,!» The first lecture of the session at the Midland Institute, Birmingham was delivered by Dr E. S. Ball, Astronomer Boyal for Ireland, on a " Glimpse through the Corridors of Time." In the course of his re marks, the lecturer said :— "While the day was gradually lengthening through the moon's action on the tides, the earth reacted on the moon and drove it farther and farther away. The circle described by the moon was therefore gradually in creasing, and thus the day was get ting, longer as the moou was reced ing farther and farther. If they looked back to earlier periods, the moon must therefore have been closer and closer to the earth. The farther they went back, and at one epoch which ho put at about 50,000,000 of years, the moon must have been very close to the earth, and then the day, instead of being twenty-four hours, would only be tliree hours long. The closer the moon was to the earth the more quickly it revolved; and, looking back to that remota period, they had the extraordinary state of things m which the earth was spinning round once m three bouts, and the moon rotating once m three houra also. At that time the earth was really a mass of semi-molten matter and if the oceans were there at all they were suspended m vapour around it. He showed that the nearer the moon was to the earth, the greater was the rise of the tide; and he calculated that, when the moon was so near the earth, the tides must have been 216 times as great as at the present time. Bis. . ing 240 feet high, the 1 tides would have washed over the whole of Eng.
A GOOD DYNAMITE STORY.
