non-volcanic dust is generally preceded by the appearance of a fireball. It can hardly be a mere coincidence that in most of the recorded instances of dust-showers the previous appearance of a fireball is mentioned. The identification of our dust with the phenomenon of fireballs is one step. Let us take another. Every night in the year, but more especially on two nights in August and November respectively, what are known as shooting-stars may be seen. On some occasions these shooting-stars have been very large, so large as to assume the exact appearance of fireballs. We have reason to believe that these meteors are small fireballs; and that just as fireballs often burst and scatter stones and dust, the smaller meteors contribute their own share of foreign matter to our atmosphere. Now, are there any celestial bodies to which we may look as the common source of the phenomena of shootingstars, fireballs, aerolites, and meteoric dust? Without detailing the various steps by which we have arrived at our knowledge, suffice it to state that comets appear to be the denizens of space to which we owe our meteoric phenomena. Olmsted showed that the meteor-showers of August and November diverge from certain fixed points in the heavens, thus indicating their planetary nature; and Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer, demonstrated the identity of their orbits round the sun with those of certain comets. The fact has thus been established that meteors are due to the earth passing through rings of matter which revolve round the sun in cometary or elliptic orbits, the larger masses of this matter reaching the earth as aerolites, and the smaller ones being frittered into dust by the resistance of the air.

Professor Tacchini, of the Collegio Romano in Rome, has recently analysed the dust which fell in various parts of Sicily and Italy during 1879. The dust was borne on the sirocco, a dry wind which blows from the African desert. The examination revealed the presence of the usual constituents-granules of metallic iron, nickel, cobalt, phosphorus, magnesia, &c. The composition of the dust tells us nothing new. But Professor Tacchini has observed that its fall is invariably accompanied by a barometric depression. The full significance of this discovery will be appreciated when we mention that the Professor hangs a theory upon it. The theory we take to be this: Whirlwinds and cyclones in the Sahara raise quantities of dust into the higher regions of the atmosphere; it there remains suspended for several days until transported across the Mediterranean; then a small descending cyclone-the cause of the barometric depression-brings it to the surface of the earth. There can be no difficulty whatever in the way of the acceptance of this explanation, if it be shown that the dust of the Sahara contains the substances found in that deposited by the sirocco. Tacchini attempts to do this. Nordenskjöld's discovery of native iron in Greenland affords the clue. If metallic iron occurs in Greenland and elsewhere, why should it not do so in the Sahara, and thus supply the metallic, or so-called meteoric, element in the dust? We shall return to this question directly.

Nordenskjöld, in the dust which he collected in the Arctic regions, found certain small white

grains, which he described as 'cryoconite.' It was partly from the presence of these grains that he inferred its origin to be cosmic, and consequently not pertaining to our earth. Silvestri found spherules of iron with nickel in some dust that fell at Catania, and assumed from that circumstance that it must be meteoric. Specimens of the cryoconite and the Catanian dust, together with some obtained from the snow near Kiel, were recently submitted to the eminent mineralogist, Von Lasaulx; and that gentleman, as the result of his examination, has announced his opinion that the dust is not of cosmic origin at all, but simply detritus derived from the rocks on the earth's surface. The cryoconite he found to be principally composed of quartz and mica, two minerals which are almost unknown in meteorites.

There were no mineral particles present which would indicate a cosmical origin. Hence he concludes that 'the dust may undoubtedly have come from the gneiss region of the coast of Greenland.' The constituents of which the Catanian dust was made up were, with the exception of the iron particles, such as might have their origin within Sicily. Mount Etna would supply the augite and olivine crystals found in it. Finally, in the dust brought from Kiel there was no trace of minerals which would indicate a non-terrestrial origin, with the exception of a few particles of metallic iron which could be attracted with the magnet. 'If we now group the observations of the various dust-masses precipitated from the atmosphere, it first appears that, in nearly their whole mass, these varieties of dust consist of mineral particles which may be very well regarded as a detritus of rocks more or less near. Only the metallic iron, present always, but in very small quantity, can be considered cosmic.' Having arrived at this conclusion, M. Von Lasaulx goes on to prove how the presence of metallic iron does not necessarily indicate a cosmic origin. The masses of iron found at Ovifak in Greenland were, in the opinion of many authorities, of terrestrial origin; and if that assumption were reasonable in the case of large blocks, it must be equally so in the case of dust.

