station is always busy; but it is as often the passage of files of bullock-wagons for the wounded as aught else, diversified now and then by the stopping of troops going up to the front. Visits to the station are always full of interest. Frequently special trains arrive in the middle of the night full of wounded; these are taken out, laid in wooden sheds erected for the purpose, where English surgeons dress wounds as quickly as possible all through, sometimes eight or ten hours' work ; then, clean and fed, the injured men remount the train and go on to Constantinople. The thing to see is when, as has several times occurred, a train of wounded going down meets a train of soldiers going up. No one could say, after that, that the Turks do not know how to cheer. Up jumps every man that can rise on his legs, every arm that can move is waved, and every throat that can utter a sound joins in the cheer with a yell of welcome, and perhaps of envy of those who are going to fight. With less noise, but with eager eyes and cheerful faces, the new-comers return the salute — not a laggard among them. They are not neatly dressed; they would not do for Aldershot; they are often somewhat dirty; they are of all sizes, and they do not look exquisitely disciplined; but their eagerness and their gladness make up for a great deal, and their patient endurance is beyond all praise.
"Next to the war movements, the relief is naturally the first interest here. All that has been done by Mr. Blunt is admirably done; he has followed the plan of collecting the women and children (there was scarcely a man among the fugitives) into decent but poor houses, insisting upon cleanliness, and giving to each woman one or two or three piastres, according to the number of the children; thus occupying the mothers in buying and contriving, instead of leaving them to croon idly over their sorrows. These women will contrive to feed and fatten out of the pittance given, and even, perhaps, to put by an odd piastre or two for better times. The two Catholic convents of the Missionnaires Apostoliques are all giving wise and simple relief in much the same way. Each has a house full of Moslem women and children, and another of Bulgarians. Mme. Camara's little hospital of Moslem women and children actually wounded in the war is quite a touching sight; and one cannot admire enough the unselfish devotion of the one lady who did not leave the city in panic, but remained to help with her own hands the poor things who were worse off than any one else at the moment. As wounds heal the hospital will gradually turn into a refuge. Near the railway station there is another small hospital for wounded Bulgarian women and children, attended partly by one of the English surgeons; but of them nearly all now are dead."
ON THE COMING WINTER.
Having recently computed the remaining observations of our earth-thermometers here, and prepared a new projection of all the observations from their beginning in 1837 to their calamitous close last year, results generally confirmatory of those arrived at in 1870 have been obtained, but with more pointed and immediate bearing on the weather now before us.
The chief features undoubtedly deducible for the past thirty-nine years, after eliminating the more seasonal effects of ordinary summer and winter, are: —
1. Between 1837 and 1876 three great heat-waves, from without, struck this part of the earth; viz., the first in 1846•5, the second in 1858•0, and the third in 1868•7. And unless some very complete alteration in the weather is to take place, the next such visitation may be looked for in 1879•5, within limits of half a year each way.
2. The next feature in magnitude and certainty is, that the periods of minimum temperature, or cold, are not either in, or anywhere near, the middle time between the crests of those three chronologically identified heat-waves, but are comparatively close up to them on either side, at a distance of about a year and a half, so that the next such cold wave is due at the end of the present year.
This is, perhaps, not an agreeable prospect, especially if political agitators are at this time moving amongst the colliers, striving to persuade them to decrease the out-put of coal at every pit's-mouth. Being, therefore, quite willing, for the general good, to suppose myself mistaken, I beg to send you a first impression of plate 17 of the forthcoming volume of observations of this Royal Observatory, and shall be very happy if you can bring out, from the measures recorded there, any more comfortable view for the public at large.
