think?" said Alice suddenly, her eyes dry and burning once more. "I know 'tis Satan temptin' me, but I canna say the words what is na true for me." My poor lamb, He'll none be angry. The Lord he's more long suffering nor man is; He's full o' compassion and of great mercy, and he'll ease thy heart, an' thou'lt wait patiently. There's that scripture, 'Wait, I say, upo' th' Lord'-there's a many sore hearts as ha' trusten to that and not been ashamed. And now I canna stop away from my own man no longer, but I mun jest get thee to bed, and maybe thou'lt sleep a bit wi' the tea." "I used to be after frettin' and fussin' him no end when I'd a-gotten him wi' me," sobbed poor Alice as she took the cup passively. "We're but poor critturs, like cracked pitchers a-goin' to the well, but happen we may bring back watter enow o'grace for to squench our thirst, an we ask Him for it wi' a' our hearts," said Zilpah gently. 'D'ye think as they'll letten me be along wi' Syl up there, if I try hard, and dunno say the sharp things I plagued him wi' down. here?" sobbed poor Alice, moved out of her usual self-complacency, as she climbed the steep stairs and lay down submissively. "It says how we shanna hunger no more, nayther be athirst no more, and sure 'twould be the worst o' hungers and thirsts, if them we loves wer'n't there for to help fill our hearts and bless us," said Zilpah compassionately. And now I'll lock the door and push the key under, as noboddy sha'n't come in for to trouble ye till ye choose to open yersen." And she went off, carrying the child asleep in her blanket away with her, thinking to save the poor mother from disturbance. Before long, however, Alice was roused out of the stupor into which she had sunk by a knocking and shaking at the door below. It was hardly yet fully day. "Eh! I dunno want nought!" said she, starting up in her bed. There seemed a great weight, a darkness of misery about her as she opened her eyes, but with the strange loss of one part of memory which accompanies the blessed unconsciousness of sleep, she could not remember for a moment the crushing blow which had fallen upon her. At the sound of her child's voice she stumbled directly down-stairs. Amy Jane had escaped from Mrs. Mowbray's care, and was beating with her little hands against the door and shaking it with all her might. "Let me in, let me in, mummie," she shouted, and as soon as the latch was raised she clutched tight hold of her mother's gown. "They're a' so strange out there, let me come home to I want you and daddy. Where's daddy? daddy!" she went on, till poor Alice's heart ached with the expression of her own craving longing. Excited as the child was, she had hardly been able to quiet her before the neighbours began to pour in to hear the news-to condole, and to question, and to remark and to speculate, till poor Alice's head went round, and the sharp answers rose to her lips, at every turn. But with the thought of him not yet cold in the grave, she checked at least half before they had passed "the fence of her teeth," which was as much. as could be expected from so young a convert to meekness. At length she was left alone to make her doleful little preparations, "the burying mun be quick," as the women all told her. The day was cold and dark and dreary, she felt, as she stitched at her black garments. "Mummie, when shall I put on my nice new frock, and that little frillering," said poor little Amy Jane, beginning to caper and smile, as her mother tried on her mourning. "What shall ye do for to live?" inquired Zilpah, when she looked in during the course of the day. "Hadn't ye best write to yer mawther for to goo to her. One's mawther's one's mawther a' the days o' one's life, and she'd be main glad for to have thee agin, I know, and the child too, to live there." "'Tisn't one and the same, goin' of a visit, wi' yer good man counten the days till ye get back agin, and it's a'most a favour to stop on a bit, and now to goo back like a beggar what's got no choice but Hobson's," sighed poor Alice, with her habit of edging her thoughts with stings all round, doubling her own burden of misery by the way she took it. "Why, she's allus been a-wantin' o' ye ever sin' you married, you know she does! and ye shouldna' think hard things o' yer own mawther," said Zilpah, a little reproachfully. "Them's like the sharp things as I used for to worrit Syl wi', and as I can't niver, niver tell him I'm sorry for now, not to my dyin' day," replied poor Alice, the tears dropping on her black work, "But he knowed it, for a' that," said Zilpah, in a more comforting tone, with her slow smile. "You've no call for to say so, when ye doesn't know whatever they're after thinking, as is gone up there!" cried Alice almost fiercely. 1 were there, in their working clothes, and the sight of the young widow and the small black child by her side, close to the coffin of the strong man smitten down in his prime, went home to the very hearts of men whose fate might be the same any day. 