148 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 
Disturbances of the electrical equilibrium are rarely manifested in 
California, and but four times have lightning and thunder been witness 
wires. Hail and snow are also seldom experienced. Besides the instance 
of hail just mentioned, we were visited with a sprinkle of both hail and ° 
snow on the 3d of May. 
he Aurora Borealis, which has been seen here only eleven times in the 
same number of years, has been witnessed on no less than four different 
occasions during the last year. The first and most remarkable was that 
on the 4th of July, and althougli the brilliancy was not so great, nor the 
field of observation so extended as that on the 28th of August of the 
preceding year, still it was seen at places wide apart, and at each point 
of observation presented the same distinctive features. This is at least 
the second instance on record in which this phenomena has been observed 
cotemporaneously in California and the Eastern States. 
Earthquakes have not been as frequent during the year at San Fran- 
northeast to southwest—as it was sensibly experienced at various pi!aces 
tween here and Carson City. At the latter place (4,741 feet above 
the sea), the intensity of the force was considerably greater than at Sac- 
ramento, where it was only sufficient to cause a slight vibratory motion 
among chandeliers and other pendant objects. 
V. MISCELLANEOUS SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. 
1. National Observatory.—The accession of Lt. James M. Gruss to 
the direction of the Washington Observatory is a fact of happy omen for 
science. It may perhaps seem to some but a tardy act of justice that 
the man who was chiefly instrumental in securing the establishment of 
Expedition should now adorn the post lately so ignominiously left vacant. 
Earthquake at Mendoza.—-On the 20th of March last, about 
o’clock in the evening, a most destructive earthquake overwhelmed the 
eity of Mendoza in the Argentine Republic, South America. Mendoza 
is in lat. 32° 53’ S, lon. 69° 6’ W., and is about 2900 feet above the sea 
on the eastern slope of the Andes. The shock is said to have come 
from the N., followed by another from the S., and to have lasted only 
about five seconds, in which brief time nearly the whole town was utterly 
laid waste and from 8000 to 12,000 lives were destroyed. The shock 
was not felt at Valparaiso, distant about 150 miles in a right line W. by 5. 
3. Prussian Expedition to Japan and China.—A letter from Baron 
Richthofen, Geologist to the Expedition, from Yeddo, dated 25th of De- 
cember, 1860, states that they were about leaving Japan, to go to Shang- Med : 
