trap and
basalt district with sparse vegetation and a bare aspect. A cold spot
with a handful of Christians, bearing their testimony alone out on the
margin of our field of work. I hope to see 40 or 50 patients up to
sundown, and then have worship with them at night. That will be my
Christmas. This evening--in the city--all the children and our wives
are having a Christmas tree in the theological lecture-room, and on
Tuesday next I guess we'll have our dinner. John Bull, Paddy, Sandy,
and Taffy all seem to agree in _that_ feature. My Sunday will only be
a sample of others. So it goes--working away. Now I must say goodbye.
Many thanks and many good wishes."

A VISIT TO CHRISTMAS ISLAND.

Letters were received in December, 1887, from H.M.S. _Egeria_,
Commander Pelham Aldrich, containing particulars of a visit she had
recently made to Christmas Island, which she was ordered to explore
for scientific purposes. Christmas Island is situated in the Indian
Ocean, in latitude 11 deg. south, longitude 105 deg. 30' east; it is 1,100
feet above the sea, is twelve miles long and eight miles broad. The
officers and men told off for exploring purposes found that the whole
place was composed of coral and rock; notwithstanding this, however,
it is covered almost completely with trees and shrubs, the trees,
which are of large dimensions, seeming to grow literally out of the
rock itself, earth surfaces being conspicuous by their absence. It is
uninhabited by human beings, nor could any traces of animals be
discovered, but seabirds swarm over every part of the island, and
about four hundred wood pigeons were shot by the explorers while they
remained there. No fruits or vegetable matter fit for consumption
could, however, be found, nor the existence of any supply of fresh
water, and the belief is that the vegetation of the island is
dependent for nourishment on the dews and the heavy rains that fall.

CHRISTMAS IN AMERICA.

Writing just before the Christmas festival of 1855, Mr. Howard Paul
says the general manner of celebrating Christmas Day is much the same
wherever professors of the Christian faith are found; and the United
States, as the great Transatlantic offshoot of Saxon principles, would
be the first to conserve the traditional ceremonies handed down from
time immemorial by our canonical progenitors of the East. But every
nation has its idiocratic notions, minute and otherwise, and it is not
strange that the Americans, as