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The air was mellow and sunny. From the camp-fires, far and near, there came always a faint pungent smell of wood smoke. Curls of blue vapour rose from every glade. The land seemed bathed in Indian summer. Through it in the mellow sunlight, beneath the crimson of the gums, the lighter red of the maples, the yellow of the hickories, the 2d Army Corps found itself for weeks back on the drill ground.

Beyond the green slope of corn, a thin, soft vapour hung on the distant woods, and hid the hills. The pale young leaves of the aspen rustled faintly, not yet with their full sound; the sprays of the horse-chestnut, drooping with the late frosts, could not yet keep out the sunshine with their broad green. A white spot on the footpath yonder was where the bloom had fallen from a blackthorn bush.

Knowledge is like the atmosphere: in order to dispel the vapour and dislodge the frost, our ancestors felled the forest, drained the marsh, and cultivated the waste, and we now breathe without an effort, in the purified air and the chastened climate, the result of the labour of generations and the progress of ages!

She was surprised, indeed, but thinking only of her dog, she called again, and was perfectly amazed at the long, hollow, and deep sound, of the reverberation. She stood still again, holding the bushes aside, and was aware of a rush of damp vapour, blowing in her face.

Faintly as the wind blew, it speedily wafted me out of sight of the floating relics of the wreck, and then all was bare, bald, swelling sea and empearled sky, darkening in lagoons of azure down to the soft mountainous masses of white vapour lying like the coast of a continent on the larboard horizon.

Ordinary water is boiled in an open vessel; the water is changed to a vapour which disappears, and a white powdery earth remains in the vessel. Conclusion. Water is changed into air and earth. Did we not know that ordinary water holds certain substances in solution, and that boiling water acts on the vessel wherein it is boiled, we should have no objection to urge against this conclusion.

A great crowd of people assembled in the public square. This celestial phenomenon, the earthquake, the thunder which accompanied it, the red vapour seen during so many days, all were regarded as the effect of the eclipse. About nine in the evening there was another shock, much slighter than the former, but attended with a subterraneous noise.

Why, burned thus: In the middle of the flame, where the wick is, there is this combustible vapour; on the outside of the flame is the air which we shall find necessary for the burning of the candle; between the two, intense chemical action takes place, whereby the air and the fuel act upon each other, and at the very same time that we obtain light the vapour inside is destroyed.

And then we find this white powder, produced by the lime-water and the vapour from the candle, appears to us very much like whitening or chalk, and, when examined, it does prove to be exactly the same substance as whitening or chalk.

'I think everything points to Vanua Lava, the principal island of the Banks group, becoming our centre of operations, i.e., that it would be the place where winter school would be carried on with natives from many islands, from Solomon Islands group to the north-west, and Santa Cruz group to north, New Hebrides to south and Loyalty Islands south-west, and also the depot among the islands, a splendid harbour, safe both from trade and hurricane winds, plenty of water, abundantly supplied with provisions, being indeed like a hot-house, with its hot springs constantly sending up clouds of vapour on the high hills, a population wholly uninjured by intercourse with traders and whalers, it being certain that our vessel was the first at all events that has ever been seen by the eyes of any member of this generation on the islands; I could prove this to you easily if I had time.