'Nay, it were na up anywhere as Syl were speakin'; 'twas when my measter and him was goin' up to their work last night, and Charley were a bit chaffin' him about ye complaining like" (Alice winced), " as men will do, you know, and Syl, he says, says he, she's as good a 'ooman as breathes, and is Twere a very. big buryin'," said Zilpah, sorry-like when she's said them things, hurtin' recounting the events for her. husband's herself more nor me.' And at the bottom o' benefit, as he lay in bed, "and a dry place, th' pit he picks up a bit o' stone, wi' a sorter very conformable and comfortable, they've afiggur on it, and he says, kind-like, 'I'll tak' chose for him i' th' sun. And the masters and yon home to my missus; she's partial to thema' the men has got together a nice little lot o' things.' And Charley, he telled Tommy brass for Alice and the little 'un, so that she Crichton, what cum but now for to ax for shanna goo empty-handed to her mawther's. him, to look an' he could set eyes on it, i' th' And she cried sore when they brought it her, pockets; but him were so blowed a' to bits, and said folks had been trimming kind, and and nothink wasn't to be seen nowhere." Syl would bless 'em, up there where he was agone to, for what they'd a-done to her for hissen's sake. It went very nigh her heart. And the cart's come for her bits o' things but now, and I went down to help see to 'em, and hoisted her upo' the tables and cheers, and she went off lookin' very white and bad, but quite quiet; and the little mayd snuggling up to her wi', 'Mummie, shanna we ha' a nice ride?' And a sore thing 'tis for to see that home a-cleanin' out for the new folk as is to come in to-night, they says. Seems as tho' 'twere on'y a bad dream, and him and her and the little 'un swept away like last summer's leaves. summer's leaves. But there! God A'mighty's heart's big enow to mind us, and He wonna forget the widow and the fatherless, we has His word for 't. But I'm main glad (a' the same) as He've a-seed fit for to leave thee a bit longer wi' us, Charley, and I hope as you'll tak' warnin', and gi'e up them nasty pits and mining ways for good and a'.” Alice's tears continued falling, but they were no longer so bitter; it seemed to her as if a message had come from her husband beyond the grave. "The parson he come to Charley but now, (and he'd been here, on'y I telled him how bad you was, and that I'd put to the door). He's a beautiful man, he is, and there he read out to him about the Lord is my Shepherd. 'I've a-knowed what 'twere to pass through the valley o' the shadow o' death, and that sin' mornin',' says my measter. 'And you be grateful for His great mercy?' says the other. That be I,' answers my man agin. And now I'll just tak' that bit o' a black sleeve home wi' me for to finish, and the little mayd can fetch it. You'll be ower throng for to get a' done by Friday i' th' morn. Ye should ha' put out more o' th' work." "I likes for to do the child's frock. Them gathers and things kips me a bit fro' so much thinkin'," said Alice, sadly. The funeral of the two men was followed by a long train to the little steep churchyard under the old grey tower. There was not much black to be seen outside, but plenty of sympathy within. Almost all the miners "Please God, I'll be back wi' 'em a' down there at work afore New Year's Day, or come mid' o' Janawary at latest," answered Charley, sturdily. "But I shall miss my mate, I shall, a' the days o' my life. He were a good 'un as iver drew breath, he were !" FR ON THE NATURE AND SUPPOSED ORIGIN OF METEORITES. `ROM the first dawn of exact astronomy | sources. Many of the bodies of the universe there has been a well-marked desire to are self-luminous, and the analysis of their learn something of the material constituents light by the spectroscope gives us not a little of the heavenly bodies, and it is remarkable information regarding their material condithat the gratification of this most natural tion. To this class belong the sun and the wish, after having been entirely withheld dur- stars, as well as comets and nebulæ. Others, ing long centuries, should now be capable of as the planets and their moons, shine merely being satisfied from two entirely different by reflecting the light which shines upon them, and the information to be gained of these is meagre, being confined to the effect which may be produced by the atmospheres, if any, which surround them. There is a third class, however, which are non-luminous, and of which the spectroscope can tell us nothing; but as they occasionally fall to the earth our knowledge of them is complete, though their previous motions and history are enveloped in much doubt. That dark bodies exist and sometimes become conspicuously brilliant as they fall to the earth had long been believed, and the writings of Pliny, Herodotus, and Livy give more or less detailed accounts of falls of stone that had been witnessed in ancient times; but so little attention had been paid to these reports that as lately as the beginning of the present century we find the popular tradition discredited by scientific men. We are indebted to Chladni for first drawing attention to the cogency of the evidence in favour of the current belief that stones occasionally fall from the heavens, and for the commencement of the first collection of specimens of bodies which were said to have reached the earth in this manner. in which they have for ages, perhaps, pursued their own proper paths, they are full of interest, and capable of teaching us much more than was previously expected of them. The number of meteors which actually fall to the earth, the class with which we are at present more particularly concerned, is very small indeed compared with those whose fate is more complete. Probably not one in many thousands, or even millions, is able to penetrate our atmosphere, which forms as it were an efficient armour to the earth against the battery of stones which is continually being hurled at it. Nevertheless scarcely a year now passes without the discovery of one or more such falls upon some portion of the globe, and in many of these cases the fall is actually witnessed. Although these must be regarded as the giants among meteors, the phenomena connected with their fall are not startling. If the occurrence takes place in the daytime a cloud is seen to form suddenly in the clear sky, and sometimes to traverse