was no water up there, and that made the pasture less useful than it would have been. All the water for the cattle had to be accumulated in that large tub, either from the snow or the rain. All was in fairly good order. A sackful of hay lay on the floor of the stall. The few cows Pierroch possessed had all disappeared, and the door stood wide open. Nothing more was ever heard of any one of the three. Since then the place bore an evil name. It was called the " Revenants, and no one ever went there now. Only on St. John's Eve a light was always seen. A pale light like the gleam of a glow worm. No one had ever been bold enough to try and get there to find out the explanation. In fact, what further explanation was wanted? Did not Holy Scripture say there were spirits? Did not Monsieur le Curé tell them of Samuel and the witch? They were not so ignorant there on that mountain as monsieur might think. But monsieur has actually passed the night there on St. John's Eve? he must have been there, since he had seen the great tub. Old Nannette remembered the making of that tub. It was built up there. There was a feast given, and the red wine was the first liquid it ever contained. Ah, it was good, that red wine as it flowed from the wooden spigot!

I could not repress a shudder as I thought of the mouldering skeleton, and the frightful death that seemed shadowed out by that ghastly mute phantasma. The convulsions, the plunges I could not see. The groans I could not hear. The awful sickening death.

I answered all their questions briefly, and went on my way. In a short time I was down the mountain. I had reached the village on the edge of the lake. In half an hour the steamer would be here. As I sat outside the clean simple little hotel sipping my coffee, I thought over the strange experiences of the night. Had I really seen a ghost? It seemed so odd. In the broad daylight, with the blue lake before me, with the large bird-like barks airing their sails in that quiet bay beside me; in the presence of the trim gendarme, magnificent in all the rigid dignity of his padded uniform and pasteboard hat, leaning against the rails of the landing-stage, -it seemed so impossible. Why should ghosts exist? How could they be? It

was so much more easy to say it was a dream. And a dream I should still say it was, were it not for that tub. Can it be that we can antedate a dream? That we hear and see certain things, dream of them, and then, forgetting when we dreamed it, believe the dream took place before the events?

As I pondered over it all, I could hardly accept this. I had entered the hut in the dark. I knew there was a tub there, and a skeleton before I looked for them. The skeleton in the sack I saw almost as soon as I opened my eyes; but I had gone out and taken a walk in the cool air of the morning, found a path down, and was perfectly calm and collected before I remembered the tub. I went back purposely to look for it. I knew exactly where it was, what it looked like, and fully expected to find something horrible in it. I must have seen this then. The châlet must have been lighted up somehow. Attribute what I would to imagination, it was impossible to say this was a dream, unless a singularly prophetic one. seemed as easy to believe in a spiritual manifestation as to believe in so marvellously circumstantial a dream.

It

But here was the steamer. A throng of happy merry boys, with tin boxes and knapsacks on their backs, were trooping over the gangway. Two Englishmen, in tweed suits and straw hats, were occupying with dignified grandeur the whole of the first-class deck. In another minute I was on board. I tried to hide my tattered appearance as well as I could; but it was useless. I had to confess to my sufferings, and all the compassion I got was that I was a most utter idiot to go up the mountains without a guide. However, no guide would have led me to "les Revenants ;" and if I should have slept comfortably in my bed at Vevey, I should have gone without the marvellous experience which I cannot help confessing goes far to convince me there must be ghosts.

Two things I have learned from my adventure. One is to regard with a profound respect all Alpine climbers. The other is to receive with reverence the researches and lucubrations of the Psychological Society. There is also a third conclusion I have sadly come to. Vaseline and plaster are very useful adjuncts to a tourist equipment. If, also, you could induce your tailor to part with several

pieces of the stuff of which your suit is made, you would find it come in very useful it is so difficult to match your things abroad.

I shall be happy to tell any one the exact situation of the châlet. It lies in that little plateau quite hidden from the lake.

