17 JULY 1886, Page 26

A Tangled Tale. By Lewis Carroll. (Macmillan.) —This inexhaustible humourist,

who makes fun even out of mathematics, proposes various problems in arithmetic, as, e.g., under the title of "Chelsea Buns," the following :—" Say that 70 per cent. [of Chelsea Pensioners] have lost an eye, 75 per cent, an ear, 80 per cent, an arm, 85 per cent, a leg—that'll do it beautifully. Now, my dear [the question is put by Mad Mathesis to her much-enduring niece and pupil, Clara], what per-centage, at least, must have lost all four ?" He then banters his correspondents (the problems were originally proposed in the Monthly Packet) about their answers. The right answer is ten, and is reached by adding up the wounds, and dividing the total with one hundred. Next to the "Chelsea Buns" comes the geographical puzzle, "Where does the reckoning change from Wednesday, say, to Thursday," for the traveller who circumnavigates the globe, and in so doing loses or gains a day, as the case may be ? There are ten "knots," each con- taining several problems, and the answers to correspondents are often very amusing.