sembles the French in appearance. A quarry of this was opened near Conway, about twenty years since, which at first appeared very promising; but it was soon discovered that it was the upper stratum only that possessed the porous property so essential, the lower stratum being found too close and compact to answer the purpose.

"23. Cologne mill-stone.-This substance is an exceedingly tenacious porous lava. Mill-stones are made of this material in great quantity near Cologne, and transported by the Rhine to most parts of Europe. Smaller stones, from 18 inches to 30, are much used for hand-mills in the West Indies for grinding Indian corn, for which purpose they are well adapted.

"24. Emery.stone.-No substance is better known, or has been subservient to the arts for a longer period, than this. The gigantic columns, statues, and obelisks of Egypt owe their carved and polished forms and surfaces to the agency of emery. It is obtained almost entirely from the island of Naxos, where it occurs in considerable abundance in detached irregular masses. It is reduced to the state of powder by means of rolling or stamping-mills, and afterwards by sieves and levigation.

25. Pumice-stone is a volcanic product, and is obtained principally from the Campo Bianco, one of the Lipari islands, which is entirely composed of this substance. It is extensively employed in various branches of the arts, and particularly in the state of pow. der, for polishing the various articles of cut glass; it is also extensively used in dressing leather, and in grinding and polishing the surface of metallic plates, &c.

26. Rotten-stone is a variety of Tripoli almost peculiar to England, and proves a most valuable material for giving polish and lustre to a great variety of articles, as silver, the metals, glass, and even, in the hands of the lapidary, to the hardest stones. It is found in considerable quantities both in Derbyshire and South Wales.

"27. Yellow Tripoli, or French Tripoli, although of a less soft and smooth nature, is better adapted to particular purposes, as that of polishing the lighter description of hard wood, such as holly, box, &c.

"28. Touch-stone is a compact black basalt or Lydian-stone, of a smooth and uniform nature, and is used principally by goldsmiths and jewellers as a ready means of determining the value of gold and silver by the touch, as it is termed-that is, by first rubbing the article under examination upon the stone, its appearance forms some criterion; and, as a further test, a drop of acid, of known strength, is let fall upon it, and its effect upon the metal denotes its value.

"29. Blood-stone is a very hard, compact

variety of hematite iron ore, which, when reduced to a suitable form, fixed into a handle, and well polished, forms the best description of burnisher for producing a high lustre on gilt coat-buttons, which is performed in the turning-lathe by the Birmingham manufacturers. The gold on china ware is burnished by its means. Burnishers are likewise formed of agate and flint; the former substance is preferred by bookbinders, and the latter for gilding on wood, as picture-frames, &c."

THE TELEPHONY, OR MUSICAL TELEGRAPH.

In January, 1828, a M. Sudre presented to the French Academy of Fine Arts the scheme of an universal language, formed of the seven musical signs, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do, variously combined, to which he, therefore, gave the name of "The Musical Language." A Committee of the Academy, including three of the most distinguished philosophers of the age, MM. de Prony, Arago, and Fourier, reported, that after "causing several experiments to be made and repeated in their presence," they had " come to the conclusion, that the author had perfectly attained the end he had in view, namely, that of creating a real musical language;" and that a system of telegraphic communication might be established by means of this language, and the aid of musical instruments, far superior to any hitherto in use, inasmuch as it would enable men to correspond instantaneously with each other at great distances, not only during the most profound darkness, but under circumstances in which even in open day, no communication by visible signals could possibly be carried on.

The invention was afterwards referred by the Minister of War to a Military Commission, of which Baron Despres was President, which made an equally favourable Report upon it. After stating that, in their opinion," the Musical Language' might prove eminently useful in establishing a correspondence between the different corps of an army," they give several remarkable instances in which it might have been the means of saving the French arms from discomfiture; as at the battle of Busaco, when the attack made by the French troops failed "in. consequence of a division, whose march was arrested by a deep chasm, being un

able to give immediate information of the circumstance to the other divisions from which it was separated by the abrupt winding of the mountains;" or the af fair of Forroren, in 1813, when "the difficulty of communicating promptly and directly in a mountainous country" was the cause of the French army failing in its attempt to raise the siege of Pampeluna.

