I can understand what is meant by the parallelism of the earth's axis; and, with the slight exceptions caused by precession and nutation, I take _that_ to be the standard of _fixity of direction in space_. When, therefore, I am told that the plane of a pendulum's oscillation is also fixed in direction, and yet that it is continually changing its relative position with respect to the other fixity, the axis of the earth, not only does it not present to my mind a comprehensible idea, but it does present to it a palpable contradiction of the commonest axiom of philosophy. I am therefore in a disposition of mind the reverse of H. C. K.'s; that which to him is only "hard enough to credit," to me is wholly incomprehensible; while that which to him is "utterly impossible to conceive," appears to me a rational hypothesis in which I can understand at least the ground of assertion. H. C. K. asks me to "reduce to paper" the assertion of the difference of velocity between two parallels of latitude ten feet apart. He is not surely so unphilosophical as to imagine that a theory, to be true, must necessarily be palpable to the senses. If the element of increase exist at all, however minute and imperceptible it may be in a single oscillation, repetition of effect must eventually render it observable. But I shall even gratify H. C. K., and inform him that the difference in linear circumference between two such parallels in the latitude of London would be about fifty feet, so that the northern end of a ten-feet rod, placed horizontally in the meridian, would travel less by that number of feet in twenty-four hours than the southern end. This, so far from being inadequate, is greatly _in excess_ of the alleged apparent motion in the plane of a pendulum's vibration. In the remarks of another correspondent, E. H. Y. (Vol. iv., p. 177.), there is but one point that seems to require observation from me; it is his assertion that "there is no force by which a body unconnected with the earth would have any tendency to rotate with it!" Is then the rotation of forty miles of atmosphere, "and all that it inherit," due to friction alone? And even so, can any object, immersed in that atmosphere, be said to be "_unconnected with the earth_"? A. E. B. WINIFREDA.--"CHILDE HAROLD." (Vol. iii., pp. 27. 108. 155.; Vol. iv. p. 196.) I have not yet thanked LORD BRAYBROOKE for the obliging manner in which, in reply to my inquiry, he furnished a list of the reputed authors of "Winifreda." His recent note on the same subject gives me an occasion for doing so, while expressing my concurrence in his view that G. A. Stevens was not the author. In short, it may be taken now I think as an established fact, that the author is unknown.