The First Observatories.-The article "Highest Observatories" (Vol. vii, p. 298) may be appropriately supplemented by the following:

The first recorded observatory was on the top of the Temple of Belus. The tomb of Osymandias, in Egypt, was another. This last contained a golden astronomical circle, 200 feet in diameter. Another at Benares, India, is supposed to have been contemporary with the one last named. The first in Europe was erected at Cassel, in 1561; that of Tycho Brahe, at Uraninburg, was built in 1576; the Paris observatory dates from 1667, and that at Greenwich from 1675; the Nuremberg observatory was erected in 1678, and that of Berlin in 1711; the famous Bologna tower was built three years later; that at Pisa following next in 1730. Stockholm, Utrecht, Copenhagen and Lisbon observatories were erected in 1740, 1690, 1656 and 1728, respectively.

KNOXVILLE, IA.

J. W. W.

Superstition in High Places (Vol. vii, P. 310).-Jas. O. G. Duffy, in the Philadel phia Press, gives the following additions to your previous note:

"Parnell had a strange aversion to the color green, as he always believed that it brought ill luck to his family-a curious circumstance, when it is borne in mind that the House of Commons is all upholstered in that hue. When he was in Kilmainham some admirers were admitted to make a presentation to him of a silk dressing gown and slippers and cap. In all of these articles the dominant color was green, and one of his colleagues who was with him during the presentation describes the contrast between the delicate courtesy with which Mr. Parnell acknowledged the presents and the anxious. expression with which the very instant the deputation had left the cell, he implored the said colleague to 'remove those green things, they bring ill luck,' and he refused even to look at them any more.

"Parnell also had a great horror of any one passing him the salt at table. During a late sitting of the House of Commons Mr. Parnell was having a hurried supper at the bar, when one of his colleagues offered him

the salt, but Mr. Parnell pushed his hand back and exclaimed in an alarmed tone:

"Don't you know it is a most unlucky thing to do that?'

"His colleague was inclined to smile at his apprehensions, but Mr. Parnell was thoroughly in earnest.

"A still later instance of this peculiarity of his was furnished a short time before his death. It was on the morning on which he addressed his last meeting at Ennis. He and his friends were at breakfast, Mr. Parnell looking very grave, and in the course of conversation he startled the company by saying with an air of firm conviction:

"Poor Biggar appeared to me last night.' "It was noticed that he did not say, in the ordinary way, that he dreamt' of him, but that he appeared' to him-as if he had had a waking vision."

eight-hour day, during which time his right hand, in traveling from the frame containing the type to the stick in his left hand, covers a distance of 36,000 feet, or about seven average miles. This being an average rate of speed of little less than a mile an hour. There are many compositors who can even beat this record, although the rapid movement of the hand often generates a sort of temporary paralysis, known as 'printer's cramp'" (Philadelphia Record).

Curious and Accidental Cures (Vol. vii, pp. 248, etc.).—A distinguished clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church, well known to the writer's informant and formerly a missionary in the far West, related in public the following story. A man who lay apparently dying of an enormous abscess in the throat, sent for the worthy priest, at that time the only clergyman in the district. With the consent of the family, and of the sufferer himself, the priest baptized the poor fellow, and then asked for oil with which to administer extreme unction. There was no oil in the neighborhood, and Father was obliged to substitute some lard. The sight of the good missionary blessing a pan of lard was so funny that not only the patient burst out laughing, but his abscess burst also, and he recovered. The whole family became devoted members of the missionary's flock, and at the last accounts they were outdoing in zeal and fervency those to the manner born. ISLANDER.

How Deep Does the Earth Quake? "The Mississippi Valley has recently experienced an earthquake shock which for severity has not been equaled for years, an incident which revives interest in the query: How deep does the earthquake' when nature shakes her crust like the cyclone does the circus tent?

"At Virginia City, Nev., the great earthquake of 1879 was not noticed by the miners in the deeper portions of the Comstock. mines. The famous earthquake at the same place in 1874, which shook down chimneys, fire walls, etc., and cracked every brick building in the city, was merely noticed by some of the miners working in the upper levels,' but did them no damage, not even shaking down loose rocks and earth.

