P sight by the methods taken to induce a temporary inflammation in the eye. The historian Robertson mentions a case which, whether true or not, is, at all events, physiologically possible. He says that Pope Julius III. feigned sickness to avoid holding a consistory, and in order to give the greater colour of probability to his illness, he not only confined himself to his apartment, but changed his diet and usual mode of life. By persisting in this plan, however, he contracted a real disease, from which he died in a few days. THE SHERWOOD FORESTER. IN a low, but pretty thatched cottage, parish of Sutton-Ashfield, within the verge of Sherwood Forest, dwelt, in the early part of the present century, a grave and respectable member of the society of Friends, by name Samuel Hall, who was a tradesman and farmer on a moderate footing. Samuel married a widow with two children, and they had several more, one of whom, Spencer Timothy Hall, born in 1812, we desire to say something about, as being a good specimen of a man who, without any pretension, rises by dint of perseverance to celebrity as a littérateur. Unfortunately for himself, his name bears such a resemblance to some other notabilities, that for distinction's sake he prefers to call himself the Sherwood Forester, by which designation, as in the case of the Ettrick Shepherd, he is generally known. What with old Samuel's moral and intellectual culture, and the kindly solicitude of his wife-a 'warm, bright, stout, active little woman'--the family were well brought up. As regards their son Spencer, he was indebted to a half-sister, Hannah, and other sources, for a love of reading and much useful knowledge, which diverted him towards literary pursuits. Getting through his school-days, and not caring much for rustic occupations, the youth resolved to strike out for himself, which was rather a daring thing to do; and one cold night in January 1829, he, unknown to any one, set out to push his fortune, with a clean shirt and pair of stockings, with one or two books in his wallet, and thirteenpence-halfpenny in his pocket. Sleeping where it might happen, and one night lying sleepless altogether with a snow-drift for bed-fellow, toil-worn and hungry, he fixed at last on Nottingham. Here, something after the manner of the late Horace Greeley, he put himself to learn the business of a compositor; and so, in a struggling hopeful kind of way, studying and improving his mind at spare intervals of labour, he passed six years of his life. His services and general conduct during the first year having given satisfaction to his master, he was taken into the house as one of the family; and his daily duties being not only heavy, but sometimes very protracted, his reading and writing could only be accomplished with any effect in the night. For this purpose, he sat up, long after others had gone to bed, by which means he acquired an insight into various philosophies, and was able to peruse the works of the English poets. At length, this period of probation coming to an end, the Sherwood Forester after a time is found superintending two newspapers, printed in one office at York. As a first independent literary effort, he published the Forester's Offering, a volume of prose and poetry, which he set in type himself, most of it without the intervention of manuscript. Soon afterwards he shared in the editorship of the Sheffield Iris, a well-known newspaper established by James Montgomery, but from which he had retired. While in Sheffield, Hall was offered the resident governorship of the Hollis Hospital, a philanthropic institution which fell in with his fancies; and in enjoying this post he for some years lost no opportunity of prosecuting the study of physical and mental science. With strong poetic tendencies, a robust frame, and an extraordinary desire to be useful, the Sherwood Forester, at twenty-nine years of age, was induced to become a lecturer on mesmerism, in which, by visiting the principal cities in England and Scotland, and at length residing in London, flocked to by crowds, he gained considerable note. These were the palmy days of (now Dr) Hall. Popular institutions insisted on hearing and seeing what he could demonstrate. His poor mother who was dead and gone could not enjoy the pleasure of seeing her son the hero of a platform, but the venerable old Quaker father was still in life, and although not given to vanity, had the satisfaction of sitting near his son one evening when experimenting before three thousand people. It was during these delightfully popular perambulations that the Sherwood Forester was brought in contact with eager philosophical inquirers in all parts of the country, and with his literary tastes was able to write not only several volumes on different themes, but a variety of papers, which he has latterly collected and published under the title of Biographical Sketches of Remarkable People.