Tibbetts has found that ranch-bred mink are the best with which to start a mink farm. He says they are hardy and reproduce rapidly. He feels that the venture will prove a success. A good mink pelt is worth from nine to thirteen dollars.
Man Selects Coffin for Himself and Wife.
“I have practically lived it through,” said former Mayor William L. Rice, of Bristol, Va., when this week he entered an undertaking establishment in Bristol and purchased two low-priced coffins—one for himself and one for his wife.
Mrs. Rice was at first opposed to the idea of having the coffins placed in the home where the aged couple reside alone, but after hearing the reasons advanced by her husband, she made no further objection, and is reconciled.
Foreman of Jeff Davis Jury.
Josiah Millard, eighty-nine years old, of Baltimore, Md., a friend of President Lincoln and foreman of the jury that convicted Jefferson Davis of treason, recently married Miss Martha E. Streeks, twenty-six years his junior. The wedding was in accordance with the deathbed wish of Millard’s first wife, who died five years ago, and who had been nursed by Miss Streeks.
Millard is a native of Massachusetts, but lived in Virginia at the outbreak of the war. His Union sympathies got him into trouble, and he was the first Union man arrested during the war.
Appointed internal-revenue assessor by Lincoln, he was removed by Johnson, but reappointed by Grant, and held office until it was abolished. He has since held Federal appointments.
Record of One Bird’s Meal.
A student at the University of Wisconsin, who is making experiments in the food consumption of birds, has under observation a little bird, known as the Virginia rail, which in the course of two days eats more than its own weight in food. Although the bird weighs only a half pound, its menu of one day recently consisted of one caterpillar, fifteen flies, one stickleback fish, 2½ inches long; two small sunfish, 1½ inches long; one water scorpion, three inches long; three water bugs, twelve meal worms, twelve grasshoppers, and fourteen amphipoda. Live hornets do not cause any irritation. It ate five of them on this same day. To the above add one crawfish, two inches long; one snake, eight inches long; and one frog, 1½ inches long.