Canada is making extensive improvements in her seaports. At Halifax work is under way which will cost $10,000,000, while at St. John, New Brunswick, $8,000,000 is being spent. Levis, opposite Quebec, is building the largest dry dock in America. Much work is also being done at the Pacific coast ports. Finds Petrified Snake in Rock. While blasting some limestone rocks in the side of Stone Mountain, near Big Laurel, Va., the workmen found a petrified snake imbedded in the rocks. The snake was coiled as if making ready to spring at something, and is believed to have been a copperhead. Failures. Commercial failures in the United States last year were 8,344. Cossacks Rescue Little Girl. A little incident, told in Danish newspapers which have arrived in Chicago, shows that the Cossacks are not as cruel as they are sometimes depicted. Recently while advancing against a detachment of Turks, a company of Cossacks found a little girl, two years old, who had been deserted by her parents in their precipitate flight. They brought the little one to the headquarters of the regiment, where she received food and was made comfortable in every way. In the Greek Catholic Church in the village of Bardus the little foundling was baptized according to the orthodox ritual. The commander of the regiment and Princess Gelovana, wife of a member of the Duma, served as godparents of the child. The little girl received the name of Alexandre Donshaga, after the regiment known as Don Cossacks. The officers promised to contribute monthly toward the maintenance and education of this little “daughter of the regiment.” Girl in Soldier’s Uniform. People in the vicinity of Cooke’s Church, on Queen Street, in Toronto, at two-thirty in the afternoon were left wondering whether the Germans had landed in the city in such large numbers that the military authorities had found it necessary to mobilize a regiment of the fair sex to aid the soldiers in driving them back. The cause of the sensation was a pretty young lady named Clara Philip, who, by the terms of a wager she had made with a lady friend, had to walk down Mutual Street from Shuter to Queen Street dressed in full soldier’s uniform, for a box of chocolates. The young lady with curly hair peeping out under the service cap, looked bewitching in the uniform, although it was somewhat too large for her, and despite the fact that the heavy army boots were dispensed with for her own dainty pair of “threes.” “It certainly did feel funny walking down the street with some of the people turning up their noses at me and others convulsed in laughter, but I was determined to win the bet, and did,” said Miss Philip, after her sensational parade.