The death rate after the age of forty is increasing annually in Chicago and other large cities in spite of sanitary modes of living and greater protection against communicable diseases. The expectation of life after forty years is less than it was thirty years ago. In a warning sounded by the public-health service, it is explained this alarming condition is due largely to the increased prevalence of the diseases of degeneration. The muscles, arteries, and other organs of those who, as a result of sedentary occupation or indolence, take too little exercise degenerate. The advice of the public-health experts is to take exercise. Baby Chokes on Prune Seed. A prune seed, which lodged in his throat, caused the death of Frederick Pellegrini, three-year-old son of John Pellegrini, of Denver, Col. The lad choked to death while a physician was en route to the house from the County Hospital. She Had Right, Says Court. The proper way to end an engagement to wed was much discussed in the court of Judge Frederickson, in Los Angeles, Cal. Mrs. Grace Gore contended that she was within her rights when she swallowed the diamond ring presented by Luther Buntin, but that the pugilistic retort of Buntin was too much. The court agreed, and fined Buntin thirty dollars. The story of the courtship was a “thriller.” The two met at a dance. Each thought the other single. Buntin, a street-car conductor, took the pretty young woman for frequent street-car rides. One night he gave her the ring. A few nights later Isadore Gore, in the rôle of irate husband, pounced on him and sent him to the hospital for two weeks. When Buntin emerged from bandages and plaster, he sought Mrs. Gore and demanded the ring. She refused, swallowed it, and he admits his reply to a merry laugh was a series of stinging slaps. Double Chicken is Hatched. A chicken hatched in Big Piney, Mo., at the home of Mrs. Maud Vaughn, had four legs, four wings, and two tails. It had but one head, but the body was like that of what might be called a double chicken. It could not walk. Its head was between its two bodies. Students of Baby Culture. Not only may Los Angeles, Cal., girls learn to cook and sew in the public schools, but they may become students of baby culture with real live, gurgling, wriggling babies to practice on. A course in the care and nursing of infants has been added as a permanent feature of the curriculum of the Polytechnic night school, and the first class, numbering thirty-five pupils, includes a dozen young mothers and prospective brides as well as younger girls. Bird is Killed by Golf Ball. While “teeing off” at golf, S. C. Pettit, of Topeka, Kan., brought down a sparrow with the flying ball. The bird was dead when it reached the ground. It is said by golfers that such an incident has occurred only once before. A professional golfer on a large course in New England once killed a bird with a golf ball. Bird Rings Burglar Alarm.