The use of wood pavements in Sydney has been very strongly condemned by a Committee appointed by the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales to inquire into the subject. It had been alleged that these wood pavements exerted a deleterious influence on the health of persons living in their proximity, and the conclusions arrived at by the Committee would seem to justify these allegations. Analysis showed that the blocks in actual use had absorbed a vast amount of organic matter, even though they had only been laid down a comparatively short time. It was evident, too, that complete impregnation of the wood was only a matter of time. In the words of the Report: ‘So far as the careful researches of your Board go, the porous, absorbent, and destructible nature of wood must, in their opinion, be declared to be irremediable by any process at present known; nor, were any such process discovered, would it be effectual unless it were supplemented by another which should prevent fraying of the fibre.’ It should be noted that this strong condemnation is applied to the _hard_ wood-blocks used for the purpose of paving in Sydney, and not to the soft wood used here at home. These latter are so thoroughly impregnated with tar, that it is difficult to imagine that room could be found for anything else, organic or otherwise. The cable tramway which is situated on the historic hill at Highgate, London, has worked without hindrance during the recent frost and snow. This is due to the fact that the working parts are underground. But of late a new use has been made of the system. Heavy vehicles even with six horses attached could not be moved up the hill during the recent frosts. Many of them were therefore fastened to the tramcars, and were pulled up the steep incline—one in eleven—at the rate of six miles an hour. In his recent lecture at the Royal Institution, Mr A. A. Common, the treasurer of the Astronomical Society, pointed out that the old method of eye-observation in telescopic work would probably in the near future give way to automatic records on sensitive dry plates by means of photography. He also pointed out what extreme variations existed in the amount of light emitted by different celestial objects, contrasting with the blinding glare of the sun the small quantity of light received from a faint star. The latter he described as being equivalent to the twenty-thousandth part of the light given by a standard candle seen from the distance of a quarter of a mile. It is not a matter for wonder, therefore, that the most sensitive dry plate which would yield a photograph in daylight in the smallest fraction of a second, should require an exposure of two hours, or thereabouts, when used for recording the existence of one of these distant orbs.