The cigarette has found friends. The Truth about Cigarettes embodies the substance of papers read and discussed at the Medico-legal Society of New York. The gist of the papers is to the effect that the stories of harm done by cigarettes are fictions or gross exaggerations; that they contain no opium, arsenic, or other poisons, but are the best pure tobacco (1.0926 grammes each) wrapped in pure paper (0.038 gramme); that they never caused a case of insanity; and that they are simply injurious in the same way and to a corresponding extent as other forms of tobacco. These statements are supported by certificates of physicians and by reviews of special cases of insanity charged to cigarettes, showing that the insanity had matured independently of them. The average annual temperature at Manila is given by Mr. W. F. R. Phillips, in a paper on the subject, as 80° F. April, May, and June are the hottest months, May being the hottest of the three, and December and January are the coolest. The highest thermometer reading recorded is 100° F. in May, and the lowest 74° in January. The average annual rainfall is 75.43 inches, more than 80 per cent of which descends in the months from June to October, inclusive. Departures from the average rainfall are sometimes excessive. For example, as much as 120.98 inches have fallen in one year, and as little as 35.65 inches in another. Still more remarkable were the fall of 61.43 inches in one September, and that of only two inches in another September. At the observatory of Yale University, as we learn from the annual report, a planned series of twelve measures each has been completed for eighty-four stars of large, proper motion, with a view to determinations of parallax, and it is expected shortly to bring the number up to one hundred. A series of measures on highly colored red stars has been begun, and is in progress for the purpose of testing the possibility of a systematic error due to the lesser refrangibility of their light. The photographic instrument has been put into use at every suitable period of meteorological displays of consequence. Preparations are already making for a more complete observation of the Leonid meteoric shower expected in 1899.