OCCASIONAL NOTES.

AMBULANCE SOCIETIES.

We are glad to observe that as one result of Professor Chiene’s appeal, a Committee of Employers in Edinburgh and Leith is being formed for the purpose of having employees instructed in the manner proposed, so that many of the latter may be able to give practical assistance in the event of accidents happening where they are employed.

THE LAST OF THE OLD WESTMINSTER HOUSES.

All who take any interest in the topographical antiquities of the ancient city of Westminster will learn—not perhaps without some feeling akin to regret—that the last of the old original houses of that old medieval city was taken down during the past summer to make room for more convenient and spacious premises. The house has been thought to be over five hundred years old, having been erected in or about the reign of Edward III. It belonged to the Messrs Dent, well-known provision-dealers, by whose predecessors the business was founded in the year 1750. The shop floor was three steps below the level of the pavement outside, and the ceiling of the shop was so low that a small man could touch it easily with his hand. The building contained several large and commodious rooms up-stairs, the first floor projecting, as usual in such houses, beyond the wall about a foot. The beams used throughout were heavy, massive, and very hard old English oak; and the roof was covered with old-fashioned red tiles. The house stood at the western corner of Tothill Street, where that street joins the Broadway. A few years ago, several such houses were to be seen on the north side of Tothill Street, but as nearly the whole of that side was taken by the new Aquarium, the quaint old houses were of course removed. Now that the old one above referred to is down, they are all gone, and nothing is left of old Westminster city but its grand and matchless Abbey; and long may its majestic beauty continue to adorn a spot celebrated for so many deeply historical memories.

THE RECENT MARVELLOUS SUNSETS.

The marvellous sunsets which have lately been common all over the world have led to a mass of correspondence and conjectures upon the part of scientific men. Perhaps the fullest and most interesting contribution to the literature of the subject is the long article contributed to the Times by Mr Norman Lockyer, who, with many others, is disposed to attribute the phenomena to the presence in the upper regions of the atmosphere of a vast quantity of volcanic dust, the outcome of the terrible eruption—one of the most terrible ever recorded—which took place at Krakatoa in August last. In corroboration of this hypothesis, another correspondent calls attention to the circumstance that similar phenomena were observed in 1783, and are recorded in White’s Selborne as follows: ‘The sun at noon looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rose-coloured ferruginous light on the ground and floors of rooms, but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. The country-people began to look with superstitious awe at the red lowering aspect of the sun; and indeed there was reason for the most enlightened person to be apprehensive; for all the while Calabria and part of the isle of Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes, and about that juncture a volcano sprang out of the sea on the coast of Norway.’