“These countries are making rapid progress in elementary and secondary education and in industrial education. Several of their universities enroll from one to 2,000 students each. The history of their countries is interesting, and they possess a rich and varied literature.” Earthquake Kills Twenty-three. According to a dispatch from Athens to the Exchange Telegraph Company, in London, twenty-three persons were killed and others were injured in the earthquake recently in Western Greece and the Ionian Islands. On the island of Santa Maura the earthquake caused strange convolutions of the earth’s surface. A mountain collapsed and crumbled away for a distance of nearly two miles, and the waters of the Ionian Sea covered 125 acres of the valley. New small mountains appeared at different points on the island. To Collect Farm Relics. F. A. Wirt, who teaches farm mechanics in the Kansas Agricultural College, is planning an interesting collection of machine relics for the college. The first mowing machine in Kansas will soon be on exhibit if his plan works out. He found the sickle bar of this machine reposing in a junk pile near Milford. He is looking for the rest of the machine, and hopes to assemble the different parts. The machine was taken to Kansas in 1850, and was used on the reservation at Fort Riley. It was so heavy that it required six government mules to pull it. The bar weighs 125 pounds and cuts a swath five feet wide. The guards are thirteen in number and are two inches longer than the guards that are used on more modern mowers. Another interesting relic is the hub of the cart used to haul the logs that were used in building the first Statehouse in Kansas. The hub is twenty-three inches long and eighteen inches in diameter. There are holes for sixteen spokes which were 5 by 11½ inches. The wheel was eight feet in diameter and required a tire four inches wide and three-quarters of an inch thick. The logs were suspended under the axle of the cart. The axle had a spindle 7¾ by 5 inches. Finds Needle in Chicken. When dressing a chicken for dinner, Mrs. Charles Wingate, of Albert Lea, Minn., felt something prick her hand as she was drawing the insides. She soon discovered what caused it. The fowl had swallowed--perhaps in meal--a needle, and the needle had penetrated the gizzard and the point was protruding about one-third of an inch. Once, she says, she found a needle in a growing cucumber. It was badly rusted. Buy War Motor Trucks. The Pierce-Arrow Motor Company, of Buffalo, N. Y., has received an order from the French government for 300 five-ton trucks. The order amounts to about $1,000,000. It is expected that it will be followed by others. The truck “tested out” to the satisfaction of the French army representatives at Bethlehem, Penn. Part of the French order goes also to the White Motor Company, of Cleveland. That company will make 200 five-ton trucks.