These beads were made from the single joints of the articulated stems of Encrinites. The central perforation permitted them to be strung. From the fancied resemblance of this perforation to a cross, they were formerly used as rosaries, and associated with the name of St. Cuthbert— "On a rock by Lindisfarm St. Cuthbert sits and toils to frame The sea-born beads that bear his name." _Eating Animals that have Died a Natural Death._ The gypsies in Europe are very peculiar in their eating, and are, perhaps, the only race who will eat animals that have died a natural death. "Dead pig" is their favorite delicacy; and one of the most typical and most amusing of the Rommany ballads which Borrow has collected, celebrates the trick formerly so common among them of poisoning a pig in order the next day to beg its carcass for food. _Embalmed in Honey._ The ancients put dead bodies into honey to preserve them from putrefaction. The body of Agesipolis, King of Sparta, who died in Macedonia, was sent home in honey. The faithless Cleomenes caused the head of Archonides to be put in honey, and had it always placed near him when he was deliberating upon any affair of great importance, in order to fulfil the oath he had made to undertake nothing without consulting the head. The body of the Emperor Justin II. was embalmed in honey. The wish of Democritus to be buried in honey is a confirmation of the practice. _Perfumed Butter._ We are told by Plutarch that a Spartan lady paid a visit to Berenice, the wife of Dejotarus, and that the one smelled so much of sweet ointment and the other of butter that neither of them could endure the other. Was it customary, therefore, at that period, for the ladies to perfume themselves with butter? _Wine at Two Millions a Bottle._ Some years ago wine graced the table of the King of Wurtemburg, which had been deposited in a cellar at Bremen two centuries and a half before. One large case of the wine, containing five oxhoft of two hundred and forty bottles, cost five hundred rix-dollars in 1624. Including the expenses of keeping up the cellar, and of the contributions, interest of the amount, and interest upon interest, an oxhoft costs at the present time 555,657,640 rix-dollars, and consequently a bottle is worth 2,723,812 rix-dollars. The fact illustrates the operation of interest, if it does not show the cost of the luxury.—_Bombaugh._ _Opal of Nonius._ The ancients valued opals very highly. The Roman senator, Nonius, preferred exile to giving up an opal to Mark Antony. This opal was still to be seen in the days of Pliny, who ascribed to it a value of more than $500,000. _Children's Day in Japan._