M. B. T.
A BEE "SOLD."
Talk about the instinct of animals! I'm sure my little friends the bees are as bright as any, yet I heard, the other day, a strange thing about one. There was a flower-like sea-anemone, near the top of a little pool of water, when a bee came buzzing along and alighted on the pretty thing, no doubt mistaking it for a blossom. That anemone was an animal, and had no honey. Now, where was the instinct of that bee? That's what I want to know.
THE LETTER-BOX.
West Roxbury, Mass.
Dear St. Nicholas: I saw in your June number, in the "Letter-Box," an account of a turtle; so I thought I would tell you about "Gopher Jimmy." My uncle brought him from Florida. He is a gopher, and different from the common kind of turtle. His back is yellow, with black ridges on it. His feet are yellow and scaly. Gophers burrow in the ground; and, when full grown, a man cannot pull one out of its burrow, and a child can ride easily on its back. I feed mine on clover. He likes to bask in the sun. My uncle named him "Gopher Jimmy." When full grown, they can move with a weight of 200 pounds. Jimmy is a young one.—Your devoted reader,
Francis H. Allen.
Baltimore, Md
Dear St. Nicholas: Perhaps the other readers of your magazine have heard of "Tyrian purple," a dye which once sold in the shops of ancient Rome for its own weight in silver. Well, after a while, the way to make this dye was forgotten,—probably because those who had the secret died without telling it to others. And now I want to let you know what I have learned lately, in reading, about how the secret was found again, after hundreds of years.