This

the falling of a tree, beyond Turtle a specimen of the information conCreek, a distance of twenty-one veyed from the House, we have the miles. He finished mending it at following:-" Committee has perdark, and then returned to the city, mission to sit until five o'clock;" and in the temporary absence of and among the questions sent down other competent operators, received from the committee are the followthe speech and sent it to New York, ing :-"What is before the House ?" "How long finishing it at four o'clock in the "Who is speaking?" morning. before the House divides?" will supersede the old form of ringing a bell, and the startling and stentorian announcements by the messengers to wearied wights in committee, of "The Speaker's at prayers!" There will be no complaints for the future in the newspapers, by members indulging after dinner at Bellamy's, of being "barred out" of a division. A "call" of the House may be known in a twinkling of time throughout the country.

The first message of Governor Young to the New York Legislature was commenced reading in the House of Assembly at Albany, on Tuesday (Jan. 5, 1847), at 18 minutes before 12, New York time, and was transmitted to New York by the New York, Albany, and Buffalo Telegraph Company, and the entire document complete was placed in possession of the editors of that city at three o'clock p.m. The message contained 5000 words, or 25,000 letters, and was written from two instruments in the Albany office, by Messrs. Carter, Buel, and Johnson, and read in the New York office by the Messrs. Woods, at the rate of 83 letters per minute, or two and a-half hours for each instrument. Professor Morse's original estimate to Congress for the despatch with which communications could be sent by his telegraph, was thirty letters per minute. Here we see the number almost trebled in a long public document.

THE LIGHTNING STEED.

His constituents may

know in a moment when the Hon. Mr. is "up," when the "perpetual motion member" is in pendulo.

Accommodation has been afforded to an agent of the Electric Telegraph Company in the reporters' gallery; and his business will be that of communicating the results or the progress of debates and divisions up to the rising of the House.(London Anecdotes.)

MARRIAGE BY TELEGRAPH.

The American journals report a story, which, if true, throws into the shade all the feats that have

The following versified pedigree been performed by our British teleis from the Boston Chronotype :"That steed called Lightning,' (say the Fates,)

Is owned in the United States.

'Twas Franklin's hand that caught

the horse;

'Twas harnessed by Professor Morse!"

PARLIAMENTARY ELECTRIC

graph. It appears that a daughter of one of the wealthiest merchants in Boston had formed an attach

ment for a handsome young man, who was a clerk in her father's counting-house; and she determined to marry him, although her father had previously promised her in marriage to another suitor. The Both Houses of Parliament have father having heard of the attacha telegraph of their own, communi-ment, feigned ignorance of it, but cating with the offices of clerks, determined to cause it to be broken cloisters, and committee-rooms. As off. For this purpose he directed

TELEGRAPH.

STORM IN A TELEGRAPH OFFICE.

time.

79

The Professor concludes, from his experiments with this apparatus, that the velocity of electricity through a copper wire, one-fifteenth of an inch thick, exceeds the velocity of light across the planetary spaces; that it is at least 288,000 miles per second! The Professor adds, that the light of electricity, in a state of great intensity, does not last the millionth part of a second; but that the eye is capable of distinctly perceiving objects which present themselves for this short space of time.

the young man to proceed to Eng- he has given a velocity of eight land by steamer, upon business; hundred revolutions in a second of and the lover accordingly arrived, en route, in New York. In the meantime, the young lady had gained some knowledge of her father's intentions, and sent a message to that effect to her lover in New York, by the following expedient: -She took her place in the telegraphic office in Boston, and he did the same, with a magistrate, in the office in New York; and the exchange of consent being given by the electric flash, they were thus married by telegraph! Shortly after, the lady's father insisted upon her marriage with the gentleman he had selected for her; and judge of his amazement when she told During the revolutionary excitehim she was already the wife of ment in 1848, it was reported in Mr. B., then on his way to England; the papers that the King of Prussia adding an explanation of the novel had abdicated. The mistake oriway in which the ceremony was ginated with the electric telegraph, performed. The merchant threat- which sent the following despatch: ened to protest against the validity The King-of-Prussia-has of the marriage, but did not carry-gone-to-Pot-" In another

his threat into execution.

VELOCITY OF ELECTRICITY.

One of our most profound electricians is reported to have exclaimed, "Give me but an unlimited length of wire, with a small battery, and I will girdle the universe with a sentence in forty minutes." Yet this is no vain boast; for so rapid is the transition of the electric current along the lines of the telegraph wire, that, supposing it were possible to carry the wires eight times round the earth, it would but occupy one second of time.

A TELEGRAPHIC BLUNDER.

minute, the communication was on its way to a newspaper office. Not long after, however, the dial was again agitated, and then "s-dam." Making it read thus-"The King of Prussia has gone to Potsdam."

STORM IN A TELEGRAPH OFFICE.

Recently, at Buffalo, United States, a driving snow-storm came on from the north-east, accompanied by vivid flashes of lightning and heavy peals of thunder. The atmosphere, and all objects upon which the eye rested, and especially the falling snow, put on a sallow, sickly hue; The immense velocity of elec- aud this was rendered occasionally tricity makes it impossible to cal- more singular by the repeated culate it by direct observation; it flashes of electricity, which worked would require to be many thousands wonders in the Telegraph-office. of leagues long before the result The battery-room was for some time could be expressed in the fractions lit up by one constant sheet of elecof a second. Yet, Professor Wheat-tric flame that played around its stone has devised some apparatus walls. It was a thrilling scene, and for this purpose, among which is one calculated to fill the mind of a double metallic mirror, to which the observer with serious appre

canting up the body of the vehicle, so that it remained fixed by one end on the ground, at an angle of forty-five degrees. The action was so sudden, as scarcely to afford time to his Excellency to direct the attention of the Caffres to the experiment; but, in those who were looking towards the spot, and saw the power exercised on a distant object, the surprise manifested was amusing. "There," exclaimed Sir Harry Smith, "is a lesson to you not to meddle with waggons; as you now

see the power I possess, should you do so, to punish you."

