow neck, but day after day, when teatime came, every drop of that milk was gone.  Nobody drank it, nobody used it, nobody spilled it.  “Walton’s Kitty” and all her descendants were clear of suspicion, because of the long, narrow neck of that pitcher.  So everybody watched and waited to find out how the milk went.

And this is what they saw:  There sat “Walton’s Kitty,” dipping her paw deep down into the pitcher, taking it out, and then lapping the milk from it!  If she dropped the smallest drop, she stopped and cleaned that up, and then went on.  As the milk dwindled to the bottom of the pitcher she shook her paw around; and she never left off until every drop of milk was gone!

Since then, the milk for tea stands in a covered pitcher, but “Walton’s Kitty” has hers in a tall, narrow goblet.  It is a very affecting sight, and people laugh till they cry as they watch her.—­Yours truly,

    M.B.C.S.

FLINT ONCE WAS SPONGE.

You never would think it, would you, my dears?  But the Little Schoolma’am says that it was; and she always is right.

She says that flint really is nothing more nor less than sponge turned to stone.  Once the sponge grew at the bottom of the sea, as other sponges grow now; but that was ages and ages ago, and since then the sponge, turned to flint, has lain covered by rocks and earth of many kinds piled thick above it.  Seen with a microscope, flint shows the make of sponge in its fibers; and sometimes you can see, bedded in it, the shells of the tiny creatures on which the sponge had fed.  Now and then, inside a flint, will be found bits of the sponge not yet changed.

That last proof settles it; but I must say it’s hard to believe;—­hard as the flint, almost.

SOME OLD PUZZLES.

Here are two letters, with old puzzles in them, that may amuse you for a while on one of these shivery evenings, my chicks.  I’ll tell you the answers next month.

Michigan.

DEAR JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT:  The other night one of my brothers said he did not believe we could pronounce a certain word after he should have spelled it.  I will tell you what it is, though you may have heard about it already: 

A cross, a circle complete,
An upright where two semi-circles do meet,
A triangle standing upon two feet,
Two semi-circles, a circle complete.