Miscellany.
Singular Effects of Lightning.—Sir David Brewster has published an account of the effects of lightning in Forfarshire, which is of much interest. In the summer of 1827, a hay-stack was struck by lightning. The stack was on fire, but before much of the hay was consumed the fire was extinguished by the farm servants. Upon examining the hay-stack, a circular passage was observed in the middle of it, as if it had been cut out with a sharp instrument. This circular passage extended to the bottom of the stack, and terminated in a hole in the ground. Captain Thomson, of Montrose, who had a farm in the neighborhood, examined the stack, and found in the hole a substance which he described as resembling lava. A portion of this substance was sent by Captain Thomson to Sir David's brother, Dr. Brewster, of Craig, who forwarded it to Sir David, with the preceding statement. The substance found in the hole was a mass of silex, obviously formed by the fusion of the silex in the hay. It had a highly greenish tinge, and contained burnt portions of the hay. Sir David presented the specimen to the Museum of St. Andrew's.
Ancient Glacier in the Pyrenees.—M. Charles Martens, who was present at the meeting of the British Association, read a paper on the ancient glacier of the Valley of Argelez. This glacier and its affluents descended from the crest of the Pyrenees, whose summits now reach an altitude varying from 6000 to 9000 feet. The roots of the glacier were in the cirques of Gavarnie, Troumouse, Pragnères, etc., and the glacier extended into the plain as far as the villages of Peyrouse, Loubajac, Ade, Juloz, and Arcisac-les-Angles. Along the valley, polished and striated rocks, scratched pebbles, glacial mud, moraines, and erratic boulders, are the proofs of its existence. At Argelez, the thickness of the glacier was about 2100 feet, and, at the opening of the valley at the foot of the Pic de Geer, near Lourdes, 1290 feet. Between Lourdes and the village of Ade, the railway runs across seven moraines; and the railway from Lourdes to Pau is cut, as far as the village of Peyrouse, through glacial deposits. The Lake of Lourdes is a glacial lake, barred by a moraine, and surrounded by numerous erratic boulders proceeding from the high Pyrenean mountains. Some of the boulders are of large dimensions: thus one of them, between the lake and the village of Poueyferré, is thirty feet in length, twenty-three feet in width, and eleven feet in height. This lake of Lourdes, surrounded by hills covered with briars, reminds one, in many respects, of the small lakes of Scotland.
A Burning Well.—While some artisans were engaged in making borings for an artesian well at Narbonne, France, the water rushed forth with great violence, and soon burst into flame. The flame, which arises from the combustion of carburetted hydrogen, is reddish and smoky, and does not emit a smell either of bitumen or sulphuretted hydrogen. The "sinking" for the spring was made on the left branch of the Aude, in a plain situate about two metres above the sea-level, and composed of alluvial mud. The alluvial mud extends to a depth of six metres; then follow tertiary limestones and marls, with the remains of marine shells. At the depth of seventy metres, the spring containing the inflammable gas was met with.
Comets and Meteors.—In a paper on this subject, laid before a late meeting of the Astronomical Society, Mr. G. J. Stony, Secretary to the Queen's University in Ireland, makes the following interesting observations, which tend to show, as Schiaparelli has already pointed out, that there is a very natural relationship between comets and meteors. If interstellar space, external to the solar system, be, as is most probable, peopled with innumerable meteoric bodies independent of one another, a comet while outside the solar system would in the lapse of ages collect a vast cluster of such meteorites within itself. Each meteorite which approached the comet would in general do so in a parabolic orbit; and, if it came near enough to pass through a part of the comet, this parabolic orbit would, by the resistance of the matter of the comet, be converted into an ellipse. The meteor would, therefore, return again and again, and on each occasion that it passed through the comet its orbit would be still further shortened, until at length it would fall in, and add one to whatever cluster had been brought together by the previous repetitions of this process. In this way a comet, while moving in outer space, beyond the reach of the many powerful disturbing influences which prevail within the solar system, would inevitably accumulate within itself just such a globular cluster of meteors as the November meteors must have been before they became associated with the solar system.
How the Earth's Rotation affects Gunnery.—Some may be found to doubt that the movement of the earth affects the direction of a ball expelled from a cannon; nevertheless, the fact is correct. In the Astronomical Register, Mr. Kincaid says that a simple illustration of this effect may be made by attaching to the same axis two wheels of different diameters, so that both shall rotate together. If the one have a diameter of three feet, and the other of one foot, it is evident that any point on the circumference of the larger will, during a revolution, move through three times as much space as a similar point on the periphery of the lesser circle, and will, therefore, move with three times the velocity. The figure of the earth may be considered as made up of an infinite number of such wheels, diminishing in size from the equator to the poles, and all revolving in twenty-four hours. Now, if a gun be fired from the equator in the direction of the meridian, which is obviously that of maximum deviation, at an object nearer the pole, it is plain that that object, being situated on a smaller circle than the gun, but revolving in the same interval of time, will move, during the flight of the projectile, through less space eastward than the shot, which will have imparted to it the greater velocity of the larger circle from which it started, and the latter will therefore tend to strike eastward from its butt.
Dodo-like Birds of the Mascarene Islands.—The Committee appointed in 1865 to investigate this group, has produced little result beyond the collection of a number of bones from Rodriguez. Professor Newton made some general remarks upon the specimens collected, and he especially dwelt on an unexpected confirmation of the testimony of Leguat, by the discovery of an extraordinary bony knob near the extremity of the wing. Leguat, whose account of the "Solitaire's" habits was the only one we possessed, mentioned a curious "ball," as big as a "musket-bullet," which the male birds possessed under their wing-feathers. Now, the existence of this ball was proved by the bony knob exhibited, and thus the veracity of old Leguat, on this point, as on so many others, was confirmed. In conclusion, Professor Newton called attention to the fact that at present we only knew of the didine bird of the island of Reunion, that it was white. In the course of last year, Mr. Tegetmeier had shown him an old water-color painting of a white dodo, and this, he was inclined to believe, might represent this lost species, of which he trusted the French naturalists in that island would succeed in obtaining actual relics.
Mr. Foley's model for the O'Connell National Monument in Dublin has been unanimously adopted by the Committee. The work will be forty feet high, executed in bronze and granite. £10,000 is already subscribed toward the cost of its erection.
A Slander Refuted.—A work has lately appeared in England, in which everything Spanish is spoken of with the greatest contempt. In reply to the accusations made against the queen's chaplain, the Reverend Canon Dalton writes thus to the Athenaeum: "Will you allow me to protest against the character drawn by Miss Edwards of Padre Claret in her recent work entitled, Through Spain to the Sahara, which was reviewed in your last number, December 14th? When I was in Spain last year, I had several interviews with the queen's confessor. The estimate which I was then enabled to form of his character was the very opposite to that drawn by the authoress. I should like to know if Miss Edwards ever spoke a single word to Padre Claret, or even ever saw him. Then there is the testimony of Lady Herbert, in her work entitled Impressions of Spain in 1866, (London, Bentley, 1867,) at pages 211-12; her ladyship draws a very different character of the Padre, taken from a personal interview with the illustrious prelate. Again I should like to know what reasons Miss Edwards has for styling Claret's work, La Clave de Oro, a coarse work? All the works which he has published are purely of a devotional or literary character, and I am quite confident that nothing 'coarse' or unbecoming can be found in any one of them. Lastly, I never heard of Padre Claret's coach being driven by four splendid mules, because I believe he is not possessed even of a cab! J. Dalton."