Miscellanies. 189 



Another case occurred in the sanae place, a few years subsequent, 

 in which arsenic was taken through mistake, by a sick person, and 

 she employed tobacco with the like success. She, too, had always 

 loathed the article, but now chewed it and swallowed the saliva, 

 without producing sickness at the stomach. No emetic was admin- 

 istered in this case, nor any other remedy. Happy will it be for 

 our race, should this insidious poison, now the slow death of so ma- 

 ny, be employed only as an antagonist to those other deadly poisons, 

 for which it may have been provided by the Creator, as a sure and 

 speedy remedy. 



The above facts I lately received from Dr. Eastman, of Holies, 

 the father of Sophia, and from her sister, at whose house Sophia 

 committed the mistake. Yours truly, 



Ralph Emerson. 



Andover, Mass. May 28, 1836. 



12. Shower of Falling stars in Kussia, on the night between the 

 I2th and I3th November, 1832. — The following extract of a letter 

 from Monsieur le Comte de Suchteln, to Pvlonsieur Feodorou, was 

 communicated to the " Royal Academy of Sciences" at Paris, in 

 which mention is made of numerous meteors which were seen in the 

 neighborhood of Orenburg, in the night between the 12th and 13th 

 November, 1832. "In the night between the 12th and 13th No- 

 vember, 1832, between three and four in the morning, the weather 

 being calm and serene, and the thermometer being at 55° of Fahr. 

 the heavens appeared to be bespangled by a great number of 

 meteors, which described a great arch in the direction of from north- 

 east to south-west. They burst like rockets, into innumerable small 

 stars, without producing the slightest noise, and left in the sky, 

 what was long of disappearing, a luminous band, having all the vari- 

 ous colors of the rainbow. The light of the moon, which was then 

 in her last quarter, obscured this appearance. It sometimes seemed 

 as if the heavens were cleft asunder, and in the opening, there ap- 

 peared long brilliant bands of a white color. At other times flashes 

 of lightning rapidly traversed the vault of heaven, eclipsing the 

 light of the stars, and causing these long luminous bands of varied 

 colors to appear. These phenomena continued to succeed each other 

 without occasioning the slightest perceptible noise. They were in 

 their greatest splendor between five and six o'clock in the mornino-j- 

 and continued without interruption till sunrise. They were observed 



