Mr. Huggins, whose researches with the spectroscope have already made his name famous, has recently communicated a most interesting paper to the Royal Society, giving an account of the spectrum analyses of one of the smaller and commoner class of comets that was visible for a short time in the month of June last. Avoiding technical details, which might be uninteresting to some of our readers, we may simply mention that on testing the nucleus of this comet with the spectroscope, Mr. Huggins found that it was resolved into three broad "bands," precisely similar to the results obtained on examining with the same wonderful instrument such carbon as follows the transmission of electric sparks through olefiant gas. The conclusion arrived at by Mr. Huggins is, that the nucleus of the comet in question consisted solely of volatilised carbon. This paper of Mr. Huggins is altogether a most interesting one, and we may have something more to say about it on a future occasion.
The following is a translation--somewhat freely rendered--of an old Irst or St. Kilda song, the solitary island home of a score or two of hardy inhabitants, and by all accounts a happy and hospitable race too, who cling with an unquenchable love to their lonely rock, as if it were a perfect paradise, ocean-girt and storm-beaten though it be--
Except another specimen given in a small collection of Gaelic songs, edited by the late Rev. Mr. M'Callum of Arisaig, the original of the following is the only St. Kilda song that we have met with. Our copy was procured in this way: Some years ago we were dining on board H.M. Revenue cruiser "Harriet," Captain M'Allister. Going ashore on a fine moonlight night, one of the seamen who rowed our boat sang the song, which we had no hesitation in at once declaring to be of St. Kilda origin, which the man admitted was the case, he having picked it up many years before from an old woman who had spent some time on the island. Of the air, we can only remember that it was a wild, irregular sort of chant, very different from the soft low airs to which our mainland songs are for the most part sung, with the refrain or burden (represented by our Alexandrines in each stanza) given in a shrill falsetto that was somewhat disagreeable to the ear, although abundantly appropriate, probably, in the circumstances in which the song was composed, and when sung amid all the surroundings of the scene depicted.