It will be observed that both our authors find a difficulty in accounting for the presence of iron particles in atmospheric dust, and that they get over the difficulty by referring to the Ovifak masses discovered by Nordenskjöld in 1870. Tacchini supposes that similar matter may exist in the sands of the Sahara; and Von Lasaulx assumes that the blocks are volcanic, and that iron dust may therefore be of terrestrial origin also. Both observers seem to have completely forgotten the reasons why Steenstrup, Dr Lawrence Smith, and others came to the conclusion that the Ovifak iron was terrestrial. One of the reasons was this, that carbon was invariably combined with the Greenland iron, and as invariably absent from meteoric iron. So of course the Ovifak masses do not throw the least light upon the presence of meteoric iron particles in atmospheric dust. Were the composition of the Greenland native iron and that found in meteorites and meteoric dust identical, we would be forced to conclude either that it had all a common cosmic origin, or was all derived from terrestrial sources; but the difference observed permits, if

it does not compel us to assign the Ovifak blocks and meteoric iron to entirely different sources. The one was reduced by the action of organic matters (hydrocarbons); the other comes to us from the realms of space.

Until Arago took up the subject, the precipitation of dust from the air seems to have excited but little interest. At the present time, it is receiving some attention from scientific men. In 1879, Mr Ranyard presented a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society giving a detailed account of the known observations on meteoric dust previous to that date; and in the following year a Committee was appointed by the British Association for the double purpose of examining past observations, and discussing the best means of prosecuting more systematic investigations in the future. The Report of this Committee was read by Professor Schuster at the meeting of the Association at York, the principal point dealt with being the method of observation to be pursued. The first point to be determined is the approximate quantity of dust which falls within a given time. An instrument suitable for this purpose, devised by Dr Pierre Miguel, was described in the Annuaire de Montsouris for 1879. An aspirator draws a quantity of air through a fine hole, the stream impinging on a plate coated with glycerine, which retains all solid particles. The volume of air drawn in being known, the relative proportion of solid matter is easily got. A second, less accurate, but more portable form of the instrument was also described. The aspirator is dispensed with, and a weathercock substituted, which always directs the opening against the wind. The solid matter is retained by means of a glycerine plate, as in the other form. An anemometer placed in the immediate vicinity shows approximately the volume of air that has passed through the apparatus. The most difficult matter in using these aeroscopes, as they are called, is the selection of a suitable locality. The place ought to be as free as possible from ordinary dust. Some spot in mid-ocean would do very well; but uninterrupted observations for any length of time would be almost impossible there. An elevated station in the Alps is a more likely place, and should such a station be established, we may hope for valuable results concerning this vexed question.

MORNING broke bright and beautiful. 'Mr Search, Mr Search,' said the captain, with a half-comic, half-serious glance at Hiram, 'somebody's been steering a queer course lately.'

'We went out a point or two to look at that yacht,' said Hiram shiftily.

'And lost your reckoning afterwards,' said the captain. I thought you were better sailors, both of you. Might be running for Odessa this way rather than Alexandria.'

'Well,' returning Hiram, feigning ill-temper,

you can steer the ship yourself, captain. I reckon it's your business.'

The genial old skipper stared after him as he left the deck. What makes him so sore all of a sudden?' he wondered. But he never spoke again of the night's wayward steering, and perhaps that served Hiram Search's turn.

As for Gerard, he showed little difference of manner. Hiram, when he was left alone, and the Mew's-wing had faded out of sight in the gray mist of morning, found time to think matters over, and came to the conclusion that he would have to encounter one of two things -a passionate and profound resentment, or a gratitude equally passionate and profound. Gerard gave sign of neither the one nor the other, but met him almost as if nothing had happened. 'British again,' said Hiram; but Gerard's behaviour was not the less bewildering to him that he pretended thus lightly to find a solution for it.