The

station men in the various shafts felt it strongest, and the deepest point where it was noticed was by the ninth station man, who was on watch at 900 feet below the surface. He said it felt like a faint throb or pulsation of air, as though a blast had been fired above, below, or in some indefinite direction. In some of the Virginia City mines the shock was not felt at all, not even by station men in the shafts" (St. Louis Republic).

A Double-meaning Revolutionary Rhyme.-"A Jersey City friend sends a double-meaning poem. He found it among his grandfather's papers. Read the lines first as they are printed; then read them as they are numbered:

"1. The pomp of courts and pride of kings
3. I prize above all earthly things
5. I love my country, but my king
7. Above all men his praise I'll sing
9. The royal banners are displayed
11. And may success the standard aid
2. I fain would banish far from hence
4. The Rights of Man and Common Sense
6. Destruction to that odious name
8. The plague of Princes, Thomas Paine
10. Defeat and ruin seize the cause
12. Of France, her liberty, and her laws."
(New York Sun.)

Dynastic Succession in Alaska."The dynasty of the Alaskan Indians is a curious one, and pleasantly interesting to all concerned, except the heir apparent himself. The direct line of succession is through the nephews of the deceased chief, the eldest nephew, of course, being heir to the throne. When there is a nephew, therefore, it would seem to be plain sailing in the business of stepping into the royal honors and powers. But the heir apparent must be, not only the nephew of the deceased chief, but he must marry the widow. It is of no consequence that the widow may be, and usually is, quite old enough to be the nephew's grandmother, and frequently she is extremely unattractive too. And then, what is a greater objection, it often happens that the heir apparent is already married to a pretty young wife, whom he naturally prefers to an ugly old wife. But the law is inexorable. He can only become chief by putting away his pretty young wife and marrying his uncle's ugly old widow" (Philadelphia Press).

Vol. VIII. No. 2.

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COMMUNICATIONS:-Epitaphs, 17-Pronunciation Spanish American Words, 18-Pope's Bull Against the Comet-King Alfonso XII Still Unburied-Frequency of Thunderstorms-Scientific Discoveries by a Poet, 19Epithets of Noted People-Up to Date-The Number 13Flowers as Food, 20-Hat and Cap Doffing-Shakespeare's Table, 21-Glass Eating a Relish-Odors and MemoryNumerical Recurrences-Our National Archives, 22-Oddities of Noted People-Egyptian Discoveries-Those Bacilli -The Pallium, 23-Acrostics-Who Invented the CigarThe Right Word in the Right Place, 24.

ROTES.

LONGFELLOW'S LL.D.

'Longfellow was made an LL.D. of Bowdoin College in 1828, at the age of twentyone," says the "Encyclopædia Britannica." As a matter of fact, he received the degree in question in 1874, when sixty-seven. The Longfellow who received a doctorate in 1828 was the poet's father. One is as much surprised at this statement concerning the poet, as if an article on Washington should declare that "the father of his country" was sixty-seven when he did the alleged cutting of the alleged cherry tree about which, as alleged, he could not lie.

HARPSWELL.

AN EXTRAORDINARY TREE. "The accompanying cut from La Nature was copied from a photograph of a beech tree standing in a wood near Metz. Popular Science News gives the following account

of this tree:

"The tree is several hundred years old and the contortions and irregularities of its trunk and branches are most remarkable. Occasional departures from perfect symmetry can be observed in almost every tree,

and it is proverbial that a bending of the young twig leads to the inclination of the adult tree, but it would be of great interest to know the original cause of the manifold twistings and turnings of this tree, and whether they were due to an accidental bending of the young shoots or to an abnormal habit of growth.

"This tree, which is probably the most remarkable of its kind, is an object of interest to large numbers of sightseers, and is locally known by the inappropriate name of the Joli-Fou, or Pretty Fool" (Harrisburg, Pa., Morning Call).

