-In the account of his Africai explo-.
rations j ust * p1blished, Major Serpa
Pinto refers at coisjiderable length to the I
ants encoiuitered it] the course of his s
journevings. One ternible species is t
even said by the natives to attack and I
kill elephants. The savages lice front it I
in great terror. 'It is not large, but bites f
severely, and it swarms in sitt-h vast s
hordes as to completely overwhelm any t
animal it may meet in the counse of its r
long marches over the country.
-31. 'lammarion, the emineit French 1
astronomer, iaclines to the view that a
comets' tails are not material, Lot per- t
baps ni excitation-electric or other-- 1
of ether. He also calculates that the I
tail of the comet of 1,A3, at the distance 11
of the earth from the sun, must have t
swept space with a velocity of 40,0Ut s
miles per second, at which late no mole-nc
cuie of matter would remain a single in
stant dependant on solar attraction,
nibving in a closed orbit around the sun.