It is difficult to find. The ascent to it is very arduous, and, owing to that awkward ravine, is really dangerous. But the descent to it is easy and rapid. One has only to slip off the cliff above, and you are soon there.-Blackwood's Magazine.

THE International Photographic Congress, organized several years ago by a group of astronomers for the purpose of applying photography to the study of the stars, met recently for the third time at the Paris Observatory and agreed upon the latest arrangements for photographing the heavens.

The idea of applying photography to the curious things in the sky came to light on the very day when the great discovery of Niepce and Daguerre was publicly announced in the memorable account which Arago gave of it at the session of the Academy of Science, April 19th, 1839. The illustrious astronomer, perceiving at once the many and diverse uses to which the discovery could be put in astronomical research, pointed out among other things the possibility of obtaining a good map of the moon, and a perfect representation of the solar spectrum. But the methods of photography at that day were too crude to admit of securing satisfactory results.

However, about the year 1845 Sizeau and Flaucault contrived to take an excellent photograph of the sun in 1.6 seconds, a very fine engraving of which may be found in Arago's complete works. In 1849, William C. Bond, an American astronomer, obtained a good Daguerreian proof of the moon. The eclipse of the sun on July 28th, 1851, was photographed by Berkawski, at Koenigsberg, upon a Daguerreian plate, which disclosed for the first time traces of the corona that envelops the star of day, and the eruptions that emanate from its surface.

In 1857, Bond obtained a very clear photograph of the double star Mizar and Zeta in the Great Bear, as exact in truth as the micrometric measures, for I have been able to insert it as a document in my catalogue of double stars. It was at the

Harvard College Observatory that these first photographs of stars were made, and it is there to-day that Professor Pickering obtains such marvellous results that in themselves they appear at least to equal all those of the twenty to thirty astronomers composing the European Congress.

Mr. Warren de la Rue, in England, and Mr. Rutherfurd, in the United States of America, obtained magnificent photographs of the moon between 1857 and 1867 that have not yet been surpassed. Let us note among these photographs some startling stereoscopic views that show the lunar globe so much in relief that it has almost the form of an egg. This effect, somewhat exaggerated, is due to the advantage taken of a certain movement of libration in order to penetrate more or less satisfactorily the invisible hemisphere of the moon. Warren de la Rue, to whom we are indebted for these stereoscopic photographs of our satellite, succeeded equally in obtaining views of the planet Jupiter with an exposure of twenty-six minutes.

M. Flaye, in France, has been one of the most ardent advocates of astronomical photography. Insensibly, despite the opposition of astronomers who were first of all mathematicians, photography made a place for itself among the processes of the study. It was applied with the greatest success in observing the transit of Venus in 1874, and again in 1882. In 1877, M. Yanssen, at the Observatory of Meudan, obtained admirable photographs of the solar surface, upon which the observer seems to assist, so to speak, in the phenomena of the formation of light. These photographs of the sun are almost instantaneous, for they are taken in a half one thousandth of a second. In 1884 MM. Paul and Prosper Henry, while making maps of the stars for the atlas of the

The stars of the fourteenth nagnitude are visible through the best astronomical instruments. It will be seen that the total of these first fourteen magnitudes exceeds 40,000,000. To try to catalogue this celestial army would be not only a superhuman task, but absolutely beyond realization; for errors would creep inevitably into such a number of observations, as well as into their reductions, their transcriptions, and their places upon a map.

Years and years would not suffice, and while the work was in progress the stars themselves would change their positions in space, for each of them is animated by

its own motion more or less swift.

Now photography can effect this properly and in the simplest manner, thanks to the perfection to which the art and its methods have been brought.

