The baronial or abbatial-looking kitchen is placed in the line of circumvallation, or curtain wall. Walls and groined roof alike are of massive masonry. It is thirtyfour feet square, and rises to a height, lantern-fashion, of forty feet. This is supplemented with sculleries and offices connected with the various culinary departments, a set of larders for meat, fish, stock, and game, and many appliances, such as lifts, hydraulic apparatus, marble slabs, and streams of water; and below it is a vast vault for coals; and above some of these departments are bed-chambers for the numerous staff employed in them. Here the old character of the castle is maintained, and Italian art is only dreamt of in the occasional production of an Italian dish. In the kitchen hangs the huge dish on which is placed the baron of beef on festive occasions. When this is placed on the table it is preceded by a piper playing "Chevy Chase."

with pictures of much interest. Ward's | in which banquets are frequently given two paintings of the chargers of the Duke and entertainments held. It is a hundred of Wellington and Napoleon, and Cana- and thirty-five feet long, with an openletto's views of Northumberland House timbered roof. Learned societies (the and Westminster Bridge, Sir David Wil- British Association, last year), tenants, kie's "Gentle Shepherd," and a woodland and neighbors are frequently hospitably scene by Creswick, and the "Return from regaled in it, and an annual ball fills it Deer-stalking," by Landseer, are here. with revelry, light, and music. It has been once recently fitted up as a bazaar for a charitable purpose, when it was filled with lively crowds for nearly a week. The crowning rejoicings of which it has been the scene were those held at the coming of age of the present Earl Percy, when young and old, rich and poor, were entertained in different ways and different times for three days. Except when required for entertainment, this great hall does duty as a coach-house. Here stands the gilded state-coach with its thick wheels, and highly ornamented panels and carvings of the days of sedan-chairs, fans, powder, and patches; and side by side with it the most recent, luxurious, and severely simple vehicles of our own day of various descriptions. In the airy, well-lighted stables, though there are no rows of war-horses, or of sumpter-mules, or fair ladies' palfreys, nor in the harnessrooms any broidered reins, or velvet housings "trapp'd with gold," there is much to admire. The name of the steed to which it belongs is placed at the head of each stall; a fringe of plaited straw gives a neat finish to each straw-strewed compartment; and the utmost order and cleanliness prevail. The gentle, powerful, sleek animals, well groomed and so well housed, would probably not care to change places with those of old times, notwithstanding their rich trappings and more intimate companionship with knights and squires.

Some of the ancient towers on the curtain-wall are used as museums. The walls are about five feet thick, and there is a footwalk on the top of them here and there. Some towers are pierced with narrow slits only on the lowest stage, and lighted by larger mullioned and transomed windows above. The stone steps leading to the upper floors are sometimes external, and sometimes placed inside and lit by cross-bow openings. The constable's tower has, in the chamber above the ground floor, a cusped double-light window with a quartre-foil heading, and a stone seat in the thickness of the wall on either side of it. This old-world room, once the constable's lodging, now contains the arms, powderhorns, etc., of the troops raised to repel the threatened invasion in the beginning of the century. The sallyport tower contains a collection of antiquities. Another tower holds the Egyptian collection gathered together by the late Duke Algernon. A geological collection, made by the Duchess Charlotte Florentia, was placed in the abbot's tower. Offices for the heads and clerks of the various business departments occupy more of the buildings along this encircling line.