* The volume in which these sketches appear is, in fact, a miscellany of reminiscences, abounding in graphic pictures of conditions of society fast fleeting away; the whole shewing a considerable appreciation of character. Among the persons of whom notices are given, are Dr Samuel Brown, Miss Mitford, the fifth Duke of Rutland, the poets Bloomfield and Clare, George Combe, Liebig, Professor Wilson, the late Earl of Carlisle, Ebenezer Elliott, and Robert Owen, with all of whom he had less or more formed an intimacy, as well as many others. Born in a quarter of the world noted for stocking-weavers, the author gives us a glimpse of families great in this department of art, but not less great in other branches of knowledge. Such, in an especial degree, were the Whiteheads Sherwood Forest men-one of whom, John, besides being clever at his trade, distinguished himself as a Baptist minister; while Joseph, his son, 'solved most abstruse mathematical problems when at work in his stocking-frame; scanned the remote heavens night by night with a telescope; made a complete orrery from Ferguson's printed descriptions, without having himself ever seen one; and died while yet young, perhaps a martyr to his studies. Of this remarkable family of stockingweavers, however, Matthew took the lead, not only as a mechanical genius, but for his general intelligence and benevolence. Matthew appears to have been a really good Samaritan, but we must leave the Sherwood Forester in his garrulous way to delineate his character. * No man in the neighbourhood better underBiographical Sketches of Remarkable People, &c. By Dr Spencer T. Hall, the Sherwood Forester. Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. 1873. London: To return to the subject of the present notice : at the climax of his popularity, and when he was engaged to lecture at Windsor, and to visit Russia, for which country his passage had been already taken, he was for some time disabled by a spinal complaint. Rather unpleasant this; but, as we shall see, things did not turn out so ill after all. In mesmerism, or animal magnetism, as it is sometimes called, there was, with all its wild pretensions, a thread of truth, which is susceptible of being turned to good account. The belief that, by means of certain passes of the hands, a person could be thrown into a mesmeric sleep, was only a mistake to this extent-that the sleep was not superinduced by the passes, but by the riveted attention of the person operated on. In other words, the nervous system of the patient becomes lulled by fixing his mind on a particular object-say, a cork held over his eyes, or a wafer stuck on the wall, and is thus thrown into a profound slumber, when perhaps all ordinary medical appliances have failed to produce sleep. To the late Mr Braid of Manchester belongs the credit of having demonstrated that such, under the designation of hypnotism, is to a large extent the true explanation of what is popularly known as mesmerism. From the careful analysis of a large number of experiments, Mr Braid was led to the conclusion, that by a continual fixation of the mental and visual eye upon an object, with absolute repose of body and general quietude, a feeling of stupor supervenes which renders the patient pliable in the hands of the operator. As the experiment succeeds with the blind, he considered that it is not so much the optic, as the sentient, motor, and sympathetic nerves through which the impression is made.' stood the anatomy and physiology of a stockingframe or a clock, or could more readily take one to pieces, clean, repair, and put it together again, than he. He proved that he could also have been just as clever in building or gardening, or anything else that might have fallen in the way of his duty, had it so happened. And, to this hour, it is to me marvellous how much he contrived to do of these things in his leisure hours, for poor people, without fee or reward save the luxury of doing it. Much of the time that his neighbours passed in political or polemical gossip-and there was no lack of either in Windmill Lane-he would pass in setting right the clocks or looms of those who had small skill and less means of payment. Yet was he very sociable, and never happier than when in conversation on peculiar topics; and there was a fine air of originality, sometimes of piquancy, in his talk. I remember once his having been to hear a noted preacher in favour of a doctrine with which he had no sympathy. On his returning, we asked him what he thought of the sermon. "Why," he replied, "what could you expect of a man who tried to make good hose with bad cotton?" But his ready-wittedness seemed to find much better exercise