202 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



other good influences on his partner in the dialogue, who has proved 

 so communicative a companion : 



" rock upon thy tower y top 

 All throats that gurgle sweet ! 

 All starry culmination drop 

 Balm-dews to bathe thy feet 1 



" Nor ever lightning char thy grain, 

 But, rolling as in sleep, 

 Low thunders bring the mellow rain, 

 That makes thee broad and deep ! " 



These, it will be admitted, are very melodious strains. Seldom has 

 the imagery of the woods been used with more appropriateness and 

 effect than in this poem, and its poetic excellence is rivaled by its 

 accuracy. No one but an accomplished practical botanist could have 

 written it. And throughout the poem, light and airy in tone as it is, 

 there is distinctly perceptible the scientific element — the sense of the 

 forces of Nature acting according to law, which, as we have already 

 said, pervades like a subtile essence much of Mr. Tennyson's poetry. 

 But enough has probably been said to justify the title of this article. — 

 St. PauVs Magazine. 



-+*+*• 



"WATER TURNED TO BLOOD." 



FROM THE FBENOH OF DE. N. JOLY. 



FROM the remotest antiquity the red color sometimes observed 

 in water appears to have attracted attention. In all ages there 

 have been stories of rains of blood, and of rivers changed to blood, and 

 these phenomena have given rise to the most ludicrous explanations, 

 and to the most ridiculous apprehensions. In Exodus (vii., 20, 21), 

 we read : " All the waters that were in the river were turned to blood. 

 And there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt." Homer 

 speaks of the dews of blood which preceded the Trojan War, and 

 those which foreboded the death of Sarpedon, king of the Lycians. 

 Pliny in his " Natural History " (book ii., c. xxxvi.) tells of a rain of 

 milk and blood which fell at Rome in the consulship of M. Acilius 

 and C. Portius. Finally, the historian Livy mentions a rain of blood 

 which fell in the Forum Boarium. In times much nearer to our own, 

 phenomena of this kind have been observed at various points in 

 Europe, producing ridiculous alarms, and even leading to actual 

 seditions. 



The cause, or causes rather, of these so-called rains of blood are 

 now well understood. Every one knows that they are to be attributed 



