"Diverses nations ne laissent pas d'habiter ces contrees" (Scanzia or Scandinavia). "Ptolomee en nomme sept principales. Celle qui s'appelle Adogit, et qui est la plus reculee vers le Nord, voit (dit on) durant l'Este le Soleil rouler l'horizon quarante jours sans se coucher; mais aussi pendant l'Hyver, elle est privee de sa lumiere un pareil espace de temps, payant ainsi par le long ennui que lui cause l'absence de cet Astre, la joye que sa longue presence lui avoit fait ressentir." There is a little old book called _Histoire des Intrigues Galantes de la Reine Christine de Suede et de sa Cour, pendant son sejour a Rome. A Amsterdam_, 1697. It opens thus: "Rome, qui est le centre de la religion, est aussi le Theatre des plus belles Comedies du Monde:" and after giving various accounts, personal and incidental, of her mercurial majesty, and of her pilgrimage to Rome, recites the following epigram on her first intrigue there, which, to give due precedence to the church, happened to be with a Cardinal, named Azolin:-- {371} "Mais Azolin dans Rome Sceut charmer ses ennuis, Elle eut sans ce grand homme Passe de tristes nuits;" adding: "Dans ce peu de paroles Mr. de Coulanges [its author] dit beaucoup de choses, et fait comprendre l'intrigue du Cardinal avec la Reine." I can find no account of this Reverend Cardinal. Who was he (if anybody), and what is his history? And who was the author of these odd memoirs of the Swedish Queen? At page 228. of "NOTES AND QUERIES" I see mention of an English translation of _Danish_ ballads by Mr. Borrow. Is there any translation of _Norwegian_ ballads? Many of them are very beautiful and characteristic, and well worthy of an able rendering into our own language, if there were any one to undertake it. There is also much beauty in the Norwegian national music, of which a pretty but limited collection, the _Norske Field-Melodier_, arranged by Lindeman, is published at Christiania. What is the best method of reaching Iceland? and what _really good_ books have been published on that country within the last twenty years? WILLIAM E. C. NOURSE. London, April 22. 1851. * * * * * THE ROTATION OF THE EARTH. Query, Has Mons. Foucault's pendulum experiment been as yet clearly enunciated? and do I understand it aright, when I conceive it is intended to show the existence of a certain uniform _rotation in azimuth of the horizon_, but different for different latitudes; which rotation, if made out to exist, is acquired solely in virtue of the uniform diurnal rotation (15deg hourly) in right ascension of the equator, identical in all latitudes. A pendulum, manifestly, can only be suspended vertically, and can only vibrate in a vertical plane; and surely can only be conceived, in the course of the experiment, to be referred to the _horizon_, that great circle of the heavenly sphere to which all vertical circles are referred.