in action than in talk. Hence, on opening his door one cold winter morning, when all the landscape was clad in snow, and not a single dark object was to be seen except a shivering negro, who had just left a common fodging-house without breakfast, and was on his way to the next village, Matthew invited him in. His good and kindly wife, whom all who knew her called, with a tone of respectful familiarity, " Nanny Whitehead," was preparing the family breakfast of milk-porridge and bread. Nine empty basins were on the table awaiting its preparation; but when it was poured into them Matthew asked her to place a tenth. This done, he went to the workshop door and gave the customary call to "breakfast," when the young people, rushing in, were startled by the sight of the black stranger at the fireside. With scarcely a word, Matthew now went to his own basin, and pointing to the poor, hungry guest, put for him spoonful into the basin that was empty. The hint was caught in a moment, and suit was followed by each in turn; but when they had all contributed, the tenth basin was not yet filled; whereupon they each contributed half-a-spoonful more; and the grateful black added to their pleasure by getting as good a meal as the rest. Some coppers With this downcome, as we may call it, to the were then collected for him in like manner, and wonders of mesmerism, there is not a little to be the stranger went on his way rejoicing.' Besides said in favour of a process by which an operator such occasional practical beneficence, Matthew of kindly feeling, possessing abundant nervous luxuriated in an equally benign religious faith, energy, is able, through the effects of hypnotism, which he wished others to entertain. To this end to communicate the blessing of sleep to any one he would sometimes go to a printer with a piece of who, from bodily infirmity, is deprived of that manuscript and a small sum of money in his hand, salutary condition. In this view of the matter, saying: I should not like you to hurt yourself by the craze about mesmerism thirty to forty years working at too low a charge; but some day when since has been a good thing in the main. Stripped you are not otherwise busy, put this writing in of those occult properties which, by a mistaken print, and throw off as many as you can easily notion, almost allied it to magic, animal magnetism afford for this small sum of money. When the becomes a rational branch of therapeutics, and work was done, he never failed to add something may, in a certain class of cases, with all proper more to the printer's charge, and then gave the caution, be employed as a remedial agent. We excerpts away where he thought they would do most are not aware, however, that so far it meets with good. So many other pleasant traits are given of general acceptance, nor are we sure that the Sherthe family, that we echo the words of their chron-wood Forester will admit the accuracy of our icler: Brave, generous, noble Whiteheads! It is such men who give a stamina to the sub-middle class of English society. one Imagination is of course an important factor in the phenomena, and the weaker the mental system of the patient, the more easily are his or her feelings influenced. The old saying, that 'conceit can kill and conceit can cure,' is not devoid of truth., A credulous person can actually bring on a complaint of which he has a particular dread. Taking up a fancy that the beating of his heart is too rapid, he may really make the pulsation quicker, and seriously compromise his health. The best advice, therefore, that can be given, is for people to lay aside idle fancies about internal disorganisationordinarily taking no heed either of heart or stomach-and, if need be, trusting exclusively to the counsels of the physician. explanations. With the vivid sentiments of a poet, he embraced the mesmeric doctrines in all their pristine integrity, and now, as we believe, e brings them to bear in the medical practice which he has adopted as a profession at Burnley, in a rural part of Lancashire. Whether right or wrong in his beliefs, is of little consequence, provided he is able to assuage human suffering. One does not often hear of a compositor turning doctor, and accordingly there is the more merit in any success which he has achieved. Nor, as we judge from his volume of miscellanies, has he abandoned the muses. Penning verses and other literary trifles --all breathing a singularly genial spirit-he declines very composedly into the vale of years; furnishing a good example of the position which a hard-working youth, emulous in well-doing, has it in his power to attain. We conclude by quoting one of the Sherwood Forester's observations, worthy of universal circulation: Besides being taught the great lesson of circumstances, that every act and