deflagrated; and thus will the great Alchymist neutralize the azotic elements which he has let loose, and shake the medicinal draught into salubrity.” The baneful effects of a stagnant condition of the atmosphere are exemplified in the feeble physical frame, and short term of years, of those who in the “city full” are cooped up in sites were there is no sufficient ventilation, and the inhabitants of many deep inclosed valleys exhibit physical and mental deterioration as a consequence of the same cause. The numerous examples of cretinism, or idiocy, with goitres, found about the villages and hamlets of the Lower Valais, and the Val d’Aosta in Switzerland—valleys, which have low marshy spots at the bottom, surrounded by high mountains, where the fresh air does not circulate freely, and where the reflected rays of the sun are very powerful in summer—Saussure attributed to the stagnation of the atmosphere; and though such instances of physical deformity and intellectual incapacity may be the combined effect of various causes, it is in harmony with the known effect of the one referred to, to suppose it materially to contribute to the result. The cagots of the deep Pyrenean valleys answer to the cretins of the Alps. In closing this notice of atmospheric currents, we refer to observations made upon the ordinary winds of Great Britain. From an average of ten years of the register kept by order of the Royal Society, it appears that at London the wind blows annually in the following proportions:— Days. South-west 112 North-east 58 North-west 50 West 53 South-east 32 East 26 South 18 North 16 The same register shows, that the south-west wind blows at an average more frequently than any other wind during every month of the year, and that it blows longest in July and August; that the north-east blows most constantly during January, March, April, May, and June, and most seldom during February, July, September, and December; and that the north-west wind blows oftener from November to March, and more seldom during September and October, than any other months. * * * * * =INFLUENCE OF PLACE ON RACE.= =BY BON GAULTIER.= Blancs ou noirs, gelés ou rotis, Mortels que j’ai faits si petits, Dit le bon Dieu, d’un air paterne, On pretende que je vous gouverne; Mais vous devez voir, Dieu merci, Que j’ai des ministres aussi. Beranger. Are not the mountains, waves and skies a part Of us and of our souls, as we of them? Byron.