NATURE'S REALM. 117 
only remain housed up a day or two during 
the prevalence of a severe storm or excessive 
low temperature. Ofttimes the squirrels are 
forced to subsist upon such things as afford lit- 
- tle nourishment—for instance, buds of the elm, 
hack-berries and the bark of twigs of various 
kinds of trees. The squirrel has to devote 
hours of patient labor in gaining the feast of 
oily kernels of a walnut. 
Birds and small animals are more sensitive 
to atmospheric changes than people are. Here 
on a bright warm day in December the robins 
were hopping about in the grove, and the nut- 
hatches were gliding up and cown and around 
the trees in all directions, while the squirrels 
were extra lively. They all felt the coming of 
a cold wave, which arrived in good order late 
in the day.— Fasper Blines in Sports Afield. 


GLOBULAR LIGHTNING. 
This is a rare phenomenon. The general 
description of the occurrence is, that a lumi- 
nous ball is seen moving very slowly, not touch- 
ing any object, and eventually breaking up 
with a violent explosion and the appearance of 
several flashes of ordinary lightning. It is 
reported that the occurrence described has 
lasted at least a couple of seconds. Ordinary 
lightning, as is well known, is quite practically 
instantaneous. The size of the ball on differ- 
ent occasions has varied from that of an orange 
to that of a large glass lamp globe, or even 
larger. Many physicists refuse to believe any 
accounts of this manifestation of the electrical 
discharge, but the reports of it are too numer- 
ous and circumstantial for us to consider them 
to be baseless, says Longman'’s Magazine, 
which is authority for the foregoing. 
THE GLACIERS OF ALASKA. 
Soon after leaving Wrangle the first Alaskan 
glacier is seen in the distance, writes Kate 
Field, looking like a frozen river emerging 
from the home of the clouds. The sea is 
glassy, and a procession of small bergs, broken 
away from the glacier, float silently toward the 
south. It is Nature's dead march to the sun, 
to melt in its burning kisses and to be trans- 
planted into happy tears. Wild ducks fly past, 
and from his eyrie a bald-headed eagle surveys 
the scene, deeply, darkly, beautifully blue, 
apparently conscious that he is the symbol ot 
the republic. There are glaciers and glaciers. 
In Switzerland a glacier is a vast bed of dirty 
air-holed ice that has fastened itself, like a cold 
porous plaster, to the side of analp. Distance 
alone lends enchantment to the view. In 
Alaska a glacier is a wonderful torrent that 
seems to have suddenly frozen when about to 
plunge into the sea. Down and about moun- 
tains wind these snow-clad serpents ; extending 
miles inland with as many arms, sometimes, 
as an octopus. Wonderfully picturesque is the 
Davidson Glacier, but more extended is the 
Muir Glacier, which marks the extreme 
northerly points of pleasure travel. Imagine 
a glacier three miles wide and three hundred 
feet high at its mouth. Think of Niagara 
Falls frozen stiff, add thirty-six feet to its height, 
and you have a slight idea of the terminus of 
Muir Glacier, in front of which your steamer 
anchors; picture a background of mountains 
15,000 feet high, all snow-clad, and then 
imagine a gorgeous sun lighting up the ice 
crystals with rainbow coloring. The face of 
the glacier takes on the hue of aqua-marine, 
the hue of every bit of floating ice, big and 
little, that surrounds the steamer and makes 
navigation serious. These dazzling serpents 
move at the rate of sixty-four feet a day, tum- 
bling headlong into the sea, and as it falls the 
ear is startled by sub-marine thunder, the 
echoes of which resound farand near. Down, 
down, down goes the berg, and woe to the 
boat in its way when it again rises to the sur- 
face. 
DATA FOR A LARGE COLLECTION OF EGGs. 
I have often been struck with the make-shift 
arrangements for keeping data adopted by 
those who have collections of eggs, and it has 
seemed to me that a description of the manner 
in which those of the “J. P. N.” collection are 
kept might be interesting. 
At the present time this collection contains 
nearly 4,500 sets, and each set has a separate 
data. It was necessary to devise some plan by 
