The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-17 00:00:00

MAILS DIIE.

Australia and Mauritius, via Southampton. May 19.
via Marseilles May 13.
brazil and Cape Verde, by British packet June 5.
Cape of Good Hope, Ascension, and St. Helena May 29.
illaina, Penang, and Singapore, via Southarnpton May 19.
via Marseilles May 27.

Falkland Islands
Gibraltar, via Southampton .. May 19.
• India (Calcutta), and Ceylon, via Southampton.. May 19.
via Marseilles ....May 27.
India (Bombay), via Southampton May 27.
via Marseilles May 21.
Portuga1....
Malta, Egypt, and Aden, via Southampton May 19.
via Marseilles May 21.
Newfoundland ..May 25.
Oporto and Vigo
U. S. and British N. America, by Brit. packet.... May 19.
by U.S. packet....
by Canadian packet. May —.
W.C. of Africa, Madeira, and Teneritio .. June 10.
Bahamas, via New York June 2
Mexico......
All parts of West Indies, including Chili, Peru, i may 14
California. and British Columbia..

EARTHQUAKE AMONG THE GOLDFIELDS.—The
British Columbian says :—" We have received the
following from a rural correspondent The shock of an
earthquake was felt on Thorne's Creek, three miles east of
Fort Langley, Fraser River, on Sunday, February 23, at
half-past 7in the evening. It was accompanied by a hoarse,
thundering rumble, and lasted for about 30 seconds. The
sky was at the time clear and brilliant, and the atmosphere
calm and mild. So frightful was the commotion of the
quick and awful rockings as to mako it a moment of great
suspense as to whether the beholder would be buried with
the log shanty, which cracked, rolled, and tottered around
him, in a conglomerated mass of hetreogeneous ruins. Its
course was across the Creek from north to south.

FRENCH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.—At the last
sitting a paper was received from M. Valz, the
astronomer of Marseilles, on the deviation of the tails of the
4th and sth comets of 1863, from the planes of their orbits.
From calculations founded upon the results of observation,
he shows that the tail of the 4th deviated from the plane of
its orbit by an angle of 1 deg 29 min; while that of the
sth presented a deviation of 33 min, Hence the only four
comets for which data exist sufficient to determine this
circumstance, have their tails outside the planes of their
orbits; from which it may be presumed, until observa-
tion shall have proved the contrary, that this is the case
with all comets.—M. Guerin Meneville produced some liv-
ing specimens of two different species of Chinese silkworms
feeding on the leaves of the oak tree. One of these species,
the Bombyx Pernii, is reared in various cold and moun-
tainous provinces in China, that of Kooy-Cheoo espe-
cially, which exports upwards of 40,000 bales of silk
from this insect per annum. Tho other species, the Bom-
byx Yama-mai, is reared in Japan, where the exporta-
tion of its eggs is prohibited on pain of death, because
the silk derived from it is a Government monopoly.
These specimens were peculiarly interesting, from the cir-
cumstances that they had been hatched long before the oak
had put forth its leaves, so that M. Meneville had been
obliged to feed them with the leaves of the Photinia-
alabra, a Chinese shrub, which puts forth leaves from
the beginning of March. This experiment had succeeded
perfectly,—MM. Bouche de Vitray and Desmartis sent
in a paper on the possibility of transmitting the odium
Tuckeri from plants to man. They have observed
that, since 1852, the first year in which that parasite
appeared, the number of cases of croup and diphtheria of
every kind, which they considered to be produced by a
variety of the oidium albicans, a parasite acknowledged to
cause the thrush, has increased considerably. This singular
coincidence is, in their opinion, owing to a sort of relation-
ship existing between the two parasites. They foresee the
objection that might be made, viz., that the two oryptoga-
mous plants are not of the same species; to which they
reply that they are of the same genus, and that the oidium
Tuckeri may be susceptible of proteism.