222 MISCELLANY. 



ing some Barnacle-shells upon the starlings of Rochester Bridge. Upon looking 

 closely I found that many of them contained within their valves a small spiral 

 shell — the Common Periwinkle \_Turbo littoreus, Linn. — Ed.] — and it appeared 

 to me that they had either destroyed the Barnacle and taken possession of its 

 shell, or had crept into those which had died from natural causes. — W. H. 

 Bensted, Maidstone, Feb. 7, 1838. 



Petrescent Tree. — On Tuesday last, the stone-getters at the Oak Bottoms 

 Stone-delph, Breightmet, near Bolton, discovered a tree about thirty feet long and 

 forty inches in circumference, in a petrescent state, in a solid rock, about forty 

 feet from the surface of the earth, and at least thirty feet beneath the strata of 

 rock. The inside of the tree is completely petrified, and covered with an incrust- 

 ation of carboniferous matter. — Sheffield Iris, March 13, 1838. 



METEOROLOGY. 



Meteors on the Nights op Nov. 12 — 14. — It has now been observed for 

 nearly forty years that an astonishing number of meteors are always to be seen 

 during the nights of the 12th, 13fch, and 14th of November. Alexander Von 

 Humboldt has inserted an advertisement in the Berlin papers, suggesting to 

 scientific men in different parts of the world a variety of observations, with a view 

 to ascertain whether this phenomenon is not in some way connected with telluric 

 magnetism. — The Guide, Oct. 14, 1837. — [These are the peculiar meteors termed 

 '• shooting stars." — Ed. Nat.~] 



Patrick Murphy, Esq. — The Sumbeam, No. vi., for March 10, contains a 

 portrait and brief notice of Mr. Murphy, the gentleman after whom thousands 

 and hundreds of thousands of persons went mad a few short 'weeks ago, and who 

 is now all but forgotten. If Mr. Murphy's theory should yet prove true, the 

 history of his scientific career will only add another to the already numerous and 

 instructive instances of the neglect and contempt with which new discoveries— 

 however important — are treated as well by the learned as the ignorant. We are 

 glad to find that the Cheltenham Looker-On continues steadily to compare the 

 prophecies of Mr. M. and the actual state of the weather. The Monthly Chroni- 

 cle for March contains some specious objections to Murphy's nomenclature, and 

 which, did we think they could mislead any reflecting individual — we should not 

 fail to expose. — Editor. 



