ave the following story in support of the idea
that animals are aware that snow is frozen water. It was related to
me by a rather rackety nephew, who has lived part of his life in South
America, and whose word can be strictly relied on. He relates that
once, when he was travelling among the Andes, at an elevation of some
twenty thousand feet, his mules became very thirsty, and no water was
obtainable. Each animal seized a _calabash_ with its teeth, filled it
with snow, and trotted off to the crater of an adjacent volcano; it
then waited till the lava melted the snow, which it drank up, and
finally trotted back again. My nephew says he should not have believed
a mule could be so clever, if he had not seen it.

Yours obediently, SAMUEL SOBERSIDES.

SIR,--Since writing you that letter about our bull-finch, I have
discovered an even more surprising fact, which I am sure no Naturalist
has yet dreamed of. Not only do birds appreciate snow, but they are
very fond of _iced beverages_. A tom-tit, who often drinks water from
a saucer which we put on our window-sill, one day found the water
frozen. What did the intelligent creature do? Why, it rapped on the
window-pane with its beak till the window was opened, then hopped on
to the sideboard, and began trying to peck the cork out of a whiskey
bottle! I took the hint, and poured some of the spirit into the
saucer; the bird drank it greedily! My wife's comment on this
occurrence is really too good to be lost, so I send it you. She said,
"Evidently the bird was not a _tomtitotaller_!"

Yours, in convulsions, LOVER OF NATURE (_as before_).

* * * * *

A PINT OF HALF-AND-HALF.

"'_Qui va la?_' says he."
"'_Je_,' replies I, knowing the language."
"_Jeames" and another Old Story_.

The international susceptibilities of Sheriff DRURIOLANUS--henceforth
to bear the Anglo-French title, _Monsieur le Sherif 'Arris de Paris_,
or _'Arry de Parry_,--appear to have been considerably hurt by a
statement in the _Debats_ to the effect that the appearance in the
London streets of men dressed as Gendarmes--"_en gendarmes francais_,"
writes MOSSOO DRURIOLANE--intended as perambulating advertisements for
the Waterloo Panorama, was due to a supreme effort of his managerial
genius. So Sherif DRURIOLANE wrote at once to the London Correspondent
of the _Figaro_, who bears the singularly French name of JOHNSON,
denying, in his very best French, that