In Mecklenburg, Northern Germany, as I'm told, fuel is scarce and dear: and, as the peasants are very poor, they take an odd way to save wood. It is this: Each village has one or two large ovens in which the baking for a number of people can be done at one time. These ovens look from a little distance as if they were small hillocks, and they are built in the open fields. Why they are placed away from the village I was not told; but I would like to know. They have very much the look of underground dairy-cellars, and are built of great stones covered with turf. One or two men can go into an oven quite comfortably. In each oven a great fire is made, to heat the stones, and when these are hot enough the fire and ashes are swept out, and the bread is put in to bake. Then a stone door is put over the mouth until it is time to take out the loaves. There is no chimney or opening, and the heat stays in well--even for some time after the bread has been taken out; so that it is no strange thing for a belated traveler to use the shelter or warmth of one of these empty ovens on some cold and stormy night when far from his home. So much for fire-places out-of-doors. Now for a word about PERSIAN STOVES. I've just heard of the queer way the Persians have of keeping themselves warm in their houses during cold weather. They place in the middle of the room a pan of burning charcoal under a sort of table or frame which holds up a large wadded quilt that reaches the floor on all sides, like a tent. This must look almost like keeping the fire warm. Then the family sit around the droll stove, with their legs and arms under the quilt; and when they wish to go to sleep, they put themselves half under the quilt, and so keep nice and warm until the morning. That's easy enough for Persians to do, because, as I'm told, they never undress at night, but just roll themselves in coverings and lie down anywhere. Perhaps you would not find such arrangements in your homes quite as comfortable as soft beds and cozy blankets in well-warmed rooms. However, the Persian winter is not as cold as ours, I suppose. LIGHT THROUGH METAL. Here's an odd thing! My wise old wide-awake friend the owl tells me that a Yale College professor has found out a way to make a layer of metal so thin that it will readily show the color of a light-beam sent through it. That professor will be showing us how to see through a mill-stone next, may be. GOOD AS AN EXPERIMENT.