Here some explanation is necessary. The Burmese evening is divided into three watches-namely, children's bed-time, old folks' bed-time, and young folks' bed-time. Children's bed time is sunset, or shortly afterwards. Courting time begins soon after children's bed-time, and it continues long after old folks' bed-time, which is about nine o'clock. Young folks' bed-time depends a great deal upon the will and pleasure of the young people in question; say about eleven o'clock.

When the hour of courting approaches, the young lady trims her little lamp, so that it gleams through the window, and takes her seat upon a mat on the flodr. Meantime the young gentlemen have been putting on their best bright silk butzoes, a nondescript garment, something between a pair of trousers and a petticoat, have donned their clean white jackets, have tied colored silk handkerchiefs on their heads in the most approved style, and have turned out altogether in the height of Burmese fashion. They enter, they seat themselves on the mats around the fair one, and then the "chaffing" begins.

If a gallant has been unsuccessful in a boat race, or has tumbled into the water, or has paid too much attention to another damsel, or has made himself ridiculous in any other way, the chances are that his feelings will be hurt before the evening is over. How the lady receives each lover, especially in the presence of other lovers, is more than we can describe. She herself requires considerable attention, and the old people never interfere. Indeed, why should the old folks interfere? The young folks can take care of themselves, and are only doing what they themselves did in the days when they were young.

These evening gatherings are generally very innocent, and the marriages which follow them are generally very happy, although sanctified by no priest, and only held together by the ties of mutual affection or the obligations of civil law. Jealousy, how

ever, is a master passion in Burmah, and if a damsel is too kind to one of her admirers, the chances are that the offending lover is stabbed, speared, or shot. Indeed a jealous rival, who suspects that the object of his affections is alone with another rival, will not unfrequently astonish the happy pair by running a spear through the floor of matting on which they may be reposing, and then there is a regular Burmese row, terminating very seriously sometimes.

This courting time in Burmah is nothing more than a relic of the old Hindoo institution known as the swayamvara, or choice of a husband by a maiden. Gambling away a wife, which is often mentioned in Sanskrit tradition, and would be impossible in the India of the present day, has not unfre quently occurred in Burmah.-Pall Mall

Gazette.

SILENT CHORDS.

Far down in the deeps of the spirit,

In the silence and calm profound, Remote from the storms of the surface, Are chords that have ceased to sound.

The heart once throbbed to their music,
As it filled all a summer day,
Then trembled at eve into silence,

And passed in soft echoes away. Yet sometimes the breath of a flower, Or a glance, or a careless word, Steals down to the deeps of the spirit,

And the silent chords are stirred.

Then faint as the ghost of an echo,

They repeat a vague refrain; But we listen in vain for their sweetness, To fill us and thrill us again.

Some day, it may be, when we waken

Transfigured on yonder shore, Every chord of the spirit will vibrate In such melody evermore.

ANNETTA DARR.

A STRONG CEMENT.-A cement, said to be capable of use where resistance to the action of both water and heat is required, is composed by mixing ordinary glycerin with dry litharge, so as to constitute a tough paste. For uniting the joints of steam pipes and other similar applications, this preparation is said to be very satisfactory.

NUMBER OF THE STARS.-The number of stars visible to the naked eye, in the entire circuit of the heavens, has been usually estimated at about 6,000; an ordinary operaglass will exhibit something like ten times that number; a comparatively small telescope easily shows 200,000; while there are telescopes in existence with which, there is reason to believe, not less than 25,000,000 stars are visible.

STEAM POWER AND HAND-POWER.-' .-The great pyramid, which is seven hundred feet square and five hundred high, and weighs 12,760,000,000 tons, required, according to Herodotus, the labor of 100,000 men for twenty years to build it; but Dr. Lardner

affirmed that 480 tons of coal, with an engine and hoisting machine, would have raised every stone to its position.

vapor.

ENCKE'S COMET.-Astronomers, it is said, are now very generally agreed that Encke's comet is a glowing mass of carbon Its spectrum consists of three bands, the middle one of which is much brighter than the other two, all apparently identical with the middle lines of carbon. In shape the comet resembles a shuttle, whose longer axis is directed toward the sun, carrying two wings of fainter light on either side near the head.

FRUIT IN OCCUPIED ROOMS.-Ripe fruit absorbs oxygen in the process of decay, and gives out carbonic acid. Both the processes deteriorate the value of the air for breathing; therefore, fruit should not be allowed to remain for any length of time in sitting rooms, more especially in sleeping-rooms, or

sick chambers. Many persons are so sensitive to the emanations from special fruits that they become faint if they are present in the room.

