Here is a nut for lovers of arithmetical riddles to crack at their leisure; we give it up: ‘The diamond wedding of Major-general Lennox and his wife was celebrated on Saturday, at their house in Kelvinside. The General was born in Scotland in the year 1727, and was married on the 2d of December 1882, in the city of Cawnpore, to Mademoiselle de Laval, born in 1806, who had arrived at the French settlements in India with her parents from Mauritius, when that island passed in 1810 from the hands of the French into the possession of the English. General Lennox served in India for forty-three years. He went through the Cabul wars of 1839-43; assisted at the capture of Ghuznee, Khelat, Kandahar, Cabul, Gwalior, and was present at the battle of Sobraon. With his wife and youngest daughter, he was miraculously preserved during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. General Lennox retired from the service in 1860.’ After that, there is nothing surprising in a certain baronet being ‘born in Paris in 1844, and married in 1827.’ Reporting the death of a cricketer from taking carbolic acid in mistake for black draught, an Irish newspaper said: ‘The shopman filled the draught bottle out of a carbolic acid jar, instead of that marked “Senna Mixture,” though his orders were never to do so unless under supervision.’ Anticipating the death of a whale exhibited at the inaptly named Royal Aquarium at Westminster, a London paper observed: ‘It will make excellent porpoise-skin boots.’ Relating a chase after a native robber, an Indian paper said: ‘A Bheel outlaw, fleeing for the jungle, saw his comrades captured one by one, then followed his horse and his wife, and the wretched man at last found that his only companion was his mother-in-law. He thereupon gave way to despair, and was taken by the police without further trouble.’ Noticing the meeting of a new organisation called the Grand State Defenders, a New York journal said the members were bound by a solemn oath ‘never to leave the state, except in the case of an invasion by a foreign foe.’ In each case the satiric insinuation is plain enough. Whether it is intentional or not, would require some skill at thought-reading to decide.