it with considerable velocity. After an interval a loud explosion, or succession of explosions, is frequently heard, resembling thunder or the continued discharge of heavy ordnance, and one or more fragments of the meteor are found to have fallen in the vicinity, and to have buried themselves to a greater or less depth in the earth, usually from about one to three feet. Should the fall take place at night the phenomena are similar but more slightly luminous, to be formed of the minute particles thrown off from the meteor itself in its flight, and to constitute the train which usually distinguishes the more brilliant shooting stars. The meteor is visible as a brilliant and highly incandescent disk, which may again and again explode, throwing off considerable fragments, which, acting as independent meteors, may be speedily dissipated into fine dust slowly filtering through the lower layers of atmosphere, or may reach the earth almost in the condition in which they parted from the original body. But before it could be admitted that meteorites were astronomical bodies, from whose materials it would be possible to infer something of the general structure of the universe, it was necessary to prove that they came to us from inter-planetary or inter-stellar space, and were not merely phenomena of the ter-impressive. The cloud will be seen to be restrial atmosphere. This important step has been effected only recently by the labours of Schiaparelli and others, who have shown that myriads of minute meteoric bodies accompany certain comets in their wanderings through space, and that the earth, when passing through or near the tracks of these bodies, finds them extending to enormous distances on either side of the comet upon its path, and attracts them to itself. It thus becomes highly probable that all comets, and not merely the very few that pass near the earth's orbit, are in like manner accompanied, and that in every direction, and far beyond the realm of the solar system, small bodies like those which are picked up on the earth's surface are to be met with. Whether, there fore, they are simply visible for a moment as they pass through the outermost layers of the earth's atmosphere to be entirely dissipated by the heat which is evolved from the retardation of their motion, or whether they succeed in reaching the earth diminished in bulk, broken and scattered, but still retaining a solid form and but little changed from that Such, with slight variations of detail, is the account of all observed falls of whatever kind, and the explanation of the appearances is sufficiently simple. Before coming into contact with our atmosphere, the temperature of a meteoric body is necessarily very nearly that of space, which is known to be excessively cold; for although the sun would warm it, just as the earth is warmed, it would radiate freely in all directions the heat thus received. Its temperature after collision with the atmosphere would depend entirely upon its previous velocity of motion, and would be very considerable, since we may assume that upon the average the velocity of the meteor would be exactly equal to that of a comet moving in a parabolic orbit, or about twenty-seven miles per second. Its velocity with reference to the earth may, however, be much greater than this, for should it be directed from the point towards which the earth is travelling at the moment—that is, should the earth and meteor meet each other in full career-the velocity of the former in its orbit (ninteen miles per second) must be added to the already mentioned velocity of the meteor itself. On the other hand, of course, if the meteor is overtaking the earth, or if it is moving obliquely to the earth's path at the moment of impact, the relative velocity of the two bodies will be less than that stated above. Now, when a solid body with a motion so great as this impinges upon even a rarefied atmosphere, its course is so greatly impeded that intense heat is suddenly evolved; but it would appear that this is principally exerted upon the exterior of the body, leaving the interior at nearly the original temperature; that is, during the rapid flight it has not time to become heated through the entire mass. The unequal expansion which it is thus made to undergo is fully sufficient to rend the mass to pieces, and observation enables us to verify this explanation to some extent, for precisely as the meteor is a bad or good conductor of heat is the destruction of it more or less certain. Thus, with meteors which are composed mainly of iron and other metals, which are good conductors of heat, the breaking up of the mass is often very incomplete, and in some cases no explosion whatever takes place; while, with the more usual stony meteors, or aerolites, as they are generally called, the fragments are sometimes so very numerous that the fall may almost be regarded as a shower of stones. We may now see how it is that when found soon after their fall they are rarely incandescent, although they are too warm to handle until some time has elapsed. The surface of the meteor, whatever substances it may consist of, invariably indicates that it has been subjected to a great heat during its flight, as it is covered with a black, glassy crust, or rind, of a thickness varying from to of an inch. It is evident, too, that this crust is formed principally during the earlier part of its career through our atmosphere, before the velocity of the body has been greatly checked, since fractures may be occasionally noticed which are only imperfectly glazed over; that is, that explosions sometimes take place when the body has too little energy remaining to raise it to the high temperature required to melt