The stable-courts lie beyond it. In one of these stands the new great guest-hall,

The gardens Pennant found too trim for his taste lie to the east of the castle. Here, again, we are reminded of the possessions of Italian princes in past centuries, notwithstanding the cold skies and keen winds of the North Countrie." There are terraces sloping up one above another, parterres bright with flowers arranged with geometric precision, parterres green with convolutions of box and ivy without flowers, leafy screens of lindentrees, squared hedges of yew and privet almost as compact as masonry, banks with festoons of foliage on them, wide walks bordered on either side with wide flowerbeds all the more brilliant for the contrast with their smooth grass bordering, and on three sides of the goodly acres thus treated stands a high red-brick wall cov

ered with fruit trees. In the heart of the | ble from this mount (known as Brislee), as

well as Dunstanborough and Warkworth Castles. Hulne Priory is near the foot on the opposite side of the river. It is said the resemblance to the scenery round Mount Carmel, in Syria, was the reason of the selection of this spot for the site of the monastery. The gigantic firs, the pines, the seas of heather, the glades, the deer, the wide openings of greenest verdure, the close plantations, the majesty of some of the monarchs of the forest, the profuseness of animal, bird, and plant life, not to mention fish life in the beautiful river, create an impression perhaps even more acute than that afforded by the castle, that enables us to realize how much the Percies gave or lost in olden times when their estates were confiscated; and something, too, of the magnanimity of the sovereigns who restored them, time after time, to them and their heirs.

garden, in the centre of the parterres, is a large fountain, or carrée d'eau, with a polished semicircular red granite lip, or rim. At the lower end of this division, or opening, stands a fine conservatory, a hundred feet long, with two other glass houses about as long on either side of it, at a little distance, wing-fashion. At the upper end, at the full height of the sloping terraces, is an Italian-looking gateway of three arches filled with ornamental ironwork of the lightest workmanship, which gives access to other portions of the gardens and grounds. To the west of the fountain is a quadrangular allée vert of linden-trees trained to form a green colonnaded cloistral walk round a central paradise, to use an old word for the grassy square enclosed by it; to the east is the rose garden -some thirty beds of choice roses cut out of greensward, which is an addition to an older star-like device of roses near it, originally thought of, probably, by Capability Brown. And beyond all this are many kitchen gardens, glass houses where pines are grown in great numbers, vineries, ferneries, an orchid- TEMPERATURE IN THE GLACIAL EPOCH. house, and most of the items that go to THE ate long frost has naturally sug make up Lord Bacon's idea of man's great-gested the question, What permanent fall est happiness.

The ornamental pleasure-grounds encircle the gardens and extend westwards, where they enclose the river, and finally merge in the parks mentioned, round which runs a high stone wall about twelve miles long. The parks are traversed by forty-seven miles of roads, and contain all that remains of Alnwick Abbey and Hulne Priory, and some of the loveliest spots in this "dear kingdom of England," as the Saxon poet called our native land. On the summit of a heather-clad mount, about two miles westwards of the castle, is an ornamental column erected by the first Duke of Northumberland, from the balcony of which may be seen many miles of the borderland committed by so many sovereigns to the keeping of the Percies, with the Alne winding below, the ocean spreading along the north-east coast, with Grace Darling's lighthouse as a central spot of interest upon it, the Cheviots rising up like a natural barrier to the Scots, and, in the same direction, Flodden Field, with, we must conclude, somewhere among the distant hills, the scene of "Chevy Chase," or of the series of encounters in the course of centuries that were concentrated into the narrative set forth in that poem. Bamborough Castle, the seat of Saxon kings in the days of the Heptarchy, is also visi

From Nature.

of temperature would produce a recurrence of the glacial epoch? It is a question not easily answered, for it is like a problem complicated by too many independent variables. It is not enough for us to ascertain the actual temperature of a district in order to determine whether it will be permanently occupied by snow and ice. There are regions where the ground, a short distance below the surface, is always frozen to a depth of several yards at least; and yet glaciers do not occur, even among the hills, because the amount of precipitation is so small that the summer rapidly dissipates what the winter has collected. There are other regions partly covered by ice though their mean annual temperature is distinctly above the freez ing point; as where glaciers descend to the sea from hilly districts, of which a considerable area lies above the snow-line, and on which there is much precipitation. In the case of Great Britain, at least, a further difficulty enters into the problem

namely, that much controversy still prevails as to the interpretation of the symbols upon which our inferences in regard to the temperature of these islands during the glacial epoch must depend. Some authorities would concede no more than that the highland districts of Scotland, Wales, and England were enveloped in

