364 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



parallel streaks inclined at an angle of fifty degrees, with the general motion of 

 the phenomenon. Three or four of these were noticed near the head of Draco. 

 At 8:30 it was observed to clear away on the zenith. The eastern portion now 

 consisted of a narrow strip, very bright, clearly marked at the edges, extending 

 from Gamma Pisces through Alpha Lyra, and at the same time seeming to be 

 moving southwest, it being about thirty degrees from the zenith and appearing to 

 roll like columns of smoke spirally towards the west. At 8:33, in the east were 

 two parallel streaks, the northern, the heavier and the southern throwing out 

 diverging lines of light that seemed to gradually curve as they approached the 

 zenith. At 8:35 o'clock the main branches separated at the zenith, while the 

 western one was very narrow, extending through the Northern Crown. A small 

 line of light now extended from a point about three degrees north of Alpha Lyra 

 to a point about seven degrees from Ela Ursa Major. At 8:39 a brighter streak 

 appeared between Alpha Lyra and Ursa Major, while that over the Crown was 

 broken up into a series of parallel, smaller and fainter streaks. The eastern 

 branch was now very faint and narrow, and extended nearly from Pi Pisces to 

 Alpha Lyra, while all along the northern horizon was a bright rosy glow like the 

 northern lights, but brightest towards the west. At 8:45 the phenomenon pre- 

 sented a faint, yet beautiful appearance, and at 8:55 it had vanished." 



" I have not the courage to make any assertion in the matter. It may have 

 been an aurora, but so far as my knowledge goes, it was something unique." 



Manager Uline, of the telephone exchange, says that it was not an aurora, 

 as during an aurora the telephone wires exhibit a disturbance, while on the night 

 aforesaid they worked all right. In the name of this wonderfully-marked year, 

 what was it? Similar phenomena were observed at Utica, N. Y., Boston, Mass., 

 and Hanover, N. H. — The Argus, Albany, N. Y. 



PHILOSOPHY. 



CREATIONAL PROGRESS. 



BY PROF. H. A. REID, SEC'y STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AT DES MOINES, IOWA. 



The very nature and constitution of the human mind is such, that no man can 

 talk or even think about his own existence and that of the visible world of objects 

 around him, without assuming, even though he may deny it in words, the idea 

 and the fact of a Great First Cause — or, as Herbert Spencer now phrases it, 

 " the inscrutable universal power." I, therefore, maintain that a real atheist is a 

 phenomenal impossibility ; the existence of God is simply an eternal fact — but 

 mere's ideas about God are various and changeful. Then, without attempting to 



