Yet, in those ten years positive wonders have been done, and good hope established that a continuance of patient enquiry will be rewarded by still further discoveries. To take a single result it may be mentioned, that a careful study of the thermometer has shown that a descent of the temperature of London from forty-five to thirty-two degrees, generally kills about 300 persons. They may not all die in the very week when the loss of warmth takes place, but the number of deaths is found to increase to that extent over the previous average within a short period after the change. The fall of temperature, in truth, kills them as certainly as a well aimed cannon-shot. Our changing climate or deficient food and shelter has weathered them for the final stroke, but they actually die at last of the weather. Before 1838 several European states less apt than ourselves to talk about the weather, had taken it up as a study, and had made various contributions to the general knowledge of the subject; but in that year England began to act. The officials who now and then emerge from the Admiralty under the title of the ‘Board of Visitors,’ to see what is in progress at the Greenwich Observatory, were reminded by Mr. Airy, the astronomer royal, that much good might be done by pursuing a course of magnetic and meteorological observations. The officials ‘listened and believed.’ The following year saw a wooden fence pushed out behind the Observatory walls in the direction of Blackheath, and soon afterwards a few low-roofed, unpainted, wooden buildings were dotted over the enclosure. These structures are small enough and humble enough to outward view, yet they contain some most beautifully constructed instruments, and have been the scene of a series of observations and discoveries of the greatest interest and value. The stray holiday visitor to Greenwich Park, who feels tempted to look over the wooden paling sees only a series of deal sheds, upon a rough grass-plat; a mast some 80 feet high, steadied by ropes, and having a lanthorn at the top, and a windlass below; and if he looks closer he perceives a small inner enclosure surrounded by a dwarf fence, an upright stand with a moveable top sheltering a collection of thermometers, and here and there a pile of planks and unused partitioning that helps to give the place an appearance of temporary expediency—an aspect something between a collection of emigrant’s cottages and the yard of a dealer in second-hand building materials. But,—as was said when speaking of the Astronomical Observatory,—Greenwich is a practical place, and not one prepared for show. Science, like virtue, does not require a palace for a dwelling-place. In this collection of deal houses during the last ten years Nature has been constantly watched, and interrogated with the zeal and patience which alone can glean a knowledge of her secrets. And the results of those watches, kept at all hours, and in all weathers, are