FOURDRINIER'S PAPER-MAKING

MYTHOLOGY OF SCIENCE.

THE DRUMMOND LIGHT.

81

mense mass of news and advertise- weight I will move the world." ments as was now contained in "But," says Dr. Arnott, "he would them, had not this invention en- have required to move with the abled them to make use of any size velocity of a cannon-ball for milrequired. By the revolution of lions of years, to alter the position the great cylinder employed in the of the earth a small part of an process, an extraordinary degree inch. This feat of Archimedes is, both of rapidity and convenience in mathematical truth, performed in the production is secured. One by every man who leaps from the of its chief advantages is the pre- ground; for he kicks the world vention of all risk of combination away from him whenever he rises, among the workmen, the machine and attracts it again when he being so easily managed that the falls." least skilful person can attend to it. It was added, that the invention had caused a remarkable increase in the revenue: in the year 1800, when this machine was not in existence, the amount of the paper duty was £195,641 ; in 1821, when the machinery was in full operation, the amount of duty was £579,867; in 1835, it was £833,822. No doubt, part of this increase must be set down to other causes; still, it was impossible, but for this discovery, that such a quantity of paper could have been made and consumed. The positive saving to the country effected by it has not been less than £8,000,000; the increase in the revenue not less than £500,000 a year. At length, in May, 1840, the sum of £7000 was voted by Parliament to Messrs. Fourdrinier, as some compensation for their loss by the defective state of the patent law.

In 1839, there was made by this machinery at Colinton, a single sheet of paper weighing 533 lbs., and measuring upwards of a mile and a half in length, the breadth being only 50 inches. Were a ream of paper of similar sheets made, it would weigh 266,500 lbs. or upwards of 123 tons.-(London Anecdotes.)

ARCHIMEDES AND THE LEVER.

Archimedes said, "Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, and with my own

The importance of simplicity in inventions for popular use, has been shown in the late Lieutenant Drummond's apparatus for illuminating lighthouses with his oxyhydrogen light; that is, a stream of oxygen and another of hydrogen, directed upon a ball of lime. Experimentally, the light has succeeded beyond the expectation of the inventor; but the machinery or apparatus remains to be simplified before it can be worked by the keepers of lighthouses. The light is seen at a distance of 60 miles.

MYTHOLOGY OF SCIENCE.

M. Arago, in his brilliant eloge on Fourier, observes:"The ancients had a taste, or rather a passion, for the marvellous, which made them forget the sacred ties of gratitude. Look at them, for instance, collecting into one single group the high deeds of a great number of heroes, whose names they have not even deigned to preserve, and attributing them all to Hercules. The lapse of centuries has not made us wiser. The public in our time also delight in mingling fiction with history. In all careers, particularly in that of the sciences, there is a design to create Herculeses. According to the vulgar opinion, every astronomical discovery is attributable to Herschel. The theory of the mo

F

tions of the planets is identified They said that, before a man was with the name of Laplace, and used to it, it produced a feeling as scarcely any credit is allowed to if the ears were bursting; that, on the important labours of D'Alem- the bell first dipping, they were in bert, Clairaut, Euler, and Lagrange. the habit of holding their noses; Watt is the sole inventor of the at the same time of breathing as steam-engine, whilst Chaptal has gently as possible, and that thus enriched the chemical arts with they prevented any disagreeable all those ingenious and productive effect: they added, the air below processes which secure their pros- was hot, and made a man thirsty; perity." To countervail this error,—the latter observation, though in Arago continues: "Let us hold up duty bound I received as a hint, I to legitimate admiration those believe to be true; nevertheless, chosen men whom nature has en- the service cannot be formidable, dowed with the valuable faculty as the extra pay is only one shilof grouping together isolated facts, ling per day. Had there been and deducing beautiful theories anything extraordinary to see befrom them; but do not let us for- low, I should have asked permisget that the sickle of the reaper sion to go down; but the water must cut down the stalks of corn, was by no means clear, and the before any one can think of collect- muddy bottom of the docks was ing them into sheaves." not a sufficient recompense for the disagreeable sensation. Two men descend at a time, and four pump the air into the bell through the leathern hose; the bell is nearly a square, or rather an oblong vessel of cast-iron, with ten bull's-eye lights at the top, which lights are fortified within by a lattice of strong iron wire, sufficient to resist an accidental blow of a crowbar, or other casualty. * * Notwithstanding the great improvements made in diving-bells since their invention, after all precautions, a man in a diving-bell is, certainly, in a state of awful dependence upon human aid: in case of the slightest accident to the air-pump, or even a single stitch of the leathern hose giving way, long before the ponderous vessel could be raised to the surface, life must be extinct."

A DESCENT IN A DIVING-BELL.

Sir George Head, in his humorous Home Tour, gives an amusing picture of a pair of operative divers whom he saw in the Hull docks. Sir George was passing as the workmen were raising the divingbell, when he stepped into the lighter to observe the state of the labourers on their return from below. He had a remarkably good view of their features, at a time when they had no reason to expect any one was looking at them; for, as the bell was raised very slowly, he had an opportunity of seeing within it, by stooping, the moment its side was above the gunwale of the lighter. But, Sir George shall relate what he saw :

"A pair of easy-going, careless fellows, each with a red night-cap on his head, sat opposite one another, by no means over-heated or exhausted, and apparently with no other want in the world than that of 'summut to drink;' they had been under water exactly two hours. I asked them what were their sensations on going down?