Singular Irridescent Phenomenon. 83 



tation, while they leave behind them a desert. On nearer 

 inspection, the bushes are seen completely covered by their 

 brownish grey bodies, heaps of which may be knocked off 

 like snow-wreaths by the stroke of a stick, while your horSe 

 may be seen with avidity clearing another bush of its devas- 

 tators. The still moonlight nights bring one familiar with 

 the lively scream of flocks of the white and black plumaged 

 plover, and the softer and more prolonged note of the dickop, 

 which seem to emerge from their daylight concealment, and 

 enjoy the security of searching for their food by night. The 

 prowling wolf notifies its proximity to the sheep-kraal in 

 rainy dark nights, by its lengthened hollow howl awakening 

 the dogs, which answer with their frequent bark. In the 

 season nearly every night, either on the road or at home, the 

 jackals may be heard raising a concert of shrill cries, in 

 answer to each other in the distant bush. Fire makes no deep 

 impression on the everlasting verdure of the bush ; and if a 

 grass fire stretches to its margin, it merely consumes the 

 little at its edge that is of a more open character, but never 

 penetrates into the recesses of a kloof. In every respect 

 there seems the character of eternity implanted on it. No one 

 knows how, or where, or when, it began to grow ; no one has 

 witnessed its increase in any way, no one its decay ; no fall of 

 the leaf takes place to any appreciable extent, the foliage only 

 undergoing in the winter season a brownish shade of colour. 

 Inconsumable by fire, waveless by the wind, unharmed by 

 the torrents, unchangeable in every vicissitude of season, 

 having neither youth nor age imprinted on it, it partakes 

 more of the character of a stratum of the surface of the 

 earth than anything proper to organic life. 

 {To be continued in our nextj) 



Singular Irridescent Phenomenon seen on Windermere Lake, 

 October 24, 1851. By J. F. Miller, Esq. Communicated 

 by the Author. 



On the 24th inst. (October) a very remarkable irridescent 

 appearance was seen on Windermere Lake by a gentleman, 