M. Sudre's invention was next investigated by a Commission of Naval Officers, who reported it to be their unanimous opinion, that "it would be a powerful auxiliary to the means at present used in the navy, and ought to be immediately adopted." From a series of experiments made by this Commission in the bay of Toulon, it appeared that "it only required two minutes to transmit by means of the Musical Language,' from one point to another, distant 9,000 feet, three orders taken from the book of signals."

The system was finally submitted to a Committee of all the five Academies of the French Institute-being now in a much more perfect state than when it was first laid by M. Sudre before the Academy of Fine Arts-and from the Report of this Committee (which was adopted by the Institute), the following

are extracts:

"The Committee are of opinion, that the • Musical Language' invented by M. Sudre"1st. Furnishes a means of communication capable of expressing all our ideas.

21. Either by sounds or by (written) characters.

"3d. At short or long distances.

4th. Openly or secretly (that is, by using combinations of the signs, known only to the corresponding parties).

"And, 5th. That this system of sounds is not liable, like spoken languages, to change with time, but is essentially unalterable."

*

*

**

"The TELEGRAPH can only be used at certain stations, upon heights, when every thing has been foreseen, tried, regulated before-hand and at leisure. It is impossible to make use of it without preparation, and it is perfectly unavailable under a variety of circumstances of time and situation.

"But the TELEPHONY can be put in practice on land in almost every place, by day or by night, without any change in the method, and even more easily by night, on account of the profound silence which then pervades the earth.

"This generality of application acquires additional value, when it is considered that the instrument is of the most portable de

scription; that it is always at hand in those very circumstances when the greatest benefits would be derived from its use; and that the persons who make use of it for other purposes would speedily learn to apply it to the one before us; all these conditions are of the highest importance for all practical appli

cations."

The particular "instrument" referred to in the last extract is the French horn or trumpet, which may be heard at a distance of three miles, and is that which would most probably be employed in all cases of distant communication; but of course any instrument capable of expressing the different musical signs may be made the organ of this new language.

M. Sudre is now in London for the pur pose of unfolding all the details of his system to the English public; for it would seem that notwithstanding the various strong reports which we have cited in his favour, he has met with but poor encouragement from the Government of his own country. Let us hope that better fortune awaits him amongst us. His system displays in its general conception great ingenuity, and appears to us capable of being rendered very extensively useful.

craft.

NOTES AND NOTICES.

Fishmongers' Hall.-If the following statement, which appears in the Architectural Magazine for the present month, be correct, it must cease to be a matter of surprise that the Fishmongers' Company did not select some design for their new Hall, more worthy of the admirable site which it occupies, and of the opulence and high-standing of their "gentle" "The Fishmongers' Hall premiums were awarded by to his own clerk, on condition of receiving a commission from him on the amount he received as architect of the edifice. The design was made in -'s own office, and all the designs were sent to him for his decision as to the three best." Well may Mr. Lou don add-" If the facts are really so, the individual whose character is implicated, and is of high-standing in the profession, is much to be pitied." Verily, it is no smirking affair.

Mr. Dean's Submarine Operations.- Mr. Dean has resumed his summer amusement of diving to the wreck of the Royal George, or any other wreck, if requisite; hooking the first thing that becomes portable, and getting it hoisted out; he has already got up eleven very handsome brass guns, and three iren ones, exclusive of some cooking materials, a bottle of wine, and sundry small articles. Last week upou a complaint made by some fishermen, that while at work on the West Flats, between Ryde and Fort Monkton, their nets were frequently broken by getting foul of some substance which was beyond their art to discover, this enterprising individual got his vessel over the spot and descended to the bottom; he there found a large piece of ordnance stuck in the mud, and, by great exertion and labour, succeeded in getting it up.. It proved to be a very perfect brass cannon, about fifteen feet long; the name, "Koster, Amsterdam, 1636," perfectly legible. The ornaments are most beautiful and

chaste; the breech and trunnion is formed in a bunel of grapes. The metal is perfect and rings as sound as a bell. The shot on being drawn peeled in flakes, but the wadding was in excellent preservation. Mr. Dean is of very great use here. The other day a French whaler left an anchor in the harbour, which had got foul of the moorings: Mr. D. was employed to raise it, which he succeeded in doing, and got salvage accordingly. On groping further he got hold of another anchor worth 201. He has fitted his vessel and boat for foreign service, and towards the antumn will proceed to Navarin Bay to try his luck among the wrecks of the Turkish fleet.-Portsmouth Correspondent of United Service Journal, 20th June, 1835.