every word, dishonest or insincere, must inevitably defeat its own intent, I deeply appreciate and try to practise that beautiful sentiment of John Galt, "that whenever we do an act of justice or kindness to another, it is the benevolence of Heaven directing us to achieve some good for ourselves.” ' W. C. WONDERS OF THE ATMOSPHERE. THE remarkable book of which we are about to speak-L'Atmosphère, by M. Flammarion. is in the Parisian edition an encyclopædical volume; and even in the English one, edited by Mr Glaisher, where some excision has been had recourse to, it is a huge, though handsome volume. Full of pictures, too, of a scientific sensational kind -one of them a lunar landscape that might illustrate a goblin story; another of the aurora borealis tinted in rainbow hues-it is especially difficult to do justice to this book in a mere notice. We can only hope that what we have to say of it will induce those of our readers who have money in their purses to get it for themselves. The publishers have been wise in their choice of an English editor; for Mr Glaisher is one of the very few men of science who has succeeded in making his favourite studies popular in the sense of attractive and interesting; and yet even he is obliged to leave some of the numerous subjects which M. Flammarion ventilates in his breezy way, much the same as he found them, so far as that very ordinary person 'the general reader' is concerned. From the chapter entitled 'the Optical Phenomena of the Air,' for instance, the general reader will rise, if we are not much mistaken, a little dazzled, as if he saw sparks, and be glad to refresh himself with a look at the chromo-lithographs of 'Summer' and Autumn,' which have the advantage of being familiar, before venturing upon the Isothermal Lines' or the 'Perpetual Circulation.' A circumstance little thought of is the velocity at which we are travelling with the earth in its annual circuit round the sun. Not many, we suppose, know that our speed is sixty thousand miles an hour a degree of velocity which the mind can scarcely realise. Yet, so moves the globe we inhabit, and we are borne along by it, like so many grains of dust adhering to the whirling surface of a cannon-ball projected into space.' In old times, the earth itself was believed to form the universe, and to support the firmament, whereas now we know that it is but an atom cast into the infinite; that our whole planetary system, sun and all, is as nothing compared with the extent and number of the stars, which are solar centres of systems distinct from ours, and the light from which takes thousands of years to reach us, though its speed is nearly two hundred thousand miles in a second. Insignificant as is the spot we inhabit, the Zone of Life-the area which not only all that live and breathe and move inhabit, but in which all vegetation is contained-is still more limited. From the submarine forest in the lowest depths of the sea, to the highest altitude to which the condor soars, above the perpetual snow, is but twelve miles! Within those scanty limits, six miles of air above us, six miles of water beneath, everything that has vitality is confined. If the salamander lives in the central fire, the exception is so small as scarcely to be worth mentioning. The air presses upon the earth with a force equal to thirtythree feet of water, and upon every average human body with a weight of fifteen tons, which only does surrounds us on all sides, including our insides, not squash us flat as pancakes, because the air and thereby the weight is balanced. To most of us, nature is one vast mirage, suggesting infinite delusions; and even to the learned many things still remain to be cleared up by slow-moving science in future ages. Who would imagine, upon the face of the matter, for instance, that, in an airless world, not a sound could ever be heard! On the contrary, in still and silent space, one would conceive that we might hear a pin drop from the moon. Hawksbee demonstrated the contrary of this fact in a memorable experiment before the Royal Society, a hundred and eighty years ago. He placed a clock under the receiver of an airpump, in such a way that the striking of the clapper would continue after the air had been exhausted: whilst the receiver was full of air, the sound was quite audible; when it was empty, all was silent. Again, when the air was introduced, there was a feeble sound, growing in intensity as the air grew denser. At the top of Mont Blanc, the report of a pistol is no louder than that of a common cracker 'Above two miles,' let off at the level of the sea. says Mr Glaisher, who, as everybody knows, is an aeronaut of considerable experience, 'all noise ceases. I never encountered a silence more complete and solemn than in the heights of the atmosphere-in