on
receipt of the price._

SOLUTION OF THE BOSSY PUZZLE.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.]

The Bossy Puzzle given in No. 23 of YOUNG PEOPLE is solved by relieving
the Bossy of her disfiguring black patches, and arranging them as in
Fig. 1. Fig. 2 shows the rustic group that the artist had in his mind
when he invented the puzzle. The only correct solution to this puzzle
that we have received was sent in by Eddie S. Hequembourg.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.]

OPTICAL TESTS.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.]

The eye is an organ which is very easily deceived, and needs constant
training to enable it to judge correctly of the relative proportions of
objects of different forms. Most of our readers are probably familiar
with the optical test of guessing the height of an ordinary stove-pipe
hat by measuring off the supposed height on the wall of a room. Those
who have not heard of it will find it interesting to try the experiment.
Take a stick, or walking-cane, and measure off on the wall of a room a
height to which you suppose a stove-pipe hat would reach if placed on
the floor immediately underneath, as represented in Fig. 1. Nine times
out of ten the point selected will be a great deal too high.

Another point in which the proportions of a hat are very deceptive is
this: The diameter, or distance across the crown, of a silk hat is
greater than the height of the crown of the hat from the brim. Most
people will be very positive that just the reverse is the case. We have
all heard that a horse's head is as long as a flour barrel, and felt
very much inclined _not_ to believe it, though such is the fact.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.]

[Illustration: Fig. 3.]

There is also an optical test which is little known, and far more
surprising: Take three tumblers of the same size, and place them in a
row on the table, as represented in Fig. 2; then withdraw the middle
tumbler, and request any one present to place it at such a distance on
the table from the other two tumblers--as represented in Fig. 3--that
the measurements from C to D and from E to F shall be the same as from A
to B. This test will prove very amusing at any small gathering. Each
person in turn tries his hand; the distance he guesses is marked off on
the table. Then the real distance is measured off, and the tumbler put
in its right place, when it will probably be found that every one has
fallen far short of the right measurement. In Fig. 3 we have only
represented t