Meantime, aboard the Mew's-wing there was amazement and dread. Every man aboard had known the story of their owner's treachery to his friend in some garbled and distorted form. But Val from the first gathering of the crew together had been a favourite with them all, and in their eyes the elopement had been the triumph of true love over unknown obstacles. The rough fellows liked Romance, like the rest of the world; and Constance, who could be haughty and cold enough to social equals, had never been anything but gracious and kindly to those below her; and had, by dint of her regal beauty and her gentleness, enlisted all these hearts at once. They could not tell why she and Val had parted, but they talked about the parting, and thought about it, and had queer stories to explain it. Gerard had been once aboard the Mew's-wing, and in the awful moment when the steam yacht crossed her, Val was not the only man who recognised him. The wild cry of the look-out had brought them all on deck; and the lookout himself had seen the struggle at the wheel, and had beheld the blow which saved the yacht and every soul on board. The men talked these things over, and by-and-by murmurs of rage and fear began to rise amongst them. After a while, they came forward in a body, and setting forth their spokesman, demanded, through him, to be run into the nearest port and there disbanded.

Us thinks, sir,' said the spokesman, respectfully but firmly, 'as after what took place this morning, no man's life's safe aboard this craft.' clear the party meant to run us down; an' him -A murmur of assent encouraged him.-'It's being steam, an' us being canvas, the odds is all

agen us.

All fair an' proper risks us is willing to run, sir, but not that. Some of us is married, an' some of us ain't; but us has all got our lives to look after, an' what us says is: "Make a clean run for the nearest port, pay us our doos, an' leave us to shift for ourselves."-That's it, I think, my lads?'

That was it, said a rough murmur from behind him. The horror of the vengeance his enemy had purposed left Val unhinged and terrorstricken. He was not a coward; but in view of the deadly hatred Gerard's attempt bespoke, his

'We will not part again,' said Val, with tears in his eyes, until death parts us.'

Hush! she answered, laying a hand upon his lips. Do not talk of that, Val.'

He was constant in his attendance upon her, and found her more than commonly full of those forebodings and presentiments which are common to women in her situation. He did not even know that they were common; and though he fought against them, and smiled them down in her presence, they weighed upon him heavily, and he had a horrible fear that they would be fulfilled. If she would have permitted it, he would have had every physician in the city in attendance upon her; though, with a touch of British prejudice, he despised them all, and would have had more confidence in an English medical student freshly dressed in the glories of a diploma. It chanced that a young English surgeon of great promise, though as yet of inconsiderable note, was at that time in Naples, whither he had accompanied, all the way from England, an elderly aristocrat, who had chosen to think himself ill, and now preferred to think himself cured of a complaint which had never ailed him. But the noble feeble Earl so enthusiastically cried the praises of his medico, in whose society he had chosen to cast off his fancied malady, that Val, hearing of him, eagerly got a letter of introduction to my lord, and from him an introduction to the young doctor. The doctor wanted to return to England, and was well pleased to find employment on the way. Val had a great desire that his child should be born at home, and Constance shared it. The doctor gave it as his opinion that she would do best to travel by sea, and if possible, by short stages. So they sailed for Marseilles, and lingered there a day or two, and then found a vessel bound for Cadiz, and sailed thither in exquisite summer weather, with scarce a heave upon the sea. Little Mary accompanied them, of course. She had written many letters to Hiram, bewailing her own wickedness, and giving her own small impressions of foreign parts. Hiram had responded in clerkly hand and periods rhetorical. When Hiram set pen to paper, he lost all the raciness characteristic of his speech, and modelled himself apparently on the dullest of newspaper leaders. I will not,' he wrote with most judicial and unloverlike gravity, 'attempt to add to the weight of your contrition by reproaching you for the part you have played in this lamentable tragedy. But I am attached by ties, which I will not pause to catalogue, to Mr Gerard Lumby, and I will not leave him until the wounds he has endured are cicatrised by time. You will see, therefore, that your own conduct holds us apart for an indefinite period.'