those chilling solitudes to which no terrestrial sound reaches.' On the other hand, clouds absolutely facilitate the transmission of sound. Above a great city, to a height of from one thousand to fifteen hundred feet, there is always a noise, 'immense, colossal, and indescribable.' The whistle of a steam-engine is heard at ten thousand feet; the noise of a train, at eight thousand two hundred, says M. Flammarion; but Mr Glaisher testifies to having heard this latter when twenty-two thousand feet up in the air; the barking of a dog and the report of a gun rise each to six thousand feet; the shouts of a crowd of people, the crowing of a cock, the tolling of a bell, to five thousand; and the shout of a human being to three thousand three ignorant ear that heard it for the first time; many a beautiful story and image has it suggested to the poet; many an illustration to the satirist. hundred. At this last height, during the silence of the night, the current of a tolerably rapid stream sounds like the rush of a cascade; at two thousand nine hundred and fifty feet, the croaking There has been a great deal of discussion of frogs is 'plaintively distinct;' and at two as to the altitude at which human beings thousand six hundred and twenty, the cricket- can exist, and Mr Glaisher himself can tell not the cricket at Lord's, which would be heard us as much about it as anybody. In July 1862, much higher-but the chirp of the little insect of he and Mr Coxwell ascended in a balloon to the that name, is plainly discernible. enormous elevation of thirty-seven thousand feet. Sometimes, to those in a balloon, the phenom-Previous to the start, Glaisher's pulse stood at enon, which is best known on earth as the Spectre seventy-six beats a minute; Coxwell's, at seventyof the Brocken, manifests itself. A second balloon four. At seventeen thousand feet, the pulse of is distinctly delineated at twenty or thirty yards' the former was at eighty-four; that of the latter, distance against the white ground of the clouds. at one hundred. At nineteen thousand feet, Nor are the clouds always white: Glaisher's hands and lips were quite blue, but 'On April 15, 1868, at about half-past three in not his face. At twenty-one thousand feet, he the afternoon, we emerged from a stratum of heard his heart beating, and his breathing became clouds, when the shadow of the balloon was seen oppressed; at twenty-nine thousand, he became by us, surrounded by coloured concentric circles, senseless;' notwithstanding which, the aeronaut, in of which the car formed the centre. It was very the interests of science, went up another eight plainly visible upon a yellowish-white ground. A thousand feet, till he could no longer use his first circle of pale blue encompassed this ground hands, and had to pull the string of the valve with and the car in a kind of ring; around this ring his teeth. Aërostats, who have to make no exerwas a second, of a deeper yellow; then a grayish- tions, have of course a great advantage over memred zone; and lastly, as the exterior circumference, bers of the Alpine Club, and those who trust to a fourth circle, violet in hue, and imperceptibly their legs; even at thirteen thousand feet, these toning down into the gray tint of the clouds. The climbers feel very uncomfortable, more so in the slightest details were clearly discernible-net, Alps, it seems, than elsewhere. At the monastery ropes, and instruments. Every one of our gestures of St Bernard, 8117 feet high, the monks become was instantaneously reproduced by the aerial asthmatic, and are compelled frequently to descend spectres. The anthelion remained upon the clouds into the valley of the Rhone for anything but ‘a sufficiently distinct, and for a sufficiently long breath of fresh air,' and at the end of ten years' time, to permit of my taking a sketch in my service, are obliged to give up their high living, journal, and studying the physical condition of the and come down to the usual level. At the same clouds upon which it was produced.' Even with- time, in South America, there are towns (such as out such a beatific vision, excursions into cloudland Potosi) placed as high as the top of Mont Blanc, seem to be very enjoyable. There is no 'being the inhabitants of which feel no inconvenience. carried up' at all, as far as sensation goes; one only sees that one is so, for the voyager feels no kind of movement, and the earth seems to him to be descending. The highest inhabited spot in the world is, however, the Buddhist cloister of Hanle, in Tibet, where twenty-one priests live at an altitude of sixteen thousand five hundred feet. The Brothers SchlaTo pick out the plums from so vast a cake as this gintweit, when they explored the glaciers of the magnificent volume is no easy task, nor can it Ïbi-Gamin in