A National Forest is Lost. Lost: A national forest. Last seen somewhere in Michigan. Three thousand dollars reward. Finder please hold until called for. During the debate on the agricultural appropriation bill in the House, at Washington, D. C., the reading clerk was interrupted by Representative Fordney, of Michigan, when he read the item appropriating $3,000 for the care of the Michigan national forest. “Mr. Chairman,” said Mr. Fordney, “I’d just like to inquire of the chairman of the committee where that forest is located.” Chairman Lever confessed his ignorance, and no one else could enlighten the Michigan man. The item was left in the bill, however, for fear the forest might be discovered and left without provision. Figure Seven His Lucky Number. Calvin Ross, real-estate dealer, of Shelbyville, Ind., has just celebrated his seventy-seventh birthday. Referring to his anniversary, Ross said: “I was born at seven p. m. on the seventh day of the week and the twenty-seventh day of the month in 1837. I was the seventh son and the seventh and last child of my family.” He is convinced that he will live to be eighty-seven years old. He says he has never been sick a day in his life. Poor Man Proves Right to Patent. After having been scoffed at for years while he struggled to achieve his ambition and never once lost hope, Albert S. Janin has been declared inventor of the hydroaëroplane, or flying boat. The decision was given against Glenn H. Curtiss, the famous aëroplane builder, who had heretofore been credited with the creation of the hydroaëroplane, by the examiners in chief of the patent office in Washington, the appeal board in all questions of patents. Janin, a poor carpenter, living in a suburb of New York City, has for years skimped his wife and seven children in the necessities of their daily life, for the sake of carrying out his idea. He lost friends on account of it; they pointed to their heads as he passed and said “wheels.” The neighbors and the capitalists whom he tried to persuade to finance his dream repeatedly told him he was going crazy. “It all came from the flying fishes and the sea gulls,” said Janin. “I was what is called a cadet representing the government on a mail ship in 1899. I was detailed to a steamer running down South and used to stand on the bridge and watch the flying fish rise in an arc from the surface of the sea. I used to say: ‘If a fish can do that, I can make a machine do the same stunt.’ That’s why I got the idea of the water machine first, while the others worked on the land-machine idea. “The notion about warping the wings I got from the sea gulls that were always sailing around us. So I began to make drawings of flying boats. Right away my friends said: ‘Crazy.’” The difficulties through which Janin has made his way are hinted at in the decision of the examiners in chief. Here, for example, is an excerpt from their report: