"

adding:

"Dans ce peu de paroles Mr. de Coulanges [its author] dit beaucoup de
choses, et fait comprendre l'intrigue du Cardinal avec la Reine."

I can find no account of this Reverend Cardinal. Who was he (if anybody),
and what is his history? And who was the author of these odd memoirs of the
Swedish Queen?

At page 228. of "NOTES AND QUERIES" I see mention of an English translation
of _Danish_ ballads by Mr. Borrow. Is there any translation of _Norwegian_
ballads? Many of them are very beautiful and characteristic, and well
worthy of an able rendering into our own language, if there were any one to
undertake it. There is also much beauty in the Norwegian national music, of
which a pretty but limited collection, the _Norske Field-Melodier_,
arranged by Lindeman, is published at Christiania.

What is the best method of reaching Iceland? and what _really good_ books
have been published on that country within the last twenty years?

WILLIAM E. C. NOURSE.

London, April 22. 1851.

* * * * *

THE ROTATION OF THE EARTH.

Query, Has Mons. Foucault's pendulum experiment been as yet clearly
enunciated? and do I understand it aright, when I conceive it is intended
to show the existence of a certain uniform _rotation in azimuth of the
horizon_, but different for different latitudes; which rotation, if made
out to exist, is acquired solely in virtue of the uniform diurnal rotation
(15deg hourly) in right ascension of the equator, identical in all
latitudes.

A pendulum, manifestly, can only be suspended vertically, and can only
vibrate in a vertical plane; and surely can only be conceived, in the
course of the experiment, to be referred to the _horizon_, that great
circle of the heavenly sphere to which all vertical circles are referred.

A spectator at the north pole has the pole of the heavens coincident with
his zenith; and there, all declination circles are also vertical circles;
and there, the equator coincides with the horizon; whereby the whole effect
of the rotation of the earth there (15deg hourly) may be conceived to be
given to the _horizon_: whilst, at the equator, the horizon is
perpendicular to the equator, which therefore gives no such rotation at all
to the horizon. Simple inspection of a celestial globe will illustrate
this. Considering the matter thus, at the pole the rotation of the
_horizon_ is 15deg hourly, and at the equator is 0, or nothing. But the
s