lo: 



NATURB 



[JUiNE 4, 1 90S 



" some men camped twenty miles west from here inquired 

 if we liad heard the rumble last night : it appears their 

 Afghans jumped up and said 'buggy coming.' Whatever 

 the sound was, it was not caused by cattle galloping." 



The sound resembled a distant, prolonged peal of thunder 

 or the discharge of a far-away piece of ordnance or mine 

 explosion. The nearest working mines would be about 

 sixty miles away, the sea about fifty miles, and it is need- 

 less to say there is no artillery within hundreds of miles. 

 No noticeable meteor was seen by anyone, and had the 

 noise been due to this, would it have been heard at places 

 twenty miles apart? It might have been due to an earth- 

 quake, but no tremor was noticed. 



1 have heard from ear-witnesses of dull sounds resembling 

 this being heard in the Kimberley district of this State. 

 At the time, a black-fellow said, " Hill tumble down," 

 and next day they found that great masses of rock had 

 fallen. This might, perhaps, be accounted for in part by 

 the unequal temperatures between day and night — the day 

 very hot, the night very cool. Though the days in August 

 were hot (about qo° F. in the shade) and the nights very 

 cool (requiring several blankets in the early morning), the 

 nearest hill to us was four miles at least away to the east. 



Was this, then, an instance of the phenomenon known as 

 " barisal guns " on the Brahmaputra and " mist pouffers " 

 off Belgium? 



Mr. W. E. Cooke, the Government astronomer, to whom 

 I forwarded an account of the phenomenon with the above 

 inquiry, advised me to record it according to the wish of 

 Sir George Darwin. J. Burton Cleland. 



Department of Public Health, Perth, 

 W. .-\ustralia, .April 16. 



Welsh Saints and Astronomy. 



There were in Anglesey two contemporary saints who 

 were in the habit of meeting together at a spot mid-way 

 between their respective abodes. One was called Seiriol 

 Wyn, "Seiriol the White or Bright," the epithet signify- 

 ing his coming from the east, the region of sunrise. He 

 had his abode on Puffin Island, on the extreme east of 

 Anglesey. The other saint was called Cybi, and because 

 he travelled to meet his friend from the west he was called 

 Cybi Velyn, " Cybi the Yellow." He lived on Holy 

 Island, at Caer Gybi, " Cybi's Camp," the Welsh name 

 of Holyhead. Their place of meeting was in the parish 

 of Llandyvrydog, where there arc two springs called 

 Ffynnon Cybi and Ffynnon Seiriol, which are referred to 

 by Matthew -Arnold. 



" In the bare mid^t of Anglesey they show 

 Two springs which close by one another play. 

 And ' thirteen hundred years agone,' they say, 

 ' Two saints met often where these waters flow.' " 



Cybi, known in Cornish literature as Kebie, seems to 

 have reached Wales from Cornwall. His wanderings and 

 settlements are curiously coincident with the distribution 

 of the cromlech areas in Wales. On further inquiry one 

 finds that Cybi and Seiriol were regarded as astronomers, 

 and that their places or settlements in Wales may be re- 

 garded as observatories. 



In an ancient poem, to an extract from which I find the 

 reference " Archaiol. vol. ii. p. 38," they are numbered 

 among the " seven cousin saints," the others being Dewi, 

 Beuno, Dingat, Cynvarch, and Deiniol. " Those are the 

 seven . . . who have been in (or who entered) the Stone 

 (of round form? ' graen grynder '), and the seven who 

 numbered the stars." The expression " a fu'n y Maen," 

 " who have been in the Stone," must be taken in the sense 

 that they Ijad entered a stone chamber or circle, and it is 

 hard to find any meaning to the phrase unless a cromlech 

 or stone circle is meant, especially when read in connec- 

 tion with numbering the stars. Thus it may fairly be 

 taken that the leading saint-astronomers of Wales are 

 spoken of as having made an astronomical use of stone 

 monuments. This inference is confirmed by the fact that 

 the Cybi churches in Wales, and most likely churches 

 associated with the names of the other six saint- 

 astronomers, preserve in their relation to adjoining 

 churches the cromlech astronomy, especially the May- 

 November year. John Griffith. 



