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Round Table Chapters.
No. 720.--The Nathan Hale Chapter, of Philadelphia. Pa. Blair Baker, Thomas Bleint, Howard B. Rote. Section E, No. 5, Girard College, Philadelphia.
No. 721.--The Rugby Chapter, of New York city. Officers are N. J. Spiro, W. W. Gleason, H. F. Small. Other members are R. Mantell, N. Marluff, F. B. Engler, H. C. Moore, R. Heather, L. Peabody. Chapter address, H. F. Small, 54 West 85th Street.
No. 722.--The King Arthur Chapter, of Urbana, Ill. Its color is white, and its emblem white rose and clover. Marjorie Forbes and Ethel Ricker, Urbana.
No. 723.--The Thespis Dramatic Chapter, of Chicago, Ill. Lola Lewis, Laura Welch. Other members are Marie Rosenfield, Eleanor Lydon. Chapter address, 4454 Oakenwald Avenue.
No. 724.--The John Burroughs Chapter, of Winsted, Conn. Elizabeth Kennard, Ruth E. Whiting. Other members are Mabel Churchill, Grace A.
Smith, Grace and Mary Kennard. It is a natural history Chapter, and devotes spare moments to the study of birds, trees, and flowers. Ruth E.
Whiting, Winsted.
No. 725.--The Lincoln Chapter, of Glasgow, Mont. Roy E. Hall, Wallace Kelleson. John Sherry; Walter Fryburg, Glasgow.
No. 726.--The Margaret Sangster Chapter, of Germania, N. J. Augusta Guenther, Christine and Julia Gaupp; Christine Gaupp, Germania.
No. 727.--The Frances H. Burnett Chapter, of Minneapolis, Minn. It is organized for the encouragement of goodly fellowship and improvement. It desires to communicate with Knights and Ladies of the Round Table living in Minneapolis. Its officers are Fred H. Stevens, Lottie Kluge, Myrtle Jones; Florence Kimball, 3600 Bloomington Avenue.
Lovers of Play Journalism.
Odd, isn"t it, how everybody loves to see what he writes in print? The oldest editor in America is not free from this vanity, or whatever one may call it. So young persons who play at making small papers are in good company. Besides, they are engaged in what affords them experience they can get in no other way. Three excellent amateur papers reach the Table: the _Amateur Collector_, R. T. Hale and F. W. Beale, editors and publishers, 23 Federal Street, Newburyport, Ma.s.s.; _Our Young People_, Robinson Bros. & Co., Box 255, Brunswick, Me.; and the _Little Magnet_, Louis O. Brosie, editor, 3405 Butler Street, Pittsburg, Pa. All three are splendid examples of the editor"s and printer"s "arts." Here are some members who are interested in journalism, want sample copies, and can contribute morsels: Waldemar Young, 174 C Street, Salt Lake City, Utah; J. T. Delano, Jun., 12 White Street, Newport R. I.; James F.
Bowen, 36 St. James Avenue, Boston, Ma.s.s.; and Samuel T. Bush, 1104 East 15th Street, East Oakland, Cal.
R. C. Megrue asks what it costs to start and run a small paper. That depends on how large it is, and whether you have a press of your own.
The cost is considerable per copy if you go to a regular printing-office, because the edition is rarely above two or three hundred copies. The charge in one case we know of was $7 per hundred.
Will not R. T. Hale kindly give us a morsel on the subject? Louis O.
Brosie and Clement F. or Arthur L. Robinson may give us morsels too.
Please tell the Table about the cost, size, and mention some of the other difficulties. Never mind the fun of the thing. Pleasures take care of themselves.
What a Copyright Is.
A copyright, dear sir Harry, is a legal right to a copy. Suppose you and your friend Delano, four doors away, should publish a book that proved as popular as--well, let us say _Trilby_, or _Ben-Hur_, or _Uncle Tom"s Cabin_ did. If you send out a few copies and put upon them no legal proprietary mark, other persons seeing the demand could and would take your work, make copies of it, sell them, pocket the money, and give you nothing for what perhaps cost you a great deal of effort. If, however, you observe the legal forms, and your book proves saleable, other persons are prevented from making additional copies. Those who want copies must buy them from you. The legal form is very simple. Before you publish the book, paper, print, or whatever it is, you mail two copies to the Librarian of Congress, Washington, with $1. He returns to you a paper, duly signed, setting forth the fact that for a certain number of years that article belongs to you. You state this fact on each copy published, and then the profit is yours, and the law protects you in it.
Some South African Birds.
Following the example of other members of the Round Table, I thought I would write and tell you about some of our birds.
My brothers and I have just been talking about the blue hawk. It is not a particularly large bird, and is grayish-blue in color. It is comparatively harmless, its chief prey being rats and mice. Its nest looks like a pile of sticks roughly laid together, but at the bottom of the nest it is very soft. This is the description my little cousin gives of its eggs: "If you were to take a pure white egg and rub it all over with blood, leaving a few white specks, it would be just like a blue-hawk"s egg." In shape it is round, and the color is really a dirty red. The bird"s call sounds very much like that of a cross fretful baby.
Another peculiar bird here is the hammerhop. It is a large brown bird, and has a crest upon its head which looks like a hammer, hence the name. It preys upon the frogs. It makes a tremendous nest in the shape of a hut on the top of a high rock. I am told that it plasters the nest on the inside.
One of our prettiest birds is the gilded cuckoo or diedrich. The color of its back is green, and looks as if a lot of bronze dust had been sprinkled on it. Its breast is white spotted with brown.
Like other cuckoos, it lays its eggs in other birds" nests. The color of the eggs is pure white. It has a very musical call--"dee-dee-dee-diedrich."
The aasvogel is a species of vulture. It is of a dirty white color, and has no feathers at all on its neck. Almost as soon as an animal dies the sky is darkened by aasvogels flying to prey upon the body. The leader or king perches upon it first, while his followers sit round waiting until he is finished. He claims the eyes as his portion, as a rule. As soon as he has satisfied his hunger he flies away, leaving his followers to have their share.
The aasvogel builds his nest of sticks on the top of some inaccessible krautz (precipice). The eggs are white, I believe, spotted with brown. I would like to correspond with Ladies of the Round Table in different parts of the world.
ISMA FINCHAM.
ROYDON, QUEENSTOWN, CAPE COLONY, SOUTH AFRICA.
Do Your Rabbits Ever Drink?
Mr. Chase says rabbits drink. I think there are two sides to that question. I know a boy who has a dozen rabbits and not one ever drinks. I have two and neither ever drink. Another friend had two that he kept seven years. They drank milk, and, at rare times, water. I believe that rabbits can be trained either way. What is the experience of others?
VICTOR R. GAGE.
VINELAND.
A Florida Gopher.