You will see Venice - glide as though in
dreams

Midmost a hollowed opal: for her sky,
Mirrored upon the ocean-pavement, seems
At dawn and eve to build in vacancy
A wondrous bubble-dome of wizardry,
Suspended where the light, all ways alike
Circumfluent, upon her sphere may strike.
There Titian, Tintoret, and Giambellin,

And that strong master of a myriad hues,
The Veronese, like flowers with odours keen,
Shall smite your brain with splendours:
they confuse

The soul that wandering in their world must

lose

Count of our littleness, and cry that then
The gods we dream of walked the earth like

Still lemon boughs shall spread their faint perfume,

Soothing your sense with odours sweet as sleep,

While wind-stirred cypresses low music keep.

For

you the mountain Generous shall yield His wealth of blossoms in the noon of May

Fire-balls of peonies, and pearls concealed
Of lilies in thick leafage, glittering spray

Of pendulous laburnum boughs, that sway
To scarce-felt breezes, gilding far and wide
With liquid splendour all the broad hill-side.

Yea, and what time the morning mists are
furled

On lake low-lying and prodigious plain,
And on the western sky the massy world
Contracts her shadow-for the sunbeams
gain

Unseen, yet growing, while the awful

train

THE Times quotes a letter from a St. Louis are yet perfectly distinct tracings of the image There are two towers at the paper, giving an account of extensive ruins, of the sun. found some miles east of Florence, on the south-east and south-west corners of the great Gila river. The principal is a parallelogram enclosure still standing, one of which is 26 ft. fortification, 600 ft. in width by 1600 ft. in and the other 31 ft. high. These have evilength. The walls, which were built of stone, dently been much higher. A few copper imhave long been thrown down, and are over-plements, some small golden ornaments - one grown by trees and vines. In many places the being an image of the sun with a perforation and some stone utensils, and stones have disappeared beneath the surface. in the middle Within the enclosed area are the remains of two rudely-carved stone vases, much like those a structure 200 ft. by 260 ft., constructed of found at Zupetaro and Copan, in Central roughly-hewn stones. In some places the America, are all the works of art yet discovwalls remain almost perfect to a height of ered. The ruins are situated in a small plain, some 12 ft. above the surface. On the inner elevated nearly 200 ft. above the bed of the sides of the wall of the supposed palace there | Gila. Just west of the walls of the fortifica

the staff of astronomers sent by the German Government to observe the transit of Venus (on December 8) on the Kerguelen Islands, in the South Indian Ocean. Another detachment of German observers will at the same time be stationed on the Auckland Islands. In the event of a failure on the part of the former portion of the staff to obtain good ob servations of the transit, the Gazelle will convey them and the other German observers to the Mauritius about the middle of December, and leave them there till the end of January, 1875, when they will enter upon a voyage to the Antarctic Seas with the special object of investigating the polar currents and other phenomena connected with the south-polar

tion there is a beautiful stream of water
having its source in the mountains, which
crosses the plain, and by a series of cataracts
falls into the Gila about two miles below.
The fragments of pottery and polished stone
reveal a condition of civilization among the
builders of these ruins analogous to that of
the ancient Peruvian, Central American and
Mexican nations. The country in the vicinity
is particularly wild and unusually desolate.
No clue to the builders of this great fortified
palace, with its towers and moat, has been
discovered, but it would seem that this whole
country was once peopled by a race having a
higher grade of civilization than is found
among any of the native tribes of the later
ages. But whether this race were the ances-region.
tors of the Pimos, or some extinct people, is
not known. It is understood that these ruins
will be thoroughly explored within the present
year.

A CORRESPONDENT of the London and China Telegraph, writing from Kandy (Ceylon), says: "The changes that have taken place in the matter of coffee cultivation within the last three years are simply marvellous. New districts formerly despised have risen up like

no cure has been discovered, has been very troublesome. "It is a fungus that attaches itself like a miniature mushroom to the lower side of the leaf of the coffee tree, and appears to extract its vitality, for the leaf withers and dies. It has now been among us for four years, and has done an incalculable amount of mischief." The long drought, which has had such a disastrous effect in India, has also unfavourably affected the Ceylon coffee crop this year.

BLACK POWDER FOUND IN SNOW; WHAT IS IT? In a letter from M. Nordenskjöld on Carbonaceous Dust, with Metallic Iron, ob-magic. Whole country-sides of primeval served in Snow (dated from Mossel Bay, lat. forest have given way to the axe of the culti 79° 53m. N., received at Tromsöe July 24), vator, and districts whose only inhabitants the writer remarks that in December 1871 he were the elephant, the chetah and the elk, are found in some snow collected towards the end now flourishing plantations of coffee." The of a five or six days' continuous fall in Stock-writer observes that the leaf disease, for which holm a large quantity of dark powder like soot, and consisting of an organic substance rich in carbon. It was like the meteoric dust which fell with meteorites at Hessle near Upsal in January 1869. It contained also small particles of metallic iron. Suspecting the railways and houses of Stockholm might have furnished these matters, he got his brother, who lived in a desert district in Finland, to make similar experiments; which he did, and obtained a similar powder. In his Arctic voyage the writer has met with like phenomena. snow from floating ice has furnished on fusion a greyish residue, consisting mostly of diatoms (whole or injured); but the black specks, a quarter of a millimètre in size, contained metallic iron covered with oxide of iron, and probably also carbon. He thinks, therefore, that snow and rain convey cosmic dust to the earth, and invites further observation on the subject. M. Daubree, in presenting the letter, recalled a case of meteoric dust having fallen at Orgueil in 1864. He expressed the hope that M. Nordenskjöld has obtained sufficient quantities of pulverulent matter to be able to the presence

determine a characteristic factor absence of nickel.

The

IN the course of a few weeks, the German Imperial corvette Gazelle, under the command of Captain von Schleinitz, will leave Kiel with

THE exhibition of Colonial products in Paris will contain an enormous nugget of gold coming from Cayenne. At the present moment this mass of precious metal, which is in its crude state, is at the Banque de France, and it will be melted down into an ingot one day next week. It weighs 200 kilogrammes, and is worth 600,000 francs. It was sent to Paris by one of the companies working the mines discovered a few years ago in the French colony of Guayana. The quantity of gold won for some time past from these workings has, it is stated, become so considerable, that the project is seriously considered of diverting the waters of the river Oyapoch and its affluents from their present beds, in order to facilitate the extraction of the gold which there is no doubt is concealed there.

• 194

TO A THRUSH. A Woodland Reverie,. 194 | SERENADES. By Robert Buchanan,

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