y carriages should be less comfortably fitted up than
those of the continent. How is it that second-class carriages are to
be seen abroad with stuffed seats and padded backs, and never in
England? It cannot be that we do not pay enough for the accommodation.
We pay too much--a fact worth remembering with railway amalgamation
looming in the future; an event which must not take place without the
public coming in demonstrably as third party.

The British Association have met, and gone through their usual routine
of business, with what results--beyond the reports in the public
prints--will be best shewn by the movement of science for the next few
months. It is always something that knowledge is increased; but
whether the accumulating of fact on fact, to the neglect of
generalising those facts, be the true means thereunto, remains to be
proved. Science has been soaring in search of facts; for the committee
appointed to manage the Kew Observatory, thinking that the phenomena
of meteorology would answer further questioning, have sent up a
balloon, with instruments and observers, to make a series of
observations. The temperature was read off from highly sensitive
thermometers at each minute during the ascent, so as to ascertain the
difference of the heat of successive strata of the atmosphere, and the
rate of variation. In the first flight, the party reached the height
of 19,500 feet, and came to a temperature of 7 degrees, or 25 degrees
below the freezing-point, which, considering the state of the
temperature at the surface, was an unexpected result--in fact, an
abnormal one; and not dissimilar to that which so much astonished our
neighbours across the Channel when Barral and Bixio went up. But if it
be abnormal, as is said, it is remarkable that precisely the same
temperature was met with at about the same height on the second
ascent. Another object was, to bring down specimens of air from
different altitudes, for analysis; to try the effect of the
actinometer at great elevations; and to note the hygrometric
condition. There are to be four ascents, so as, if possible, to obtain
something like satisfactory data by repetition; and in due time,
detailed reports of the whole of the observations will be made public.

As ozone is at present attracting attention, it might have been worth
while to ascertain the proportion of this constituent in the higher
regions of the atmosphere. According to Messrs Fremy and Becquerel,
the term