H. F.—The signals given by steamboats are fully described in Chapter II. of "The Cruise of the 'Ghost,'" published in No. 81 of Harper's Young People.
W. H. K.—It is not true that horse-hairs thrown into a running stream become living snakes, although many people believe that they do. A little city boy of our acquaintance once, when in the country, collected a large quantity of horse-hairs in a barn, and was throwing them into a stream, when an old farmer came along, and asked him what he was doing. "Throwing in horse-hairs," answered the boy, "and to-morrow I'll find 'em all turned into snakes." "Ah, sonny," replied the farmer, "you may watch till you're gray, but you'll never make snakes out of those horse-hairs." The boy was sadly disappointed, but the old farmer was right.
H. H.—Many kinds of toys imported into the United States from Europe are colored by means of poisonous substances, which injure the health of children. The French government has decided to stop the manufacture and sale of such toys in France, and will not hereafter allow them to be imported into that country. They will be seized on the frontier, and confiscated. Children are very much in the habit of putting toys into their mouths, and the colors, if poisonous, are sure to make them ill.
Thomas L.—The city of Brooklyn, Long Island, was originally called Breuckelen, meaning "marshy ground," after a town of that name near Utrecht, in Holland, whence the first settlers came. Instead of buying land on the high and healthy ground along the East River, now known as "Brooklyn Heights," these settlers selected the low and level land about Gowanus Bay, perhaps because it resembled the country of their birth. The first purchase of land was made in 1636, by Willem Arianse Bennet and Jacques Bentyn, who secured from the Indians a tract of 630 acres. The growth of Brooklyn was very slow. Up to the year 1820 it was only a provincial village, and in 1850 it had only about 97,000 inhabitants. It is now the largest grain dépôt in the world, and has a population, according to the census of 1880, of 566,689 people.
G. T. J. H.—See answer to C. N. C. in the Post-office Box of No. 67.