Light was caught bending by Cine stein, and now, according to the Abbé Moreux, well-known French astronomer and observer of selen~ tifle phenomena, it is slacking. He says that, in the early part of the nineteenth century, Delambre calculated that light travelled at the rate of 310,000 kilometres a second. In 1886, Newcomb and Michelson ut the rate at 299,940, and, n few years Inter, calculations at the Nice Observatory gave only 299,802. Quite recently, Mount Wilson Observatory, in the United States, has come out with an estimate of 299,796. 'The Abbé Moreux is convinced that these variations are not due to a' greater or smaller amount of precision in the instruments ployed, but to a real decrease in the transmission of light. Its pace slackening at the rate of about four kilometres per second every year., This reduction is now constant and well-established that another savant, M, Gheury do Bray, has worked out the rates for some years in advanc As to the reason of this slack ing, the Abbé Moreux can offer satisfactory explanation, He von! tures the suggestion that the ether on which the rays or waves of light are carried, may be condens~ ing—a process which, if continued, no doubt would modity the moves ments of the heavenly bodies, but hho has to confess that the increase ing laziness of light is a mystery, at any rate for the present, A Theatrical Venture The Opera Comique has distin~ guished itself by producing @ comit opera, The uninitiated might reas sonably suppose that this kind of work is the natural province of theatre bearing such a distinctive name, but this simple idea has been put in the background fog a Zod. many years by successive managers of the Opera Comique, who have all been afraid of being accused of keeping to the rococo or the pom= pier or any other style not fully up to date. The modern French {dew of high-class light opera wooms to be an elaborate musical interpreta tion of all the sorrows of mankind, and, proceeding to the theory that. the life of man, and especially woman, is not only tragic, but full of eross-currents and convicting influences, the French composer who writes for the highest-class stage pays little heed to melody and expresses himself almost entirely in orchestration, no doubt pleasing to al, 0 "Lo Bon Roi Dagobert, has been on the repertoire of the Comedio Francaise for about, tween ty years, hasbeen turned into comic opera with music by Of. Samuel Rousseau and is delightful ly reactionary. It is not exactly Offenbachian—that would be™ too much to expect in these days—but 44 certainly is a revolt against the musical reign of terror that has put down imagination and tried to hoist science into its place. "Lo Bon Roi Dagobert" actually seems te have been written and composed. with the object of amusing the spectators. Those present at the first performance were quite onthusiastic. They had had to repress their natural fodings for 80 long, poor things!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.