its surface. So far as the stones hitherto found or seen to fall have been identified as true meteoric masses, they consist of one or other of three distinct classes, having several peculiarities in common. These have been distinguished by Weidmann-stätian figures etched upon Meteoric Iron found in South Carolina, U.S.A. | laboratory, but obtained from meteors. the names Siderites, Aerolites, and Siderolites. A Siderite is a mass of meteoric iron-a peculiar alloy of iron and nickel, with slight traces of some other substances which is not otherwise found in any sensible quantity upon the earth's surface. There is usually a distinct radiating. crystallization, while interspersed through it, like mica in granite, will be found minute glittering yellow flakes of a phosphide of iron and nickel, called schreiber site. This substance is found in very small quantities in all meteorites, and is quite peculiar to them. It can be formed artificially in the our first knowledge of it was the small quantities found in When the surface of a meteorite of this class is cut and polished, and then acted upon slightly by hydrochloric acid, certain characteristic figures are found to be etched thereon. These are known as Weidmann-stätian figures, and may be described as crescentic patches arranged in definite order. There is reason to believe that they result from the slow crystallization of the iron at a temperature very near to its melting point, and hence they afford us a slight clue to the manner in which meteorites must have originally been formed. It has been found possible to imitate these figures, but they have not yet been artificially produced with complete fidelity. aluminum, and silicon, the remaining thirteen The term Aerolite is given to the class of stony meteorites which are much more common than the preceding. Though covered, like the siderites, with a black fused crust, the interior is usually of a greyish white colour, closely resembling in appearance, and by analysis, certain well-known volcanic lavas; but all of them contain a greater or lesser admixture of the nickel-iron alloy. A silicate of magnesia and iron called olivine is always present, and a very similar compound of the same elements, but which is insoluble in acids, called bronzite, is likewise very generally found. Other silicates may help to make up the entire mass-for example, silicate of alumina or felspar, and silicate of magnesia and lime, or augite. It is to be remarked that all these substances are the products of terrestrial volcanoes, and that the analyses of some modern lavas exhibit a very near approach to that of meteorites of this class. Some aerolites are found to be porous, and present the appearance of minute spherules united together by a whitish cement. Cavities, too, occasion-magnet two or three irregularly shaped parally exist containing hydrogen or carbonic acid gas at considerably more than the normal atmospheric pressure: a fact that points scrupulously to a volcanic origin, and which is well known to exist commonly in terrestrial lavas. ticles of iron that have been entrapped by its means. In the same way it may be detected in arctic or alpine snow, but in such small quantities that it is difficult or impossible to determine whether the particles found contain the proportion of nickel that belongs to meteoric iron proper. The third class, or Siderolites, have a more complicated and variable structure. They The origin of meteorites is unhappily enusually contain all the substances previously veloped in the greatest mystery. We have mentioned in greater or less proportion, and already pointed out the close agreement in in addition one or more of a variety of sub- their structure to volcanic rocks, and the pecustances not to be found in siderites or aero-liarity which they show in common with terreslites. Among these may be mentioned mag- trial volcanic products, of having cavities connetic pyrites, chrome iron, one or more hydro- | taining hydrogen at more than normal prescarbons, and quite recently chromium mono- sure. Nor are these the only facts that tend sulphide has been added to the list, having to show the close affinity of these apparently been detected in some siderolites found in dissimilar substances. Both nickel-iron and Mexico. its phosphide (schreibersite) may be artificially formed by imitating as nearly as we can the conditions which exist within a volcano. Thus, when hydrogen acts upon the chlorides of iron and nickel at a red heat a crystalline alloy of these metals is formed, which, when attacked by acids, reproduces etchings resembling the Weidmannstätian figures; and it is highly significant as proving meteoric iron to have been actually formed by this process, that iron chloride in small quantities has been found unaltered in some meteoric masses. In like manner artificial schreibersite is formed by smelting at a great heat the oxides of iron and nickel together with phosphate of soda. All these facts clearly indicate that these alloys, as The constant presence of the nickel-iron alloy, its precise agreement in the relative proportions of the several metals of which it consists, and the invariable presence in minute quantity of the phosphide in meteorites of whatever class, afford a strong argument that, whatever the origin of them may be, it must be identical in each case. We can hardly conceive, for example, that meteoric masses torn from the interiors of different planets would show so exactly the same relative amounts of iron, nickel, and cobalt. In all we have twenty-two terrestrial elements identified as existing in meteorites, of which the principal are iron, nickel, magnesium, oxygen, sulphur, calcium, sodium, |