Birdie S.—Thanks for your very kind notice, but your pretty puzzle is so complimentary to ourselves that we can not print it.
Emmet M. L.—The American, your amateur paper, is very neatly printed, and well made up.
Marie L.—The extra number of brakes on Mount Washington steam-engines is to increase the safety of the descent.
Sallie Floyd reports Japan quinces in bloom at Carthage, Missouri, on March 7; Nellie Sands, of Lawrence, Kansas, writes that robins and redbirds have lived all winter in the evergreens in her garden; "Henry," of Philadelphia, says the dandelions have been in bloom almost all the time; and Lillie Cassiday writes that it snowed hard on March 14 and 18 in Winterset, Iowa—the only snow of the winter in that locality.
Lizzie S. S.—You can make an Æolian harp of a box of thin pine. The box should be the length of your window, about five inches broad, and three deep. Put a row of hitch pins at one end, and tuning pins at the other, and two narrow bridges of hard wood about two inches within the pins, over which to stretch the strings. Eight strings will make a good harp. They should be of catgut, and if you tune them in unison, the sound will be sweeter than if they are tuned in thirds or fifths. The tension should be rather slack. The ends of the box should be raised about an inch above the strings to support a thin pine board upon which the window rests. The draught of air passes over the strings stretched midway between the upper board and the sound-board, which should have two round holes cut in it. The harp will sound sweeter if placed in a window which is struck obliquely by the wind.