Saint Elmo's Fire

an electrical appearance sometimes seen, especially in the southern hemisphere during thunderstorms. It not infrequently takes the form of a globe of fire, playing about the top of a ship's mast, a church spire, or even a tree. The phenomenon is regarded as a discharge of electricity into the air. It may even be seen about the head of a person. The Greek sailors regarded St. Elmo's Fire as an omen of fair weather, weaving it into their legend of Castor and Pollux, by which names the phenomenon is often designated. The name Elmo is probably a corruption of Erasmus, which, in an Italianized form, appears as Ermo or Elmo. This saint is regarded in the Mediterranean as the patron of sailors. The phenomenon is called also corposant, and composant, from corpus sanctum. See Castor And Pollux

St. Etienne, sant a-te-enn', a manufacturing city of France. It is located on the Rhone, about thirty-six miles below Lyons. There are immense fields of what is said to be the best smelting coal in the world. Iron ore is obtained readily. As a center of steel and iron manufacturing, the city holds much the same relation to France that Pittsburg has in the United States. The large casting, ship armor, and machinery of France come largely from St. Etienne. It is also headquarters for firearms, including rifles and revolvers, and for cutlery, files, nails, bolts, anvils, and vises. St. Etienne was the original seat of the silk ribbon industry in western Europe. It still leads the world in the production of ribbons and silk trimmings. Forty thousand persons are engaged in the industry. The population in 1908 was reported at 146,000. See Silk; Lyons

St. Gall, a canton and also a city of Switzerland. The canton lies between Lake Constance and Zurich. Roughly speaking, it has the form of a ring, completely encircling the canton of Appenzell within. The capital is St. Gall, a manufacturing town of 54,000 people. The inhabitants are engaged chiefly in the manufacture of lace and cotton embroidery. Nearly every household in the city and in the adjacent villages for miles is engaged in this industry. The exports for 1907 amounted to nearly $36,000,000. American merchants import from $5,000,000 to $15,000,000 worth of St. Gall laces and embroideries annually. With the exception of Madrid, it occupies the most elevated position of any considerable town in Europe. A stone pillar in the marketplace informs the passer-by that the height above the sea is 2,196.6 feet. The mean annual temperature, 45.6; annual rainfall, 50 inches; air-distance from Zurich, 39 miles; from Geneva, 174. The town is famous for the ancient Benedictine abbey of St. Gall. It was founded in the seventh century by St. Gallus, an Irish monk. It was suppressed in 1805. During the Middle Ages, particularly from the eighth to the tenth centuries, the abbey of St. Gall was one of the most famous seats of learning in Europe. It was one of the institutions that preserved the learning of the ancients from being lost. The library still preserves over 400 manuscripts, none of them written later than the year 823. Several of the classics, including the works of Quintilian and other Latin writers, are known to the world of scholarship only through manuscripts preserved in the library of this abbey. One precious old document is a copy of the Nibelungenlied. See Bell; Monastery; Switzerland