And do you know how long it would take to perform this gigantic task, to erect this imperishable monument of astronomy? In thirteen minutes! Following are figures showing with substantial accuracy the duration of exposure necessary to get an impression of

Thus five one thousandths of a second are sufficient exposure to photograph a star of the first magnitude, a half second's exposure takes a picture of the smallest stars visible to the naked eye, and thirteen minutes are needed to photograph those of the fourteenth magnitude. A plate 24 X 30 centimetres covers five astronomical degrees. If at a given moment 8000 telescopes arranged for photography should be opened all over the earth, and turned upon 8000 points of the sky, all the points being agreed upon in advance, the 8000 plates would have photographed the entire heavens and registered the 40,000,000 stars of which we spoke above. Placed side by side in their proper positions, these 8000 plates of five degrees each would represent the 41,000 astronomical degrees of which the surface of the heavens is composed.

This kind of instantaneous photography of the heavens would be ideal, but it would not be possible because, first, at any given moment night extends over less than half the globe; and, second, because the atmosphere is never perfectly clear; and, last, because these 8000 instruments would involve an immense expense, a matter which it is simpler and more practicable to reduce to a minimum. The work will probably be divided among the following observatories in proportion to the number of plates set against each :

There will be about 22,000 plates of two degrees each, arranged so that their borders shall overlap each other sufficiently to register all the stars without fail and thus in time cover the whole heavens. The work will probably be completed in five or six years.

Thus nineteenth century science will bequeath to posterity an invaluable and imperishable statement as to the sidereal heavens which in future centuries will serve as a certain basis for the solution of the great problem of the constitution of the universe.

The human eye certainly is an instrument admirably adapted to its purpose. How transparent is this living crystal, how delightful are its hues, what depth it has! what beauty! It is life, passion, light! Close the eyes, and how much of the world remains?

And yet the lens of a photographer's camera is a new eye that gives the finishing touch to ours, that surpasses it, that is more marvellous still.

This giant eye is endowed with four important advantages as compared with our eye it sees more quickly, further, longer, and, inestimable faculty-it fixes, prints, preserves what it sees.

It sees more quickly in the half thousandth part of a second it photographs the sun, its spots, its whirlwinds, its flames, its mountains of fire, in an imperishable document..

It sees further turned at darkest night toward any part of the heavens whatever, it discovers, in the atoms of the Infinite, stars, worlds, universes, creations that our eye could never see by any possibility, no matter how powerful a telescope were brought to bear.

It sees for a longer time: what we cannot contrive to see after several seconds of attention, we can never see.

This new eye needs but to look sufficiently long; at the end of a half hour it will distinguish

what it did not see before; at the end of an hour it will see better still, and the longer it remains directed toward the unknown, the more completely will the eye possess it, without fatigue and always bet

ter.

And it preserves upon its retinal plate all that it has seen. Our eye retains images but an instant. Suppose, for example, that you kill a man at the moment when, quietly seated in his chair, he has his eyes open and directed toward a bright window. (There is nothing improbable in the supposition upon a planet where all the citizens are soldiers and kill each other in all manner of ways at the rate of 1100 daily.) Then suppose that you tear out his eyes (I should have said that the hypothesis involves dealing with an enemy), and that you immerse them in a solution of alum; these eyes will then retain the image of the window with its transverse bars and its light spaces. But in a normal state of things our eyes do not retain imagesthere would be too many of them, besides. The giant eye of which we speak holds fast everything it sees. Its only need is a change of the retina.

Yes, the artificial retina sees more quickly and better. And, by virtue of a property wholly lacking in the human eye, it penetrates abysses where we do not and never could see anything. This is, perhaps, its most astonishing faculty.

Place the eye, for example, at the eyepiece of a telescope whose object-glass measures thirty centimetres in diameter; such an instrument is the best for practical observations.

With this glass of thirty centimetres diameter and three and a half metres in length, we may discover stars to the fourteenth magnitude, that is to say, about 40,000,000 stars of all kinds.

Now replace our eye by the photographic retina. Instantly the most brilliant stars beat upon the plate and mark their likenesses there. Five one thousandths of a second suffice for a star of the first magnitude, one hundredth for those of the second, three one hundredths for those of the third, and so on, according to the proportions expressed above.

In less than one second the photographic eye has seen all that we could perceive with the naked eye.

But this is as nothing. Stars visible only through the telescope also come and