Basanite is also known as Lydian stone or touchstone on account of its use for trying the purity of metals. Its value for this purpose depends on its hardness, peculiar grain and black color. Different alloys of gold give different colors on the stone which one soon learns to recognize, and jewelers become very skillful in judging of the fineness of gold by this test. Also if an object is plated, by giving it a few strokes on the stone the different color of the gold and base will be revealed. It is simply a black variety of crypto-crystalline quartz, differing from jasper in being tougher and of finer grain and from hornstone in not being splintery. Flint is likewise an opaque quartz of dull color. It differs from jasper in breaking with a deeply conchoidal fracture and a sharp cutting edge. It is also often slightly transparent and has a somewhat glassy luster. These properties have led to its extensive use by the Indians and by nearly all primitive peoples for the manufacture of weapons and implements. Hornstone is more brittle than flint and has a splintery rather than a conchoidal fracture. A number of other subvarieties of crypto-crystalline quartz occur, but they are not important. Oliver Cummings Farrington. MIDWINTER. The air is like a beryl, clean and clear, Intensified by gleaming points of blue. Sharp-outlined, distant sounds come ringing near And crisply pierce the brittle silence through. The sturdy trees that yester-eve were gray In dim and foggy veils, and half effaced By winter rain that compassed them, to-day Arise like knights in crystal armor laced. The stiff, brown-fibered weeds beside the walk Have pinned, with each dull spike, a shivered star. An icy chime is rung from every stalk To wandering step that clashes them ajar. The wood is bright as when the summer lost Her sun-gems in the deep, soft shadow-seas— Only the light is dagger-edged with frost, And breaks in spangles on the ice-mailed trees. —Hattie Whitney in The Ladies’ World. A CATASTROPHE IN HIGH LIFE. Tertius, as his name signifies, was the third Maltese cat to occupy a very warm place in the hearts of a certain pet-loving family that lived on a quiet, tree-shaded street in a beautiful Eastern city. His predecessors were both noted for their wonderful sagacity and great achievements, so he felt that he must improve all his opportunities if he was to keep up to their high standard. Just how they had obtained their reputation he did not know, and perhaps it was this ignorance that caused him to make his fatal mistake. The beautiful house in which he lived had a large veranda on one side, over which ran a grapevine, and in this grapevine a pair of robins, most unwisely, decided to build their nest. “It is a very beautiful spot,” said Mrs. Robin.