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144 little posers. He is explaining that since he last had occasion to take down those three volumes of a learned book from their place on his shelves a bookworm has actually bored a hole straight through from the first page to the last. He says that the leaves are together three inches thick in each volume, and that every cover is exactly one-eighth of an inch thick, and he asks how long a tunnel had the industrious worm to bore in preparing his new tube railway. Can you tell him?

421.—A CHAIN PUZZLE.

is a puzzle based on a pretty little idea first dealt with by the late Mr. Sam Loyd. A man had nine pieces of chain, as shown in the illustration. He wanted to join these fifty links into one endless chain. It will cost a penny to open any link and twopence to weld a link together again, but he could buy a new endless chain of the same character and quality for 2s. 2d. What was the cheapest course for him to adopt? Unless the reader is cunning he may find himself a good way out in his answer.

422.—THE SABBATH PUZZLE.

come across the following little poser in an old book. I wonder how many readers will see the author's intended solution to the riddle.

Christians the week's first day for Sabbath hold;

The Jews the seventh, as they did of old;

The Turks the sixth, as we have oft been told.

How can these three, in the same place and day,

Have each his own true Sabbath? tell, I pray.

423.—THE RUBY BROOCH. annals of Scotland Yard contain some remarkable cases of jewel robberies, but one of the most perplexing was the theft of Lady Littlewood's rubies. There have, of course, been many greater robberies in point of value, but few so artfully conceived. Lady Littlewood, of Romley Manor, had a beautiful but rather eccentric heirloom in the form of a ruby brooch. While staying at her town house early in the eighties she took the jewel to a shop in Brompton for some slight repairs.

"A fine collection of rubies, madam," said the shopkeeper, to whom her ladyship was a stranger.

"Yes," she replied; but curiously enough I have never actually counted them. My mother once pointed out to me that if you start from the centre and count up one line, along the outside and down the next line, there are



always eight rubies. So I should always know if a stone were missing."

Six months later a brother of Lady