Of General Interest

- Two hunt-rs ware paddling a canoa on Poke Moonshine Lake, Maine, one night recently, when one of tliem, in he dark, thought he saw a rock ahead. lis companion in the stern, who had jeen warned to sheer out, exclaimed that it was something alive, and, graspng hie rille, fired two shots and killed a ïne buck, which was quickly towed shore. - A young Russian and his sweetr ieart decided to come to this country to get married. On the way over they had a quarrel, and after landing here she would have nothing to do with him. 8he ifl without f rienda and penniless, and will have to be sent back f she will not compromise with her lover, who has procured a clergyman and is anxious to marry her. - The canned fruits and mcats exsorted by the United States have im?roved thirty per cent. in the last two years, and are again being largely purchased in countries which had almost outlawed them. Packers found that their goods, in haste to get rich, simply killed a market in one season, and only firstrclass goods are sow shipped.- Detroit Free Press. - A pleasant surprise came to the daughter of a female miser who closed lier career a few weeks ago in Paris. The wonian, it was thought, had died without funds; and when her relatives drew lots for her furniture, a cheap tatuette feil to her daughter. The latter was abont to dash it to the floor in vexation, when bantc notes and securiUes to the amount of $10,000 dropped ut of the interior. - A family living in New York own % small skye terrier which is partially crippled in his hind legs. When he moves on all fours his speed is moderato. To get along faster he has taught tiimself to walk and run on his front feet only, balancing the rear part of his body boldly aloft. Every once in a while he will rest himself by getting down on all fours, but most of his traveling is done on his front feet. - Public officials will soon have to have a scientific education. Michigan has a law giving a bounty of three cents a head for every head of an Ensflish sparrow brought in to an official in charge of that law. No examination in ornithology is required of the official; and it is said the officials in many cases are so ignorant of the subject that the heads of all sorts of birds are palmed off on them as the heads of English sparrows. - The statue of William Penn for the apex of the iron tower surmounting the public building at Philadelphia is being cast in sections at the Tacony works. It will stand on a space only five feet square, so that one of its feet will project a little over the edge. The statue will weigh thirty tons aud be held in place by a great rod of iron starting fifty feet below the platform in the interior of the tower. The upper part of this tower is to be clothed with bronze. - It was at one time claimed and attempted to be shown that the Puritan Mayflower of 1620 was afterward used as a slave ship. Close research revealed the fact that the slaver was another ship of the same name and different burden. Historical records show that about the year 1474 Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had a ship called the Mayflower; and Hunter, in his "Founders of New England," mentions some twenty ships as bearing that name between the years 583 and 1633. - Recent statistics prove that in the United States 26 women are engaged in different emplovments to every 100 men. and in Philadelphia 50 women are employod to every 100 men. Fifty years ago seven industries were acknowledged as open to women in Massachusetts. To-day there are 284 industries in that State in which women are engaged, and in 22 i epresentative cities of the United States 342 oecupations in which women are successfully working. Woman's influenee as a business partner, too, is increased on the basis of numbers to one-sixteenth, and as a stockholder to more than onefourth. - The food of humming birds consists mainly of insects, mostly gathered f rom the flowers they visit. An acute observer writes that even among the common flower-frequenting species he has found the alimentary canal entirely filled with insects and very rarely a trace of honey. It is this fact doubtless that has hindered almost all attempts at keeping them in confinement for any length of time - nearly every one making the experiment having fed his captives only with sirup, which ia wholly insufficient as sustenance, and seeing theref ore the wretched creatures gradually sink into inanition and die of hunger.