SOLUBLE GLASS.-What is called soluble glass is now beginning to come into use as a covering for wood, and other practical purposes. It is composed of fifteen parts of powdered quartz, ten of potash, and one of charcoal. These are melted together, worked in cold water, and then boiled with five parts of water, in which it is entirely dissolved. It is then applied to woodwork, or any other required substance. As it cools, it gelatinates, and dries up into a transparent colourless glass on any surface to which it has been applied. It renders wood nearly incombustible.

MAGNETIC STORMS.-A writer in "Nature," in an article on "Magnetic Storms in Higher Latitudes," in which, however, he strangely confounds the above with electric earth currents, states that on October 18, 1841, magnetic disturbances (electric earth currents) of such intensity prevailed, that the Exeter express train was detained sixteen minutes, by the needles of the telegraph being deflected so powerfully that it was impossible to ascertain if the road was clear.

VELOCITY OF SOLAR MOVEMENTS.-The enormous velocity of one hundred and sixtysix miles per second, which was attained by the solar prominences observed by Professor Young, of Dartmouth College, in November, has led to some interesting speculations by R. A. Proctor, the well-known English astronomer, who believes that if an ordinary spherical ball could be expelled from a cannon at the rate of two hundred miles per second, the resistance of the atmosphere would cause it to rebound in the same manner as cannon balls are known to rebound from water. As a matter of fact, no cannon ball ever was propelled with a veloc

also finds that this matter is secreted by glands which have this special function, or that the phosphorescence is a secondary pro perty of the secretion. Hence, the phosphorescence of marine animals is brought under the same category as that of decaying fish or bones. It is due to the formation, in decomposition, of a phosphoric hydro-carbon, or possibly of phosphoretted hydrogen itself. He has made use of the spectroscope for studying the light of this phosphorescence.

SALT AND IRON HAIL.-Professor Kengott, of Switzerland, states that a hail storm, lasting five minutes, occurred last year, the stones from which had a salty taste. Some of them weighed twelve grains. They were found to consist essentially of true salt, such as occurs in Northern Africa on the surface

of the plains, mainly in hexahedric crystals or their fragments, of a white color, with partly sharp and partly rounded grains and edges. None of the crystals were entirely perfect, but appeared as if they had been roughly developed on some surface. They had probably been taken up and brought over the Mediterranean from some part of Africa, just as sand is occasionally transported thence to the European continent and the Canaries, by means of hurricanes. A still more remarkable phenomenon has been recently recorded by Professor Eversman, of Kasan, namely, the occurrence of hailstones, each containing a small crystal of sulphuret of iron. These crystals were probably loosened by the action of the weather from some rocks in large quantity, and were then taken up from the surface of the ground by a storm, and, when carried into the hail-forming clouds, served as a nucleus

for the formation of hailstones.

TRAVELLING STONES.-Many of our readers have probably heard of the famous travelling stones of Australia. Similar curiosities have recently been found in Nevada, which are described as almost perfectly round, the majority of them as large as a walnut, and of an irony nature. When distributed about upon the floor, table, or other level surface, within two or three feet of each other, they immediately begin travelling toward a common centre, and there huddle

up in a bunch like a lot of eggs in a nest. A single stone, removed to the distance of three and a half feet, upon being released, at once starts off, with wonderful and somewhat comical celerity, to join its fellows; taken away four or five feet, it remains motionless. They are found in a region that is comparatively level, and only bare rock. Scattered over this barren region are little basins, from a foot to a rod in diameter, and it is in the bottom of these that the rolling stones are found. They are from the size of a pea to five or six inches in diameter. The cause of these stones rolling together is doubtless to be found in the material of which they are composed, which appears to be loadstone, or magnetic iron ore.

next.

"We fear," says Nature, "that there is no foundation whatever for the rumor. In the present state of science nothing could be more acceptable than the appearance of a good large comet, and the nearer it comes to us the better, for the spectroscope has a long account to settle with the whole genus, which up to this present time has fairly eluded our grasp. But it is not too much to suppose that the discovery would be too dearly bought by the ruin of our planet. Doubtless, if such ruin were possible, or, indeed, probable-but let us discuss this point. Kepler, who was wont to say that there are as many comets in the sky as fishes in the ocean, has had his opinion endorsed in later times by Arago, who has estimated the number of these bodies which traverse the solar system at 17,500,000. But what follows from this? Surely that comets are very harmless bodies, or we should have suffered from them long before this. But this is not all. It is well known that some of them, which have withal a very portentous appearance, are merely the celestial equivalent of our terrestrial 'windbags,' and brought down to their proper level they would have