will be observed that the Germans looked forward to occupying the
adjacent parts of Greenland and Spitzbergen as their share of a line of
outposts to be established by different nations around the Arctic
circle. In any such scheme America would necessarily be called on to
bear a part, and by Captain Howgate's plan her station would be the
line of Smith's Sound and its northern prolongations. This is certainly
her natural field, and is not only the roadway by which most of our
explorers have made their attempts to reach the pole, and therefore
hallowed by their historical struggles, but it is also that portion of
the Arctic region which lies nearest us. It is emphatically a _home_
field to us.

* * * * *

Twenty-seven meteors fell in the United States, and two earthquake
shocks were experienced, in February.

When the Great Eastern was recently cleaned 300 tons of barnacles were
scraped from her bottom, an area of more than 52,000 square feet.

During the hurricane of January 30 the waves in the British channel were
forty feet high as measured by a mareograph.

In December, while the snow was blocking the roads of this country,
Australia enjoyed a temperature of 110 to 116 in the shade.

Search has again been made for the planet Vulcan, the existence of which
is indicated by Leverrier's calculations, but without success.

Among the results of Nordensjold's last trip to the Jenisei river in
Siberia was a piece of mammoth hide found with some bones of that
animal.

Hygeia, "the city of health," is to be built on the Courtland's estate,
about a mile and a half west of Worthing, Sussex, England. Work will be
commenced this spring.

The "Big Bonanza" yielded $20,108,958 gold and $25,700,682 silver from
its discovery to September 30, 1876. In this deposit the usual
preponderance of gold over silver is reversed.

The Mammoth Cave is but one among many caverns in the subcarboniferous
limestones of Kentucky, the total length of which Prof. Shaler thinks is
at least 100,000 miles.

During the continuance of the Centennial, the Pennsylvania railroad
carried nearly five millions of passengers to Philadelphia, and out of
their 760,486 trunks, valises, bags, boxes, and bundles only 26 were
mislaid.

The opening of the safes, more than twenty in number, which were exposed
in the great fire at the American Watch Company's New York building
proved that safes, as