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From a little mahogany table there I had knocked sideways to the ground, in my stumble, a small phonograph with a great 25-inch japanned-tin horn, which, the moment that I now noticed it, I took and flung with a great racket down the stairs: for that this it was which had addressed me I did not doubt; it being indeed evident that its clock-work mechanism had been stopped by the volcanic scoriae in the midst of the delivery of a record, but had been started into a few fresh oscillations by the shock of the fall, making it utter those thirteen words, and stop.

The string was made of sinew from the back of a cow, split from the long, broad sheath that lies on each side the spine, and the bow strung for trial. Quonab's arrows would answer, but Rolf needed a supply of his own. Again there was great choice of material. A 25-inch block of straight-grained ash was split and split until it yielded enough pieces.

The next step was an even longer one, and it was again taken by a self-taught optician, Thomas Cooke, the son of a shoemaker at Allerthorpe, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Mr. Newall of Gateshead ordered from him in 1863 a 25-inch object-glass.

Cooke, of York, made an object-glass, 25-inch diameter, for Newall, of Gateshead, which has done splendid work at Cambridge. We have the Washington 26-inch by Clark, the Vienna 27-inch by Grubb, the Nice 29-1/2-inch by Gautier, the Pulkowa 30-inch by Clark.

The only instruments in this country successfully employed for its detection are, we believe, Dr. Common's 5-foot reflector and Mr. Newall's 25-inch refractor. In the course of his observations on Jupiter at Brussels in 1878, M. Niesten was struck with a rosy cloud attached to a whitish zone beneath the dark southern equatorial band. Its size was enormous.