hours, being so filled with excitement and enthusiasm that he could
not stop. When the British threatened Philadelphia, in 1777, the
precious bell was taken down and removed to the town of Bethlehem for
safety. In 1778 it was returned to the State House and a new steeple
built for it. Several years after it cracked, for some unknown reason,
under a stroke of the clapper, and its tone was thus destroyed. An
attempt was made to restore its tone by sawing the crack wider, but
without success. This bell was sent to New Orleans during the winter
to be exhibited in the World's Fair there. The Pullman Company gave
one of their handsomest cars for the transit. It was in the charge of
three custodians appointed by the Mayor of Philadelphia, who did not
leave it night or day, and guarded it as fully as possible against
accident. A pilot engine preceded the train carrying the bell over
the entire route. It left Philadelphia Jan. 24, 1885, and returned in
June.


THE ANTARCTIC POLAR REGIONS.--The climate of the southern polar regions
is much more severe than that at the north pole, the icefields extending
in degrees nearer the equator from the south than from the north. Within
the arctic circle there are tribes of men living on the borders of the
icy ocean on both the east and west hemispheres, but within the
antarctic all is one dreary, uninhabitable waste. In the extreme north
the reindeer and the musk-ox are found in numbers, but not a single land
quadruped exists beyond 50 degrees of southern latitude. Flowers are
seen in summer by the arctic navigator as far as 78 degrees north, but
no plant of any description, not even a moss or a lichen, has been
observed beyond Cockburn Island, in 64 degrees 12 minutes south
latitude. In Spitzbergen, 79 degrees north, vegetation ascends the
mountain slopes to a height of 3,000 feet, but on every land within or