the same country, encamped at possibly be pursued on any system; the digres- twenty-one thousand feet, the highest altitude at sions, or apparent digressions from a subject, being which a European ever passed the night. Even often more interesting than the main topic. When at the top of Mont Blanc, Professor Tyndall's we were last snatched into the air (through the guides found it very unpleasant to do this, though intervention of Mr Glaisher's balloon), it was from the professor himself did not confess to feeling so the consideration of sound-waves, in connection with bad as they. The highest mountain in the world which are echoes. Whether acute or grave, these is Mount Everest (Himalaya), 29,003 feet, and the have the same velocity-namely, 1115 feet a condor has been seen winging the blue air' five second in air of 61 degrees (Fahrenheit). For an hundred feet higher. The air, by-the-bye, is not echo to be distinctly produced, there must be ablue,' or else, as De Saussure pointed out, 'the distance of fifty-five feet at least between the person speaking and the reflecting surface. At five hundred feet, it will (if the conditions are otherwise favourable) give back four syllables rapidly pronounced; at a greater distance, it will reflect a larger number, and even whole phrases. The echo in Woodstock Park repeats seventeen syllables in the daytime, and sixty at night. Pliny tells us that there was a portico built at Olympia which repeated sounds twenty times. The echo at the Château de Simonetti was said to repeat the same word forty times. The theory is the same for the multiplied echoes; they result from the reflecting surfaces, against which the aerial wave is thrown back several times from the one to the other, like a ray of light between two parallel glass plates. Of all the sounds of nature, perhaps the innocent Echo was the most alarming to the distant mountains which are covered with snow would appear blue also;' its apparent colour being due to the reflection of light. What light can do, and does, is marvellous; and not the least is its power of attraction to humanity. Why in large cities generally the wealthy classes have a tendency to make their dwellings in the western environs, has been occasionally discussed. M. Flammarion broaches a theory on the subject, perhaps more fanciful than real. He says, the fact may be explained on the ground of the attraction of light. People as a rule take their promenade of an evening, and not of a morning, and always, or nearly always, in the direction of sunset. This disposition has led to the formation of gardens, country-houses, and places of public resort, and, little by little, the wealthy population of a large city extends in this direction.' An evening walk in garden ground suggests delicious odours, which must be our excuse for here introducing what our discursive author has to say about smells. 'Nothing can give a more faithful idea of the divisibility of matter than the diffusion of smells. Three-quarters of a grain of musk placed in a room develop a very strong smell in it for a considerable time, without the musk perceptibly losing weight, and the box containing the musk will retain the perfume almost indefinitely. Haller states that papers perfumed with a grain of ambergris were quite odoriferous at the expiration of forty years. I remember purchasing upon the quay in Paris, some twelve years ago, a pamphlet which had a pronounced odour of musk about it. It had no doubt been there many months, exposed to the sun, the wind, and the rain. Since that time it has remained upon a library shelf, where the air has full access to it, and having just opened its pages, I find it as fully scented as ever. come down in 'showers,' do not fall from the sky, as is often supposed, but are first carried up from the earth by a waterspout or whirlwind, and then thrown back to it again.) The minerals called aerolites proceed from the explosion of a bolide, which sometimes takes place with a noise equal to the report of a heavy piece of artillery,' or even the explosion of a mine.' The weight of these is sometimes no joke: one, six or seven yards in diameter, fell in the island of Lanaia-Nawai in the beginning of this century; and another in 1868, on the same island. Fourteen deaths have taken place in consequence of these little strangers. One of two, the largest known, fell at Juvénas, in the Ardèche, in 1821, and weighed two hundred and twelve pounds: another, which was in the Paris Exhibition of 1867, fell in Chili, and weighed two hundred and forty pounds; and the miners who brought it home on their mules took it for silver. The Caille aërolite in the 'Smells are transported by the air to great dis- Maritime Alps, now in the Paris Museum, was tances. A dog can recognise his master's approach