WALT WHITMAN.

A CHARACTERISTIC LETTER, LATELY WRITTEN TO A FRIEND.

"Dear Friend:-Death; too great a subject to be treated so-indeed, the greatest

subject and yet I am giving you but a few random lines, collecteana, about it as one writes hurriedly the last part of a letter to catch the closing mail. Only I trust the lines, especially the poetic bits quoted, may leave a lingering odor of spiritual heroism afterward. For I am probably fond of viewing all the great themes indirectly, and by sideways and suggestions. Certain music from wondrous voices or skillful playersthen poetic glints still more-put the soul in rapport with death, or towards it. Hear a strain from Tennyson's late Crossing the Bar:'

"Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark;

And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

"For tho' from our bourne of Time and Place

The floods may bear me far,

I hope to see my pilot face to face,
When I have crost the bar.'

"Am I starting the sail-craft of poets in line? Here, then, is a quatrain of long ago to one of old Athens's favorites :

"Thrice happy Sophocles; in good old age,
Bless'd as a man, and as a craftsman bless'd
He died; his many tragedies were fair,
And fair his end, nor knew he any sorrow.'

"A happy (to call it so) and easy death is at least as much a physiological result as a psychological one. The foundation of it really begins before birth, and thence is directly or indirectly shaped and effected, even constituted, by everything from that minute till the time of its occurrence. And yet here is something (Whittier's Burning Driftwood ') of an opposite coloring:

"I know the solemn monotone

Of waters calling unto me;

I know from whence the airs have blown,
That whisper of th' Eternal Sea;
As low my fires of driftwood burn,

I hear that Sea's deep sounds increase,
And fair in sunset light, discern

Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.'

"Like an invisible breeze after a long and sultry day, death sometimes sets in at last, soothingly and refreshingly, almost vitally. In not a few cases the termination even appears to be a sort of ecstasy. Of course there are painful deaths, but I do not believe such is the general rule. Of the many

hundreds I myself saw die in the fields and hospitals during the Secession War, the cases of marked suffering or agony in extremis were very rare. (It is a curious suggestion of immortality that the mental and emotional powers remain to their clearest through all, while the senses of pain and flesh-volition are blunted or even gone.) Then to give the following, and cease before the thought gets threadbare :

"Now finale to the shore!

Now, land life, finale and farewell!

Now, Voyager, depart! (much, much for thee is yet in store;)

Often enough hast thou adventured o'er the seas,
Cautiously cruising, studying the charts,

Duly again to port, and hawser's tie returning.
But now obey thy cherished secret wish.
Embrace thy friends-leave all in order;
To port, and hawser's tie, no more returning,
Depart upon thy endless cruise, old Sailor!
'WALT WHITMAN."

[Dr. Murray explains this in the "New English Dictionary," but his very oldest quotation bears the date of 1748.

The following, which we extract from Yule's "Anglo-Indian Glossary," under the heading, "Banyan, a Hindu Trader," will answer our correspondent's query:

1608.-"The Gouernour of the Towne of Gandeuee is a Bannyan, and one of those kind of people that obserue the Law of Pythagoras" (Jones, in "Purchas," i, 231).

1690.-"Of this (Kitchery) the European sailors feed in these parts once or twice a Week, and are forced at those times to a Pagan Abstinence from Flesh, which creates in them a perfect Dislike and utter Detestation to those Bannian Days, as they commonly call them" ("Ovington," 310, 311). -ED. A. N. & Q.]

Setting a Horse's Leg.-I confess I was surprised on reading the enclosed in the Portland (Me.) Transcript.

Has this operation (which I supposed to be well-nigh impossible) been often performed? If so, why are so many valuable horses put to death, on the spot, the moment they accidentally break one of their legs?

"One of our veterinary surgeons was seen this summer driving a valuable horse that had broken its leg last winter. For over a month the weight of the horse was supported by a broad band under its body and thus the broken bone was induced to grow toGEO. H. L. gether."