"Indifference of the American People to Human Life."-Such is the heading of a paragraph in one of Brother Jonathan's own papers, in which an account is given of two very melancholy accidents of recent occurrence-one the bursting of the boiler of a steamer called the Majestic, by which forty persons have been injured, of whom eight have died and several others are not expected to survive-and the other, the falling, in the middle of the night, of a three-storied hotel, which contained at the time between sixty and seventy inmates, of whom a great many have perished (the number is not stated). "We have had repeated occasions," says the jour nalist, "to express our conviction, that in this country the comfort, safety, and life of man, when committed to the charge of steam-boats, stagedrivers, or builders, seems literally to be deemed of no moment. The most awful accidents from all these sources are of frequent occurrence; yet we never hear of any inquiry into the cause of them, or penalty imposed for the negligence, parsimony, or ignorance from which they almost always result. The two instances we now publish are of fearful interest; but we venture to predict, that there will be no judicial investigation in either

case."

The Mathematical Instinct of Bees.-The opera tions of pure instinct have never been supposed by any one to result from reasoning; and certainly they do afford the most striking proofs of an intelligent cause, as well as of a unity of design in the world. The work of bees is among the most remarkable of all facts in both these respects. The form is in every country the same-the proportions accurately alike-the size the very same, to the fraction of a fine, go where you will; and the form is proved to be that which the most refined analysis has enabled mathematicians to discover as, of all others, the best adapted for the purposes of saving room, and work, and materials. This discovery was only made ahout a century ago; nay, the instrument that enabled us to find it out-the fluxional calculus-was unknown half a century before that application of its powers. And yet the bee had been for thousands of years, in all countries, unerringly working according to this fixed rule, choosing the same exact angle of 120 degrees for the inclination of the sides of its little room, which every one had for ages known to be the best possible angle, but also choosing the same exact angles of 110 and 70 degrees for the inclinations of the roof, which no one had ever discovered till the 18th century, when Maclaurin solved that most carious problem of maxima and minima, the means of investigating which had not existed till the century before, when Newton invented the calculus, whereby such problems can now be easily worked.-Lord Brougham's Discourse of Natural Theology.

State of Education in England. -From a summary, prepared by Mr. Rickman, of the Returns made to the House of Commons, on the motion of the Earl of Kerry, it appears that there are 4,000,000 of persons in England, under 15 years of age, and only 1,200,000 receiving daily encation. If we

allow half a million for the number of persons under 2 years old, and also a similar deduction for those who at an early age receive the rudiments of education in the nursery, and those of the richer portion of the community, who receive what is termed home education, there will still remain above 2,000,000 individuals, who both for their own sakes and the sake of society should receive instruction, but who are entirely destitute of its advantages.

Mr. Watt, the Discoverer of the Constitution of Water-Loid Brougham, in his "Discourse of Natural Theology," after noticing the experiments of Dr. Priestley and Mr. Cavendish, by which they proved, that by burning oxygen and hydrogen in a close vessel, they disappear and leave weight of water equal to their united weights, observes:"Dr. Priestley drew no conclusion of the least value from his experiments. But Mr. Watt, after thoroughly weighing them by careful comparison with other facts, arrived at the opinion, that they proved the composition of water. This may justly. be said to have been the discovery of that great truth in chemical science. I have examined the evidence and am convinced that he was the first discoverer in point of time, although it is very possible that Mr. Cavendish may have arrived at the same truth from his own experiments, without any knowledge of Mr. Watt's earlier process of reasoning."

Draining by Boring.-The plain of Palins, near Marseilles, used to be a great morass. It appeared impossible to drain it by the help of the common surface-channels. King René, however, caused a great number of pits or drain-wells to be sunk, which are known in the Provençal language by the name of embugs (funnels). These pits transmitted, and now transmit, into the permeable strata, situated at a certain depth, those waters, which anciently made the whole country a barren waste.

