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207.—­CHERRIES AND PLUMS.

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The illustration is a plan of a cottage as it stands surrounded by an orchard of fifty-five trees.  Ten of these trees are cherries, ten are plums, and the remainder apples.  The cherries are so planted as to form five straight lines, with four cherry trees in every line.  The plum trees are also planted so as to form five straight lines with four plum trees in every line.  The puzzle is to show which are the ten cherry trees and which are the ten plums.  In order that the cherries and plums should have the most favourable aspect, as few as possible (under the conditions) are planted on the north and east sides of the orchard.  Of course in picking out a group of ten trees (cherry or plum, as the case may be) you ignore all intervening trees.  That is to say, four trees may be in a straight line irrespective of other trees (or the house) being in between.  After the last puzzle this will be quite easy.

208.—­A PLANTATION PUZZLE.

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A man had a square plantation of forty-nine trees, but, as will be seen by the omissions in the illustration, four trees were blown down and removed.  He now wants to cut down all the remainder except ten trees, which are to be so left that they shall form five straight rows with four trees in every row.  Which are the ten trees that he must leave?

209.—­THE TWENTY-ONE TREES.

A gentleman wished to plant twenty-one trees in his park so that they should form twelve straight rows with five trees in every row.  Could you have supplied him with a pretty symmetrical arrangement that would satisfy these conditions?

210.—­THE TEN COINS.

Place ten pennies on a large sheet of paper or cardboard, as shown in the diagram, five on each edge.  Now remove four of the coins, without disturbing the others, and replace them on the paper so that the ten shall form five straight lines with four coins in every line.  This in itself is not difficult, but you should try to discover in how many different ways the puzzle may be solved, assuming that in every case the two rows at starting are exactly the same.

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211.—­THE TWELVE MINCE-PIES.

It will be seen in our illustration how twelve mince-pies may be placed on the table so as to form six straight rows with four pies in every row.  The puzzle is to remove only four of them to new positions so that there shall be seven straight rows with four in every row.  Which four would you remove, and where would you replace them?

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212.—­THE BURMESE PLANTATION.

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A short time ago I received an interesting communication from the British chaplain at Meiktila, Upper Burma, in which my correspondent informed me that he had found some amusement on board ship on his way out in trying to solve this little poser.