used as a seat in a church porch, and weighed from a distance; and it is asserted that at twenty-twelve and a half hundredweight. But the most five miles from the coasts of Ceylon the delicious colossal of all is the aerolite brought back from the perfume of its balmy forests is still borne upon the Mexican campaign, which is no less than fifteen wind. These sweet perfumes, like the harmony and a half hundredweight. It had from time and the activity of the terrestrial surface, we owe to immemorial been lying where it fell. Its shape is the atmosphere.' that of a pyramid, and it is a very fair specimen,' says M. Flammarion, 'of the world that sent it to us.' But the most interesting point of the matter he leaves unanswered-namely: 'From what world did it come?' Many analyses have been made of these wonderful visitors, but they have not added a single substance to the globe which it did not possess before. Yet, what a history must a bolide have to tell if it could but speak! How infinitely more interesting is it than any stone or piece of metal brought from the antipodes or 'utmost Ind!' for people have been there, but no one has ever been to that world which gives us the bolide, nor can we even guess what sort of world it is. One of the most curious and unpleasant ways of tricking the eye in which the air indulges itself is that of the mirage, whereby, as every one knows, water is apparently presented to the thirsty soul in the desert-water, water all around, but not a drop to drink.' At morning and evening this never happens; but in the afternoon, or when the sun has heated the surface of the soil, it seems at a certain distance off to be inundated; the villages look like islands in the midst of an immense lake, and below each village is to be seen its inverted reflection. The explanation of this phenomenon is given, and, as M. Flammarion probably flatters himself, clearly, in the volume under our consideration; but as even he acknowledges that it 'demands very special attention,' it may be here omitted as utterly unintelligible to the general reader. It is not always water, however, that is thus misrepresented. In very calm weather, you may often see crowds of people on the shore at Naples, or at Reggio upon the Sicilian coast, looking seaward very intently; a chain of sombre mountains is depicted where there are in reality but waves, and above them a row of pilasters, in thousands, each of the same elevation, at the same distance apart, and of equal degrees of light and shade. In a twinkling of an eye these pilasters suddenly lose half their height, and take the shape of arcades; or they turn to castles, or to towers, and thence into pine-trees and cypresses. This is the famous Fata Morgana. In the case of the ordinary mirage, the reflections occur in plane and regular strata, but in this latter kind they are deformed in all directions, broken or repeated several times, and very far distant from one another. In spectacles of this kind, the unlearned man, if he have the gift of imagination, probably experiences a far greater pleasure than the man of science. Similarly, in the contemplation of what the vulgar call a fireball, and the wise a 'Bolide,' the ignoramus has a decided advantage. The bolide is a solid body that falls from the-well, let us call it the sky. (Fishes, frogs, and such like, when they Perhaps there is nothing about which ordinary people talk so much at random as the weather: how, in their time, it was colder, hotter, drier, or wetter; whereas, as a matter of fact, although one year may differ from another, the average of wet and fine, of cold and heat, is maintained from generation to generation. The greatest cold experienced in England has been -5 degrees, and in France -24 degrees; the greatest heat (in the shade) has been, in the former country, 96 degrees, in the latter, 106 degrees. In Africa, on the one hand, and British North America on the other, the extremes of temperature upon the globe have attained a scale of 240 degrees! The most curious incident with respect to extreme cold that ever took place in warfare was the capture of Dutch vessels by cavalry-which, since they were frozen in on the Texel, Pichegru sent against them. Africa, besides the heat, there is sometimes an altogether unexpected inconvenience. The traveller in the desert suddenly hears one of his Arabs exclaim: The torrent, the torrent!' and everybody has at once to hurry to the nearest elevated spot. In a few seconds, the valley in which he has been journeying is hidden by a deep body of water, which hurries with it rocks, trees, and wild animals. Nay, on one occasion it is recorded by M. d'Abbadie that he found an Arab looking disconsolately on the wet ground, after the passage of such a flood-which does not last beyond a few hours In |