'

'I'm ruined!' repeated the wretched Jones.

'Here, I will have a look with my bull's-eye,' said the policeman,
thinking the joke had gone far enough. 'Why, here's the lantern--oh! and
the rope, too--hid under these planks,' he called out, after a minute's
search.

'Found?' said Jones, joyfully. 'I am glad! I will never sleep at my post
again! Don't you let out a word of this, constable,' he said anxiously.

'Not I,' said the policeman, firmly; and he kept his word, for he did
not wish his joke to get to the inspector's ears.

A TURKEY'S COSTLY DIET.

At a dinner given by a wealthy Washington lady, it is said, a turkey,
fattened on pearls valued at over two hundred guineas, was served. Some
little time before, the hostess lost a valuable brooch and a pair of
earrings set with pearls. After a long search, the missing articles were
found in the garden, but the pearls had been plucked out. She was
convinced that a pet turkey was the culprit, and the bird was killed,
but no trace of the gems was found. A chemist, who made an examination,
declared that the pearls had been dissolved almost immediately after
they had been swallowed. To commemorate the loss a dinner was arranged,
and each guest received a photograph of the famous turkey.

THE STORY OF ROCK-SALT.

Salt under ground! It seems a strange thing, at first, to find salt
amongst the rocks, deep down in the earth. What does rock-salt tell us?
It reveals to us a place where once a sea existed; the water has since
flowed away, leaving some salt behind. We know that ordinary salt
exposed to the air soon gets damp, and then becomes quite fluid, but
rock-salt away from air and sun keeps firm for ages. Rock-salt is found
in various layers of the earth's crust. Some of the spaces of
underground water are called 'seas,' but in fact, large as they were,
they often did not resemble the 'seas' we have now, because they were
much shallower. A few were fairly deep, however. Then, again, these
ancient seas were sometimes so salt that no animal could live in them,
and only a few plants. Such seas, in fact, were mostly 'dead,' and this
accounts for the masses of salt deposited along their bottoms. But we
find also signs of rough water in the numerous pebbles of the layer
where the salt is found amongst hard red gravel and brown quartz.

Germany once had a tolerably deep sea, not very salt, and the bottom
surface of it shows coral reefs. There are signs in it