A correspondent recently reported what he described as the "curious freak" of a blackbird flying against a parlor window many times at the same spot. Such an incident is not uncommon. Birds have been known to fight for hours at a time, day after day, with their own image reflected a pane of glass, pecking and fluttering against the pane and quite exhausting themselves in their fury to demolish the supposed rival. It is another instance of how the arts of our civilization corrupt and confuse the birds. It is the same with fishes Darwin tells a story of a pike in an aquarium separated by plate glass from fish which were its proper food. In trying ot get at the fish the pike would often dash with such violence against the glass as to be completely stunned. It did this for more than three months before it learned caution. Then when the glass was removed the pike would not attack those particular fishes, but would devour others freshly introduced. It did not at all understand the situation, but associated the punishment it had received not with the glass, but with a particular kind of fish. Darwin's American monkeys proved themselves more "knowing." When they cut themselves once with any sharp tool they would not touch it again or else would handle it with the greatest caution. Thus they gave evidence of the simpler forms of reason of which monkeys are no doubt capable, but birds are evidently lacking reasoning powers.

In all probability the laziest man on earth has been discovered by sear-faring men who had occasion to stop at the Solomon Islands of the East Indies not long ago. Those islands are inhabited by tribes of black men known to sailors as Kanakas.

The ruler of the islands of Choisene and Caristoval is one of these Kanakas, known as Chief Sonoa. The Kanakas are almost invariably short and very heavily built, but Chief Sonoa is the shortest and fattest one of the bunch, weighing in the neighborhood of 365 pounds. He is not only the blackest, fattest and laziest, but he has more wives than any other chief in that neighborhood.

One of the sailors who visited these islands said that "his majesty would lie in the sands of the beach while his favorite wife would sit beside him and smoke. She would draw a mouth full of the smoke into her lungs. The chief would open his mouth, the favorite would blow the smoke into it and he would inhale it into his lungs, after which he would let it pass out his nose. Time after time would the wife chosen for this job blow the smoke into her chief's mouth, and time after time he would take it into his lungs to let it pass out of his nose. the tobacco used was the strongest that could be hd, and with it was rolled some kind of leaf that would bring on sleep. A truly luxurious being is this dusky king.

A young lady who wished to purchase a bicycle entered a shop and, according to the Christian Register, began looking at the different wheels and asking questions about heir price and quality.

Young Lady—What is the name of the wheel?

The Clerk—That's a Belvidere.

Young Lady (after a stony glare at the clerk)—Can you recommend the Belva?