In 1469, all the vineyards and orchards perished in consequence of the frost.  In 1609, in France, Switzerland and Upper Italy, people had to thaw their bread and provisions before they could use them.  In 1639, the Harbour of Marseilles was covered with ice to a great distance.  In 1659, all the rivers in Italy were frozen.  In 1699, the winter in France and Italy proved the severest and longest of all.  The prices for articles of food were so much raised that half of the population died of starvation.  In 1709, the winter was no less terrible.  The ground was frozen in France, Italy and Switzerland to the depth of several feet; and the sea, south as well as north, was covered with one compact and thick crust of ice, many feet deep, and for a considerable distance in the usually open sea.  Numbers of wild beasts, driven out by the cold from their dens in the forests, sought refuge in villages and even cities; and the birds fell dead to the ground by hundreds.  In 1729, 1749 and 1769 (cycles of twenty years’ duration), all the rivers and streams were ice-bound all over France for many weeks, and all the fruit trees perished.  In 1789, France was again visited by a very severe winter.  In Paris, the thermometer stood at nineteen degrees of frost.  But the severest of all winters proved that of 1829.  For fifty-four consecutive days all the roads in France were covered, with snow several feet deep, and all the rivers were frozen.  Famine and misery reached their climax in the country in that year.  In 1839, there was again in France a most terrific and trying cold season.  And the winter of 1879 has asserted its statistical rights, and proved true to the fatal influence of the figure 9.  The meteorologists of other countries are invited to follow suit, and make their investigations likewise, for the subject is certainly most fascinating as well as most instructive.

Enough has been shown, however, to prove that neither the ideas of Pythagoras on the mysterious influence of numbers, nor the theories of the ancient world-religions and philosophies are as shallow and meaningless as some too forward thinkers would have had the world to believe.

—­H.P.B.

SCIENTIFIC

Odorigen and Jiva

Professor Yaeger of Stuttgart has made a very interesting study of the sense of smell.  He starts from the fact well known in medical jurisprudence, that the blood of an animal when treated by sulphuric, or indeed by any other decomposing acid, smells like the animal itself to which it belongs.  This holds good even after the blood has been long dried.