POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



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being eighteen days out, a difPerence of more 

 than two degrees appeared between its indi- 

 cations and the shipmen's calculations. Har- 

 rison insisted that his time-piece was right, 

 and told the shipmen that, if they turned in 

 a certain direction, they would sight a certain 

 island the next morning — if the maps were 

 right. They did so, and the island was seen, 

 according to his prediction. Like results 

 were obtained as island after island was 

 passed. On arriving at Port Royal, after a 

 voyage of two months, the time-keeper was 

 five seconds slow ; and on returning to Eng- 

 land, after five months, its error was less 

 than a minute and a quarter. Harrison was 

 not allowed the offered reward till more sure 

 tests were made, but was given £5,000. The 

 watch was tested on a second voyage, with 

 triple precautions, and Harrison was allowed 

 £5,000 more, and promised the rest of the 

 £20,000 when he had taught others how to 

 make the instruments. Having fulfilled all 

 possible conditions, he was fully paid in 

 1767. His time-keepers are still preserved, 

 in charge of the astronomers royal, in Green- 

 wich Observatory. 



Egyptian Identifieations. — Dr. Edouard 

 Naville, to whom the world owes the recov- 

 ery of the cities of Bubastis and Pithom, in 

 Egypt, gave a summary of the results of his 

 work in excavating other cities of Egypt 

 before a meeting of the Victoria Institute in 

 June. His explanations related principally 

 to places connected with the Exodus. He had 

 found that Succoth, whither the children of 

 Israel journeyed from Rameses, was not a 

 city, as some had supposed, but a district. 

 An inscription discovered at Pithom left it 

 no longer doubtful that that place was the 

 ancient Heroopolis, whence, according to 

 Strabo, Pliny, and other authors, merchant 

 ships sailed to the Arabian Gulf. This fact 

 coincided with the results of modem scientific 

 surveys, which showed that there had been 

 a gradual rising of the land, and that the 

 Red Sea once extended up to the walls of 

 Pithom. The identification of Baal Zephon 

 had been aided by some papyri, which 

 proved that it was not a village or a city, but 

 an ancient shrine of Baal and a noted place 

 of pilgrimage. Other places were Migdol 

 and Pi Hahiroth, in the identification of 

 which the author had again been aided by 



a papyrus, and it seemed probable that the 

 Serapeum was the Egyptian Maktal or Mig- 

 dol. It was greatly to be regretted that a 

 bilingual tablet discovered there a few 

 years ago hud been destroyed before being 

 deciphered. 



Forest Reprodnction in New England.— 



The question whether our forests are dis- 

 appearing is answered in one way by Mr. 

 I. H. Hoskins, of Newport, Vt., who says, 

 in Garden and Forest: "In northern New 

 England they certainly are not. The farmer 

 has a constant struggle against the persistent 

 spread of seedling trees over his cleared land ; 

 and if man should abandon this region I 

 think in a hundred years it would hardly be 

 possible for a visitor to realize that it had 

 ever been inhabited by civilized man. It is 

 this constant back-pressure of the forest 

 upon intruding settlements that prevents 

 the average farmer from taking an interest 

 in forestry. He has to fight for his life 

 against the forest, and the idea that the 

 forests are likely to be extirpated seems to 

 him quite absurd. One of the largest and 

 finest sugar orchards in this towTi was seventy 

 years ago a wheat-field." While this is true 

 of some regions. Garden and Forest remarks, 

 there are other vast areas that will never 

 reforest themselves ; and the new forests are 

 of inferior quality to the old ones which they 

 succeed. 



Astronomy and Nnmismatics. — A curi- 

 ous suggestion is made by Dr. A. Vercoutre, 

 of a way in which astronomical knowlediro 

 may be made of service to numismatical 

 science. Stars and members of the solar 

 system often figure on antique medals, 

 notably on coins of the Roman republic, 

 and they sometimes appear as heraldic al- 

 lusions to the magistrate by whom the coin 

 was struck. Thus, on a coin of L. Lucretius 

 Trio, 74 B. c, the seven stars in Ursa Major 

 — called by the Romans Septem Triones — 

 appear in evident phonetic allusion to the 

 name, Trio, of the magistrate. On a coin 

 struck in B. c. 43, Dr. Vercoutre noticed 

 five stars, one of which was much larger 

 and more brilliant than the others. As the 

 constellation Taurus contains the only 

 group of five stars, with one much the 

 brightest recognized by the ancients, the 