At first the very English of his epistle crushed its recipient. But it was so unlike Hiram, that she believed in her inmost heart that its severity was assumed; and this conviction, strengthened by desire, held her poor little heart alive. Like wiser people, she believed what was pleasant to believe; but in this matter she had the truth at least partly on her side. In Hiram's eyes, she had done wrong; but he had heard the argument by which she had been persuaded, and he knew

something of the struggle she had gone through And he was, besides, one of those misguided people who have a mighty idea of the supremacy of the male creature in marriage; and like a good many others, he could be amazingly resolute -on paper. Of late, Hiram's letters had almost ceased; but she knew that he too was in foreign parts; and even that, though she could not hope to meet him, seemed vaguely to bring him nearer. She was immensely attached to Constance, who treated her with unvarying kindness; and altogether she was perhaps the least unhappy of the quintet whom the runaway match affected.

OBITUARY CURIOSITIES. TIME was when people were content to wait a month to know how things were going in the world, and looked to the magazine, quite as much as the newspaper, for enlightenment on that head, an expectation in which they were not disappointed. A hundred years ago, the doings at court and in parliament, naval and military despatches, the results if not the details of criminal trials, theatrical criticisms, commercial statistics, and notifications of births, marriages, and deaths-lightened with a column or two of poetical effusions, were the staple contents of the periodical publications of the day, as represented by the Gentleman's, the Scots, and the European magazines. Announcements of births, marriages, and deaths were then accepted as gratuitous contributions, and the last mentioned were often expanded into biographical paragraphs, much more amusing and interesting than the curt advertisements familiar to modern eyes.

Dobbs, sexton of Ross, dying in 1798, aged eighty-seven, is described as the only inhabitant of the place having any recollection of the person or manners of John Kyrle, the Man of Ross. There was much ringing, singing, and drinking at his interment, the ceremonies commencing at noon, and the clock had told three in the morning before the tears of the tankard were dried up.' No such unseemly merry-making attended the obsequies of Thomas Bond of Lichfield, 'the original of Scrub in the Beaux Stratagem,' or those of Mr Psalmanazar, well known in many ingenious performances in different parts of literature,' who died in August 1763, many years after he created a sensation by the publication of his fictitious History of Formosa.

In the Gentleman's Magazine of July 1799, we read: 'At Bristol Hot Wells, Anthony Morris Storer, Esq., of Devonshire Street, and Turley, Bucks. A man whose singular felicity it was to excel in everything he set his hand and heart to, and who deserved in a certain degree, if any one ever did since the days of Crichton, the epithet of Admirable. He was the best dancer, the best skater of his time, and beat all his competitors at gymnastic honours. He excelled, too, as a musician and a disputant, and, very early, as a Latin poet. In short, whatever he undertook, he did it con amore, and as perfectly as if it were his only accomplishment. He was polite in his conversation, elegant in his manners, and amusing in a high degree or otherwise, in the extreme, as he felt himself and his company.'

Twelve years afterwards, Mr Urban records that the world had lost a feminine paragon, by the

death, at the age of twenty-one, of Miss Anne Butters; a young lady of delightful disposition and polished manners, who was conversant alike with ancient history, and the annals of her own country and of modern Europe; had an extraordinary acquaintance with geography, biography, and chronology, was alive to the charms of French literature, but enriched her imagination, strengthened her judgment, and refined her taste by perusing our own classics and poets. She was proficient at drawing, a beautiful writer, an admirable dancer; and when she played the piano, the effects produced by her correctness of judgment, delicacy of ear, and skilfulness of hand, were not unfrequently heightened by the clearness and melody of her voice. Some lucky man had won the heart and hand of this peerless maiden; 'but alas, she had a heart too susceptible of the fine feelings of our nature. The too eager contemplation of the supposed scenes of future happiness which had recently opened upon her mind, the powerful effect produced by the consequent congratulations of her friends, and by regret at leaving a parental roof, gave rise to a nervous affection of the mind, which speedily terminated

in her death.'

Anticipations regarding the future had not in the same degree troubled the mind of Barbara Wilson, a virtuous old maid,' who died at Whittingham, East Lothian, in 1772, after enjoying single-blessedness for a hundred and twenty years! She was the hen-wife of Alexander Hay, Esq., and 'was so remarkable a genealogist of her feathered flock, as to be able to reckon to the tenth generation.' In testimony of her uncommon merit, her remains were conveyed to the grave by a large assembly of females, uniformly dressed, no male creature being permitted to join in the procession.

