ST. THOMAS* TIDE. 351 



DEC, 16. St. Adelaide, empress, a.d. 999. 

 St. Ado, archbishop of Vienna, 875. 

 St. Adalbert, first bishop of Magdeburg. 

 St. Beanus, bishop in Ireland. 



Obs. St. Adelaide, otherwise called Alice, recorded today was 

 daughter of Ralph II. king of Burgundy. She died at Salces in 

 Alsase in 999, and part of her reliques are kept in a costly shrino 

 in the Treasury of Reliques at Hanover. The life of St. Alice is 

 written by St. Odilo. She is to be distinguished from another saint 

 of the same name recorded on the 5th of February. 



St. Ado was born about the year 800. The see of Vienne falling 

 vacant, he was chosen archbishop, and consecrated in Sept. 360. 

 The multiplicity of affairs never made him the less constant in 

 prayer or less rigorous in his mortifications. He passed to the eter- 

 nal enjoyments of God on the 16th of December, 875, having been 

 bishop fifteen years and thtee months. 



Chinese Arbor Vitae Thuja Orientalis fr. 



We have copied the above, as well as many other Evergreens, from the 

 Floral Directory, without knowing why their fiondesceiice is particularly noti- 

 fied on the particular days. Perhaps their winter shoots are intended to be 

 commemorated. 



The southern heaven presents a very beautiful appearance through the night 

 at this time of year. About ten o'clock the Pleiades and Aldebaran are ap- 

 proaching the meridian ; Capella is nearly on the zenith ; lower down in the 

 south east we may observe Sirius, of celebrated brilliancy; above, and a little 

 more east, is Procyon j still higher up, and further east, the two stars of Ge- 

 mini, while the beautiful constellation Orion holds a conspicuous place among 

 the above in south south east. 



We find the following note in Brand's Popular Antiquities : 

 " On Hinginge the hallowed Belle in great Tempestes or Lightninges. — 

 Aubrey, in his Miscellanies, pa^e 148, says. At Paris when it begins to thunder 

 and lighten they do presently ring out the great bell at the Abbey of St. Ger- 

 ■ main, whicli they do believe makes it cease. The like was wont to be done 

 heretofore in Wiltshire. When it thundered and lightened, they did ring 

 St. Artelm's Bell at Malmesbury Abbey. The curious do say that the ringing 

 of bells exceedingly disturbs spirits. The same is said of Cockcrowing. Our 

 forefathers, however, did not entirely trust to the ringing of bells for tlie dis- 

 persion of tempests, for in 1313 a cross full of reliques of divers saints was set 

 on St. Paul's steeple, to preserve from all danger of tempests." This may 

 perhaps be the reason why so little mischief to London has been done by 

 storms. 



On Coincidences.— \t. is a remark repeatedly made, and that, too, by persons 

 by no means superstitious, that more coincidences happen than, according to 

 the common doctrine of chances, we should have a right to expect in a given 

 time. Though this is an assertion ditficult of proof, on account of the vague 

 and undefined character of what we call coincidences, yet every body is struck 

 with the force of the observation ; and some persons have thought that there 

 might be some mysterious and remote laws which regulated the falling out of 

 events in such a manner, as that two or more strikingly similar, though, as 

 far as we can perceive, unconnected events, should in "a great number of in- 

 stances happen together. For cue trifling instance of what we allude to, see a 

 coincidence accidentally recorded in tlie Postscript of Dec. 13, p. 348. 



