On the night of Easter Sunday, while enjoying the cool air and the view from the roof of the British Residency, we beheld that grand display of the Aurora Borealis, which was visible at the same time throughout Western Europe. As in the equally brilliant auroras of the preceding autumn, which the popular imagination in many different parts of Europe had attributed to the burning of Paris, the characteristic feature of this display was the pale flickering crimson tinge that rose from the northern and western horizon towards the zenith. Brilliant auroral phenomena are rarely seen in so low a latitude as Tangier; but thirty-two years earlier Hooker had beheld them from a still more southern station, during the visit of the Antarctic Expedition to Madeira in 1839, as described by Sir James Ross in the narrative of that voyage. We were much impressed by the accounts we received of the remarkable salubrity of the climate of North Marocco, and we gathered abundant evidence to the same effect in regard to other parts of the territory. Nothing is more rare than to find a country where neither the natives nor foreign visitors have any complaint to make against the climate, and in that respect Marocco is almost unique. As regards the season of our visit, however, our case was that of nearly all travellers in whatever country they may find themselves. We had arrived in an exceptional season! How often is this fact gravely stated as something remarkable and unusual in the experience of the narrator, whereas, if he would but reflect, it merely represents the common experience of mankind in most countries of the earth! Excepting some portions of the equatorial zone, where the seasons recur with tolerable constancy, our notions of the climate of a place are got at by taking an average among a great many successive seasons. It is true that our own islands afford an extreme instance of variability; but elsewhere in the temperate zones of both hemispheres, the difference between corresponding seasons in successive years is often very great. Any one who watches the meteorological notices published in our newspapers, must be aware that if any particular day, week, or month be compared with the general average for the same period during a long term of years, he will find it to be either considerably hotter, or colder, or drier, or moister than the corresponding average day, week, or month; and when registers shall have been kept for a sufficient time in other countries, the same result will be seen to hold good, though in a somewhat lesser degree. Travellers will then be prepared to find that they should expect to enjoy or suffer from an exceptional season, and will think it more remarkable when they happen to alight on a season that approaches near to the average. That preceding our visit had been unusually severe; snow had been seen at Tangier, and had lain for some hours on the rock of Gibraltar, and, as a consequence