Tom Brown, of Garstang, had as great a contempt for mankind as Barbara Wilson herself. 'An occasional assistant in the kitchen of the neighbouring gentry, he could either please their tastes or mend their soles with any man of his day; but Tom would neither mend nor make for the lords of the creation; he would only take the measure of a female foot. A short time before his demise, he selected thirty-six of his feminine acquaintances to attend his funeral; and devised every penny he possessed to his female relatives.

A formidable list of centenarians might be compiled from the obituary columns of old magazines; but we will content ourselves with mentioning two, Isabella Sharpe and William Haseline. The last-named died in 1733, being then the oldest pensioner in Chelsea College. He well might be, if he had really attained the age of a hundred and twelve years and six months; after fighting for the Parliament at Edgehill, for King William in Ireland, and for Queen Anne in Flanders. There can be no question as to his courage, since he wedded and buried two wives after passing his century, and at the age of a hundred and ten took a third helpmate, who survived him. Besides his allowance from the College, this undeniable veteran had an income of ten shillings a week; one crown coming from the Duke of Richmond's pocket, and the other from that of Sir Robert Walpole. Isabella Sharpe was a widow, dwelling in Gateshead, where she died on the 17th of August 1812; and we are

told that, according to the baptismal register of the parish, she was christened on the 17th of August 1698-exactly a hundred and fourteen years before-having lived during parts of the seventeenth and nineteenth, and through the whole of the eighteenth century! We cannot vouch for the truth of these instances of longevity; but if we must not believe in them, what are we to think of this paragraph in a London paper of April 9, 18827-Mary Simms, who would have been a hundred and eight years of age next month, died at the workhouse at Portsmouth on Wednesday. Her husband and father were soldiers, the former being present at Waterloo. The authenticity of her age has been established by War Office records.'

Mr Guy, sometime rector of Little Coates, Lincolnshire, is credited with being the father, by two wives, of twenty-six sons and eight daughters. How many descendants the septuagenarian saw, the record sayeth not. Maria Sproutt, blessed only with two children, left behind her, at the age of ninety-five, fifteen grandchildren, forty great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren; while the funeral of one Janet Cameron was attended by four generations of her descendants, numbering just two hundred.

Recording the death, in 1762, of the Hon. John Petre, Mr Urban informs us that this younger brother of Lord Petre was the eighteenth member of the family that had died of smallpox in the space of twenty-seven years. In 1798, was executed, behind his own meeting-house, at Grey-Abbey, near Belfast, in Ireland, for treason, the Rev. James Porter, a dissenting minister. His head was not severed from his body. In the same year, Sergeant Mackay, of the Royal Edinburgh Volunteers, went over to the majority prematurely. The cause of his death originated in the treatment he received at the barbarous amusement frequent in that city on His Majesty's birthday called "making burghers;" at which time, and from the same cause, a gentleman of the royal corps of artillery unfortunately received his death.' More mysterious was the demise of the landlady of the Three Stags, in St George's Fields, London. Indulging in an afternoon nap behind the bar, she dreamed she saw herself come into a room in which she was sitting, and that she spoke to and shook hands with her second self. Whether it was her eidolon or not, certain it is that the next morning she was taken ill and died in a quarter of an hour. A Mrs Johnson went off without even that much warning, dying 'suddenly as she sat in her chair, and next day her husband as suddenly. Even more of one mind were a Yorkshire pair, who were born on the same day, died nearly at the same hour, and--but that was a matter of course-were deposited in the same grave'-a notification that would have befitted the announcement: At Prescot, Lancashire, Mrs Blakesley, aged a hundred and eight; Mrs Chorley, aged ninety-seven; and Mrs Bennet, aged seventyfive; they were intimate acquaintances, and all died within the space of twelve hours.'

On the 9th of December 1736, Basingstoke churchyard received the remains of a zealous churchwoman, Dame Box. 'When Dr Sacheverel