NO. 2014, VOL. 78] 



Mateors from k Draconis in May. 



On May 31, loh. 40m., I saw amid the gathering clouds 

 nearly overhead a very short third-magnitude meteor close 

 to its radiant at 193^-1- 74°. I had never previously re- 

 marked any indication of this shower at the end of' May 

 or in June, though it seems continued in an intermittent 

 manner from July to December, and on January 10, 1SS7, 

 I recorded four meteors from i9i°4-72''. There is another 

 winter shower near, viz., at i94°4-67°, from which I 

 saw seventeen meteors on December 18-28, 18S6. 



A bright, doubly observed meteor seen in 1S93 by Corder 

 and myself had a radiant at iS6°4-74°. This shower is 

 one of the most interesting of those in the circumpolar 

 region. It is, unfortunately, omitted in the diagram of 

 Ursid radiants facing p. 292 in the Gen. Cat. Radiants, 

 vol. liii. of the Memoirs. 



The straggling constellation Draco contains many 

 showers, and some of these are visible over long' periods. 

 Thus meteors continue to fall from a centre at about 

 26i°-l-63° during the whole year. 



Bristol, June 1. W. F. Denning. 



FORM.iriOX OF GROUND- OR ANCHOR-ICE, 

 AND OTHER NATURAL ICE. 



•T^HE formation of ice on the bottom of a river 

 -'- or stream has occasioned much comment and 

 often scepticism in the minds of scientific men. In- 

 stead of ice forming on the surface of the water and 

 growing downwards, we find, in circumstances 

 now well understood, ice forming on the bottom and 

 growing upwards. The phenomenon has been ob- 

 served in all countries where ice is formed, and has 

 been given various names. In Europe it is called 

 ground-ice or bottom-ice (glace-du-fond, grund-eis), 

 but we often find local names, such as ground-gru 

 and lappered-ice. The term anchor-ice evidently ori- 

 ginated in America, for the first record of its use 

 seems to be by a writer in the " Encyclopaedia 

 Americana," published in iSji. The term is uni- 

 versally used in the United States and in Canada. 



There are many early records of the appearance of 

 ground-ice. It was seen by Hales in 1730 in the 

 Thames. Ireland, in his " Picturesque ^■iews " of 

 the Thames, published in 1792, speaks of ground-ice, 

 remarking, " the watermen frequently meet the ice 

 meers or cakes of ice in their rise, and sometimes in 

 the underside enclosing stones and gravel brought up 

 by them ad imo." It was observed in the Elbe as 

 early as 178S, in the Rhine at Strassburg in 1829, and 

 in the Seine, by .Arago, in 1S30. .So much interested 

 was .\rago in the ice that, for the benefit of the doubt- 

 ing savants of his time, he published in France, and 

 in the Edinhurgh New Philosophical Journal for 

 1833, an account of his observations. Other interest- 

 ing papers on the same topic were published about 

 that time. In the same Edinburgh journal we find, 

 in 1834, a paper by the Rev. Mr. Eisdale. Two very 

 interesting and instructive papers were published in 

 the Phil. Trans, for 1S35 and 1S41 by the Rev. James 

 Farquharson, F.R.S., of .-Mford, of his observations 

 on the Don and the Leochal. 



In Canada the formation of anchor-ice has been 

 jjiven much study, largely owing to its great abund- 

 ance and economic aspect. For the same reason, 

 much attention has been devoted to it in Russia by 

 prominent engineers, notably by M. Leon Wladimirof 

 in his study of the ice conditions in the Neva. 



Nowhere can be witnessed a more wonderful sight 

 of the delicate poising of the forces of nature than in 

 a river like the St. Lawrence, with the advent of the 

 winter season. In November, when the temperature 

 of the water arrives at or near the freezing point, the 

 manufacture of ice begins, and for a period of nearly 



