The author is the late Mr. Peter Legh,[148] of Norbury Booths Hall, Knutsford, who published for eight or ten {69} years the _Ombrological Almanac_, a work of asserted discovery in meteorology. The theory of comets is that the joint attraction of the new moon and several planets in the direction of the sun, draws off the gases from the earth, and forms these cometic meteors. But how these meteors come to describe orbits round the sun, and to become capable of having their returns predicted, is not explained. A NEW PHASE OF MORMONISM. The Mormon, New York, Saturday, Oct. 27, 1855. A newspaper headed by a grand picture of starred and striped banners, beehive, and eagle surmounting it. A scroll on each side: on the left, "Mormon creed. Mind your own business. Brigham Young;"[149] on the right, "Given by inspiration of God. Joseph Smith."[150] A leading article on the discoveries of Prof. Orson Pratt[151] says, "Mormonism has long taken the lead in religion: it will soon be in the van both in science and politics." At the beginning of the paper is Professor Pratt's "Law of Planetary Rotation." The cube roots of the densities of the planets are as the square roots of their periods of rotation. The squares of the cube roots of the masses divided by the squares of the diameters are as the periods of rotation. Arithmetical verification attempted, and the whole very modestly stated {70} and commented on. Dated G. S. L. City, Utah Ter., Aug. 1, 1855. If the creed, as above, be correctly given, no wonder the Mormonites are in such bad odor. MATHEMATICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF DOCTRINE. The two estates; or both worlds mathematically considered. London, 1855, small (pp. 16). The author has published mathematical works with his name. The present tract is intended to illustrate mathematically a point which may be guessed from the title. But the symbols do very little in the way of illustration: thus, x being the _present value_ of the future estate (eternal happiness), and a of all that this world can give, the author impresses it on the mathematician that, x being infinitely greater than a, x + a = x, so that a need not be considered. This will not act much more powerfully on a mathematician by virtue of the symbols than if those same symbols had been dispensed with: even though, as the author adds, "It was this method of neglecting infinitely small quantities that Sir Isaac Newton was indebted to for his greatest discoveries."