meeting, but these feelings changed to bewilderment as the lecture proceeded. The lecturer announced without hesitation the existence of a new planet attached to one of the fixed stars, but proceeded to describe its geological formation and other features with a fantastic exactitude beyond anything yet obtained by way of the spectrum or the telescope. He was understood to say that it produced life in an extravagant form, in towering objects which constantly doubled or divided themselves until they ended in flat filaments, or tongues of a bright green colour. He was proceeding to give a still more improbable description of a more mobile but equally monstrous form of life, resting on four trunks or columns which swung in notation, and terminating in some curious curved appendages, when a young man in the front row, whose demeanour had shown an increasing levity, called out abruptly: 'Why, that's a cow!' To this the professor, abandoning abruptly all pretence of scientific dignity, replied by shouting in a voice like thunder: 'Yes, of course it's a cow; and you fellows would never have noticed a cow, even if she jumped over the moon!' The unfortunate professor then began to rave in the most incoherent manner, throwing his arms about and shouting aloud that he and his fellow