usual amount of pluck and resource in handling the alligator, one needs to have a keen eye and a quick hand. To secure your animal you must grip it instantly and then keep its jaws closed. As one alligator catcher remarked, "to hold the same jaws open would be an experience gained too late to be of use." For the alligator in its native land is not, as it appears to be, safely imprisoned at the zoo, a sleepy and slow-moving creature, but very quick and lively in all its movements. BRICKS FROM VOLCANIC APLANT for the manufacture of bricks to be made of lava is now being erected near Honolulu, Sandwich Islands, under the direction of J. Rice, of San Francisco, Cal., and will be in readiness for active service within less than two months from date. It is the expectation of the promoters to be able to contract with the United States government to furnish lava bricks GRAYNELLA PACKER. Wireless Operator of the Mohawk, New York to Charleston. THE SECRETARY BIRD IN ACTION. FOUR-FOOT HIGH SNAKEKILLER. CHAMPION SNAKE KILLERS TWO birds new to the eyes of Americans, are the curious pair of secretary birds, male and female, received at the New York Zoological Park, from South Africa. These stately, long-legged birds, with ashy grey plumage and tail feathers two feet long, are the champion snake killers of the world. The secretary is really a hawk, adapted especially for ground hunting. The male stands four feet high, the greater part of this being made up of legs and neck. The bird gets its odd name from a crest of long, dark plumes rising from the back of the head, which gives it a fanciful resemblance to a clerk or secretary, having a bunch of quill pens stuck behind his ears. All the food of the secretary must be alive, and two garter snakes, about a foot or so in length, form a favorite daily meal. When a snake is thrown on the ground for the bird to eat the wiry secretary does not fly upon the prey at once but cautiously approaches the snake with wings partly outspread so as to be ready to escape any sudden lunge of the enemy. The secretary slowly circles around his antagonist, keeping well out of danger; suddenly like a flash the secretary raises one of his powerful feet, with sharp talons, and strikes the snake a hammer-like blow fairly on the head. DROPS 100 FEET THE only remarkable thing about this photograph of a modern skyscraper in Los Angeles is the fact that a structural iron worker recently fell from its topmost girder to the roof of a one-story building, a distance of one hundred feet, and sustained practically no injuries. He went almost through the roof of the small building, but as this was very elastic his fall was broken so that he received only bruises and slight fractures which disabled him but a few days. A remarkable claim is made that a recent rain had wetted the structure, making it an unusually good conductor of electricity and that contact with a live. wire had charged the whole frame. While working on a scaffold the iron worker touched the charged girder and jumped back off the building. A NATTY NEW SUFFRA- WORKMAN FELL FROM R RUBBER ARMOR FOR AIR UDYARD KIPLING has designed a of the neck against a backward or forward wrench. The weight of the padding on the shoulders ought to cushion off the worst of a sideways wrench. To protect the spinal cord from being snapped and SOMETHING SOFT FOR the dome of the head from fracture, the rolls under the chin would have to be made thick so that the head could be driven down on them without too much harm. ONE OF THE BIGGEST GUNS IN THE WORLD. This piece of artillery is of the so-called wire design and has been undergoing tests near New York City. It has a new form of disappearing carriage. CHINESE COFFIN ACHINESE coffin is constructed in a very substantial manner. There is about four times as much wood in it as in the average American casket, and it is wood of a much better quality than is employed for the cheaper grades of caskets in this country. The coffins are unusually heavy, and the four outer slabs of which they are made, are from six to eight inches wide. The logs are cut concave inside, as the picture would indicate. and little in the way of decorating or upholstering is done. There is none too much room inside, and the Chinaman is laid away in crowded quarters just as he lives in his sadly over-populated country or in his American "Chinatown." The poor "heathen Chinee" seems destined to be hampered for elbow room, not only in this vale of tears, but in the world beyond-a sad fate, indeed, for the |