My uncle has brought me a little alligator from Florida, and mamma says I may keep it if I can take care of it. It is in a big tin pan of water now, and every day it jumps out and hides in some corner. I have given it crumbs of bread and cake, but it does not eat them. Please tell me how I can keep it, and what it will eat.
Willie J. H.
A small aquarium would serve as a comfortable home for your alligator, only you must provide a board on to which he can crawl to dry himself, for he does not like to spend all his time in the water. To feed him, take very tiny pieces of raw beef, and hold them toward him. If he is lively, he will dart after them with wide-open mouth. If you are afraid he will nip your finger—if he is very young he can not bite you—put the bits of meat on the end of a wire. If you do not wish to have a hunt for him every morning, you must cover your aquarium with coarse wire netting, for young alligators are always eager to escape from confinement.
Are you going to give a work-box department for little girls? I and five others are going to have a fair to raise money to make a Christmas-tree for a little sick school-mate whose mother is very poor, and we want to make everything for the fair ourselves. One of us has a lot of pretty cards with pressed sea-weed she arranged last summer, and we thought they would be prettier if we could make them into little books or baskets. Could you tell us how to do it?
Lulu W.
We shall not give a special department to fancy-work, but we shall now and then have short papers, like the one on page 14, telling how to make pretty things. Meanwhile perhaps some of our young correspondents will give you some new suggestions for fancy articles for your fair, for the success of which you have our best wishes.