with a little book about “Light.”  They are not content with merely telling the dry facts about their subject, but, with pictures and plain speech, they explain how almost any boy or girl may, at small cost, make his or her own apparatus, and with it verify by actual trial what the book says.  Some of the experiments are positively beautiful, and the hardest is not very difficult.

Then, too, Professor Tyndall has written out his lectures to young people, given before the Royal Institution at London during 1875-76, in a little work called “Lessons in Electricity,”—­most interesting and beautiful of scientific studies,—­in which he tells how to make the instruments and conduct the experiments yourself.  And, as if that were not enough, Mr. Curt W. Meyer, of the Bible House, New York, has arranged to supply a complete set of instruments, to suit this book of Professor Tyndall’s, at a total cost of $55, packing-case and all; the various articles being obtainable separately at proportionate prices.

I only wish we had had such chances fifty years ago; for, if our older friends had not made presents of such things to us,—­as no doubt many oldsters will to your young folks this coming Christmas,—­we’d have saved up our pocket money and gone ahead alone.  I know that I made all my own electrical apparatus; but there was good fun in doing it, and it worked well, and made splendid times for our circle of young folks on cozy winter evenings.

    I hope you will read this letter through, although it is as long as
    most old men’s memories.—­Yours still affectionately,

    GRAN’THER HORTON.

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    Jamaica, L.I.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS:  I read Jack-in-the-Pulpit’s inquiry in the August number about the “Fiery Tears of St. Lawrence.”  Yesterday I was reading a book, and in it there was an article headed “Showers of Stars.”  I read it, and at the end of it was a piece which seemed to be an answer to Jack’s question.  I copied word for word from the book.  Here it is: 

“Another writer suggests the theory that a stream or group of innumerable bodies, comparatively small, but of various dimensions, is sweeping around the solar focus in an orbit, which periodically cuts the orbit of the earth, thus explaining the actual cause of shooting stars, aerolites, and meteoric showers.”

    This is all I have been able to find out, and I hope it is
    correct.—­Believe me to be yours very truly,

    C.A.R.

C.A.R., and others who wish to know more of this subject, will find all the latest information in “Appleton’s Cyclopaedia,” under the items “Aerolite” and “Meteor,” where admirably clear and condensed accounts are given of all that is known about these bodies.  C.A.R.’s extract states the theory most generally held.

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