We will assume throughout that the annual isothermal of 32° coincides with the line of permanent snow. This, obviously, is an assumption; often, owing to small precipitation, it will be found to be erroneous, but we take it as the only simple approximation, for, under favorable circumstances, masses of ice may protrude beyond it.

snow and ice, and the glaciers, whether | in their upper basins are rather above ten confluent or not, extended from their feet thousand feet, while the surrounding peaks for a few leagues over the lowlands - say, range, roughly, from twelve thousand to to some part of the coast of Lancashire and fourteen thousand feet, though but few of Northumberland; while others desire exceed thirteen thousand feet. Thus the to envelop a large part of the British Isles feeding-ground of the Oberland glaciers in one vast winding sheet of ice, a corner may be regarded as equivalent to a mounof which even rested on the brow of Mus-tain district the sky-line of which ranges well Hill, above the valley of the Thames. from rather above two thousand to five The one school regards the boulder clay thousand feet. In reality, however, not of England as a deposit mainly submarine, very much of it exceeds four thousand feet the product of coast ice and floating ice above the snow-line. This, indeed, rather in various forms; the other attributes it overstates the case. We find practically exclusively or almost exclusively to the that the effective feeding-ground, that action of land ice. Into this thorny ques- which gives birth to glaciers, which protion we do not propose to enter. The trude for some distance below their supply approximation which we shall attempt - basins, may be placed about one thousand and it can only be a rough one- can feet above the ordinary snow-line; so that be easily modified to suit the requirements the glacier-generating region of Switzerof either party. land may be regarded as equivalent to a mountain district with passes about fifteen hundred feet, and peaks not often exceeding three thousand feet. It follows, then, that if the temperature at the seacoast in Wales were 32°, the whole of the Scotch Highlands, and a large part of the Cumbrian and Cambrian Hills would become effective feeding-grounds, and the glaciers would be able to descend into the plains. In the Alps, the larger glaciers terminate at present at altitudes of from four thou sand to fifty-five hundred feet (approximately); that is, they descend on average about four thousand feet below the effective feeding-ground, or three thousand feet below the snow-line. If the temperature of Bangor were not higher than 32°, then the Snowdonian district would be comparable with one of the Alpine regions where the mountains rise generally from about one thousand to three thousand feet above the snow-line; that is, with such a one as the head of the Maderanerthal, where none of the peaks reach twelve thousand feet above the sea. Here the Hüfi Glacier leads to passes rather below ten thousand, among peaks of about eleven thousand feet in altitude, and it terminates a little above five thou sand feet. That is to say, a region, rising roughly from two thousand to three thousand feet above the snow-line, generates a glacier which descends more than two thousand feet below it.

The question, then, may be put in this form. Assuming a sufficient amount of precipitation, what changes of temperature are required in order to bring within the isothermal of 32° regions which are generally admitted to have been occupied by land ice during some part of the glacíal epoch?

an

First, in regard to the British Isles. All will admit that in many places the Cumbrian and Cambrian glaciers descended to the present sea-level. The mean temperature of the Thames Valley near London is 50° F. This isotherm cuts the Welsh coast a little east of Bangor. Obviously, the whole region north of this line has a lower mean temperature, no part of the British Isles, however, being below 45°. Hence a general fall of 18° would give a temperature of 32° at most in the Thames Valley and on the shores of North Wales (except on the extreme west), while on the coasts further north the temperature would range down to 27°. What would be the effect of this? Switzerland may enable us to return an answer. The snow But what change is required to give a line in the Bernese Oberland may be glacial epoch to Switzerland? It is genplaced roughly at eight thousand feet erally agreed that an ice sheet has envel above the sea, but it is obvious that the oped the whole of the lowland region chief feeding-ground of the Alpine gla- between the Alps and the Jura. Let us ciers lies rather higher up in the moun- assume that, other conditions remaining tains. In the case of such glaciers as the the same, this could occur if the mean Great Aletsch, or the Aar, the lowest gaps | annual temperature of this lowland were

reduced to 32°. Its present mean temper- | ice-sheet will be 18°; but less would prob

ably suffice, for the district north of the St. Lawrence would be a favorable gathering-ground. This would be brought within the isotherm of 32° by a fall of 12° or at most of 13°.

