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IT was said centuries ago that lightning strikes churches oftener than residences. In reference to this saying Cotton Mather wrote in the seventeenth century: " New England can say so. Our meeting houses and our ministers' houses have had a singular share in the strokes of thunders." This summer of 1770 seemed to prove these assertions, and if Mather had then been alive he would doubtless have mentioned this evidence in support of his claim. The principal showers during the summer occurred as follows.

THE only total eclipse of the sun visible in New England during the present century occurred on Monday, the sixteenth of June, 1806. The day was unusually beautiful, scarcely a cloud being discernible in any part of the New England sky. The air was dry and serene, and so still that the very gentle breeze which came from the northwest was hardly distinguishable. Nature gave every opportunity for observation.