There is a point near the famous Stony cave, in the Catskill mountains, where ice may be found on any day in the year. This locality is locally known as the Notch, and is walled in on all sides by steep mountains, some of which are more than three thousand feet high.

In Hawaii, one of the Sandwich islands, there is a spot called the Rock of Refuge. If a criminal reaches this rock before capture he is safe so long as he remains there. Usually his family supply him with food until he is able to make his escape, but he is never allowed to return to his own tribe.

The " Iron Chancellor" was the name applied to Prince Otto von Bismarck, of Prussia (1813), Chancellor of the North German Confederation, July 14, 1867. He retired from public life in 1890. He was also known as "The Man of Blood and Iron," from an expression in one of his speeches.

Mount Vernon, memorable as the residence and the burial-place of George Washington, is on the right bank of the Potomac, in Virginia, fifteen miles below Washington. In 1856 the mansion and surrounding property were saved from the auctioneer's hammer and secured as a national possession.

The island of St. Helena, where Napoleon was held a prisoner, has an area of forty-seven square miles. Its population is more than 4,000, but 200 emigrants leave it annually. The whale fisheries there are under American management and amount to about $90,000 a year.

The Lunatic oil spring of Wheeler Canyon, Cal., at the time of a new moon begins to flow oil. When the moon is at its full the spring yields three barrels of oil a day. The quantity decreases with the waning of the moon, and ceases when the moon's last quarter is past.

Among the noted pseudonyms of history Cid Campeador is the name, or rather names, by which the most renowed Spanish warrior of the eleventh century is best known. He was a Castilian noble, whose real name was Rodrigo, and was ancester of the royal house of Castile.

Covent Garden, originally the garden of the Abbot of Westminster, is a spacious square in London, celebrated for a great market held within it of fruit, vegetables and flowers. The square was formed about 1631 and is famous from its connection with the modern history of London.

The covered passage-way which connects the palace of the doge in Venice with the State prisons has been called "the Bridge of Sighs," because the condemned passed over it from the judgment hall to the place of execution. Hood has a poem called " The Bridge of Sighs."

Delft, one of the most ancient towns of South Holland, is situated on the Schie, eight miles Nw. of Rotterdam by rail, and is intersected by numerous canals. Delft was noted from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century for its delft-ware, but has now entirely lost its high reputation for this manufacture.

Thread needle street, in the city of London, got its name from the Merchant Tailors' Company, whose present hall is built on an estate acquired by them as early as 1331. It leads from Bishopsgate street to the Bank of England, which hence is often called the " Old Lady in Thread needle Street."

Abydos is a town of Asia Minor, situated on the Hellespont. Tradition places here the story of Hero and Leander; history tells that this was where Xerxes led his vast army over the Hellespont on a bridge of boats; and Byron here swam the Hellespont and rendered it ever famous by his "Bride of Abydos."

D'Aguesseau, the great French chancellor, observing that Mme. D'Aguesseau always delayed ten or twelve minutes before she came down to dinner, began and completed a learned book of three volumes (large quarto) solely during these "waste minutes." This work went through several editions (1668-1751).

The Straits of Babelmandeb, the passage from the Persian Gulf into the Red Sea, are called the Gate of Tears by the Arabs. The channel is only about twenty miles wide, is rocky and very dangerous for passage in rough weather. It received its melancholy name from the number of shipwrecks that occurred there.

Spanish Main [i.e., main-land), a name given to the north coast of South America, from the Orinoco to Darien, and to the shores of the former Central American provinces of Spain contiguous to the Caribbean Sea. The name, however, is often popularly applied to the Caribbean Sea itself, and in this sense occurs frequently in connection with the buccaneers,

The convivial Toby Fillpot was a thirsty old soul, who "among jolly topers bore off the bell." It chanced as in dog-days he sat boosing in his arbor, that he died "full as big as a Dorchester butt." His body turned to clay, and out of the clay a brown jug was made, sacred to friendship, mirth, and mild ale.

Charles XII. of Sweden (1697-1710) was known as the "brilliant madman." He compelled the Danes to make peace, dethroned the king of Poland and waged war with Russia for a time with success; but, being defeated by Czar Peter the Great at Pultowa, Sweden fell from her high estate as a first-class power.

The Falls of Niagara eat back the cliff at the rate of about one foot a year. In this way a deep cleft has been cut right back from Queens-town, for a distance of seven miles, to the place where the falls now are. At this rate it has taken more than thirty-five thousand years for that channel of seven miles to be made.

The most extensive mines in the world are those of Freyburg, Saxony. They were begun in the twelfth century, and in 1835 the galleries, taken collectively, had reached the unprecedented length of 123 miles. A new gallery, begun in 1838, had reached a length of eight miles at the time of the census of 1878.

The Vendome Column in Paris was erected by Napoleon I. (1806), in the Place Vendome, to commemorate his successful campaign in Germany; pulled down by the Communists (1871), but restored by the National Assembly (1874). It is one hundred and thirty-two feet high, with a statue of Napoleon I. at the top.