4 FEBRUARY 1871, Page 3

Somebody writing disconsolately to yesterday's Times, to know what has

become of the sun, complains that the meteorologists of the Times give a good deal of information as to the power of the sun's rays at " Oxii,"—a place, of which, as he correctly observes, a good many Civil-Service candidates would be puzzled to explain the locality,—but don't give us any reason for his prolonged and persistent disappearance here in London. It positively is becoming an evil quite of the order about which it is worth a Briton's while to write to the Times,—not that the Times can do anything, but that this is the appointed way for Britons to express feeling when it verges on the lyrical. The sun is really too long away. If it lasts much longer, those Englishmen will gain a distinct advantage in the conflict for existence to whom sunlight is no object, and how horribly that would exaggerate the natural defects of our gloomy race !