ature varies somewhat; for instance, it is 45°-86 at St. Gall, 49°.64 at Lausanne. Let us take 47° 5 as an average, which is very nearly the mean temperature of Lucerne.* So this lowland requires a fall of 15°5. We may take the average height of the It seems, then, that if we assume the region as fifteen hundred feet above the distribution of temperature in the northsea. If, then, we begin the effective gathern hemisphere to have been nearly the ering-ground at one thousand feet higher, the valley of the Reuss from well below Wasen, and the valley of the Rhone from a little above Brieg, would be buried be neath névé. So that probably a fall of 16° would suffice to cover the lowland with an ice-sheet, and possibly bring its margin once more up to the Pierre-à-bot above Neuchâtel; at any rate, a fall of 18° would fully suffice, for then the mean temperature of Geneva would be slightly below 32°. The line of 41° passes though Scandinavia a little north of Bergen; if, then, the climate of Norway were lowered by the same amount, which also is that suggested for Britain, the temperature at this part of the coast would be 23°, corresponding with the present temperature of Greenland rather south of Godhavn; and probably no part of Norway would then have a higher mean temperature than 26°.

The wants of North America are less rather than greater; though, as geologists affirm, an ice-sheet formerly buried all the region of the Great Lakes and descended at one place some fifty leagues south of the fortieth parallel of latitude. Its boundary was irregular; but if we strike a rough average, it may be taken as approximately corresponding with the present isotherm of 50°. The temperatures, however, in North America fall rather rapidly as we proceed northwards. Montreal is very nearly on the isotherm of 45°, and this passes through the upper part of Lakes Huron and Michigan; that of 39° runs nearly through Quebec and across the middle of Superior, while at Port Arthur, on the same lake, the temperature is only 36° 2. If, then, we assume sufficient precipitation, the maximum fall of temperature required for this North American * St. Gall, 45086 F.; Berne, 46°58; Lucerne, 47° 48; Zurich, 4820; Neuchâtel, 480 74; Geneva, 49° 46; Lausanne, 490 64. St. Gall and Berne are rather high stations, the one being 2,165 feet, the other 1,760 feet. The lake of Lucerne is 1,437 feet above the sea.

same as at present, we require it to have been lowered, at any rate in the regions named, by about 18° in order to bring back a glacial epoch. For North Wales a reduction of about 20° might be needed, but if the isotherms ran more nearly east and west, 18° for the Thames Val ley might suffice. If we assume the great extension of glaciers in central and north-western Europe to be contemporaneous with that in America, we must suppose that these parts of the northern hemisphere had a climate more nearly resembling, but even colder than that which now prevails in the southern hemisphere. The isothern of 40° runs a little to the south of Cape Horn; that of 45° passes north of the Straits of Magellan. The latter lie on parallels of latitude corresponding with those of North Wales, but their mean temperature is about 8° lower. If we could restrict ourselves to the British Isles, it would be enough to assume a different distribution of temperature from that which now prevails on the globe, for at the present time, and in the northern hemisphere, the isotherm of 32° twice comes down very nearly to the latitude of London; but it may be doubted whether this alone would account for the great extension of the Alpine glaciers, and the difficulties seem yet greater in the case of North America. Here, where even at present the temperature is rather abnormally low, we have to make a very considerable reduction. But this is too wide a question to discuss at the end of an article in these pages. We seem, however, fairly warranted in concluding that, whatever may have been the cause, a lowering of temperature amounting to 18°, if only the other conditions either remained constant or became more favorable to the accumulation of snow and ice, would suffice to give us back the glacial epoch.

T. G. BONNEY.