Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



Ercatio?a 



Barbadoea, having- under his 

 iritish Windward Islands of the West Indies. In 1848 i 



and returned to England, where he was soon after put in charge of 

 ;neer Department at Woolwich, and in J850 waes appointed Chairman 

 cecutive Committee for the Great Industrial Exhibition of 1851. Aftpr 

 ; of the Exhibition the honor of knisrhthood was conferred upon him, 

 le beginning of 18.12 he was made Governor of Malta, where he re- 

 ill the close of 1857, when the health of Lady Reid had suffered so 

 •m the debilitatinof climate that he was compelled to resign his post 

 rn to England. Thei?e letters therefore cover the whole period of his 

 rvice as a civilian, and bear testimony to the active and untiring zeal 



a Colonial Governor he manifested for the permanent welfare of the 



"TAe Good Governor''' — applie 



To the n " ■ 



another kind. In 1831 Mr. Redtield I 



and shortening the duration of these gales. These earlier papers of Mr. Red- 

 field fell under the notice of Col. Reid, while stationed at Barbadoes as an 

 engineer officer, and were to him the first satisfactory solution of a problem 

 which had long engaged his attention. From this time Col. Reid became an 

 active laborer in the same field of inx-estigation, and he opened the corres- 

 pondence which follows — a correspondence which continued for nearly twenty 

 years until terminated by the death of Mr. Redfield. 



These letters are therefore in a peculiar manner illustrative of the history of 

 the » development of the law of storms and variable winds," while they are 

 equally illustrative of the mental activity as well as the eimplicity and benevo- 

 lence of character, which marked these two friends, and so long harmomous 



other, but destined to meet only in a 'brighl 



A few letters from Lady Reid, with the r 



collection. They are necessary to render the series complete, and are wortl 



of preservation not only from her terse, vivacious style, but because her coi 



times shed a light upon Governor Reid's merits, which 1 



sty would hardly reveal. . , , , , 



Ifield's letters have been copied from his own letter-book, and a 



y'his eldest son, and 



the hours spent ; 



those who best knew him can best testify. 

 New York, January, 1858." 

 3. Supposed fall q 



over the houses on the south side of Chestnut, between Second and Third 

 streets. At the sarae instant a noise resembling that of an explosion of a 

 steam boiler startled the people in the vicinity, and this was nnrae^ateiy 

 followed by a crash through one of the large windows of the office of 

 Am. Joub, Sci.-Seco«> Sebibs, Vol. XXXIV, No. 102.-Not., 1862. 