Cooking by Gas.-Extract from a letter of Mr. John Barlow, C. E., to a friend in America, dated Feb. 27, 1835:-"There is one source of revenue to a Coal-Gas Company coming into practical effect here which promises to be of great importance, namely, cooking by gas. I know one family who have used no other fuel for cooking for the last two years and another who, for several years, have never lighted any other fire in their house for any other purpose whatever than gas during the three or four hot months; and they both say it is cheaper, more convenient, cleanlier, and the cooking better. Hundreds, and probably thousands, of families will in this country, be supplied with gas for cooking during the ensuing summer. They now roast bake, and boil by gas. The heat is always ready when wanted, and is extinguished when it is no longer required; no dust, no preparation, nor any cleaning up afterwards; the cook can leave a joint of meat, either roasting or boiling, and never look at it again till the clock informs her it is time to take it up. I know a family who regularly put their meat down, and all go to church on Sunday, locking the house up and leaving a capital dinner to the care of the gas."

Bath Hot-Wells.-Of the manner in which charities have been administered under the corrupt (Corporation) system about to be destroyed, Bath affords a curious and instructive illustration. Bath is favoured by nature with a supply of hot water sufficient to enable every inhabitant of the town to bathe every day. The Corporation has been for years composed chiefly of medical men, who know, or ought to have known, the immense im. portance to the health of the population of the cleanliness derived from constant bathing. But this Corporation cared nothing for the health of the people; so they made very fine baths, demanded a heavy fee for bathing therein, thus excluded necessarily nine-tenths of the popnlation, and let the

warm water nearly all run to waste.-Mr. Roe buck's Letter to the Electors of Bath.

The Liverpool and Manchester Railway locomotive-carriages are of three kinds, and are called train, luggage, and bank-engines. The train-engines average about 30 horses' power; they weigh about 8 tons, and cost about 900l. The luggageengines are, in general, 35 horses' power, and weigh about 9 tons; they cost about 1,000. There are only two hank-engines, the Goliah and the Samson, which are used for assisting the trains with passengers and luggage up the inclined planes at Whiston and Sutton; they are about 50 horses' power, weigh about 12 tons, and cost about 1,100. The Company have had altogether 32 locomotivecarriages made, but five or six are now (Feb. 1835) out of use, and many of those at present on the road have been almost totally renewed. They generally run about 18 months before receiving a renewal or thorough repair. The Vulcan, a trainengine, ran no less than 47,000 miles before it required to be repaired; and the Firefly ran 50,000 miles. The greatest speed which the engines have been able to obtain on a level is 60 miles per hour, without a load. The Planet, with her tender, went from Liverpool to Manchester in 40 minutes, being at the astonishing rate of 45 miles per hour, including time lost in stoppages and ascending the inclined plane.—Mr. David Stevenson: Scottish Society of Arts' Transactions.

Balloon Communication between London and Paris. We perceive that the grand aerial project which occupied so much of the attention of the Parisian quidnuncs about this time last year, is revived-with this difference only, that the scene of operation, or to speak more properly, perhaps, the starting-post, has been shifted from Paris to London. The projectors who have now taken unto themselves the style and title of the "European Aeronautical Society," announce in the newspapers that their first aerial ship the Eagle, 160 feet long, 50 feet high, and 40 feet wide," and which is to be (?)" manned by a crew of seventeen persons," may be inspected at a certain dock in the neighbourhood of Kensington, previous to making its first trip" from London to Paris and back again ;" after which it is to make similar trips to Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Madrid, &c., till the practicability of establishing an aerial communication between London and the other capitals of Europe, is fully and incontrovertibly demonstrated! The scheme is, after all, only a copy, and that but an indifferent one, of a plan that was proposed as far back as 1796, by an engineer of the name of Campenas, and not only entertained by the French government, but sanctioned by that select body of savans, the French Institute. Campenas wrote a long letter to Bonaparte, then General-in-Chief of the army of Italy, from which we extract a paragraph or two. "General Citizen,-The artist who addresses you, filled with the most lively gratitude, will erect, if the means of execution be afforded him, a vast edifice, whence, at the conclusion of his labours there will issue an Aerial Vessel capable of carrying up with you more than 200 persons, and which may be directed to any point of the compass. I myself will be your pilot. You can thus, without any danger, hover above the fleets of enemies jealous of our happiness, and thunder against them like a new Jupiter, merely by throwing perpendicularly downwards firebrands made of a substance which will kindle only by the contact and percussion at the end of its fall, but which it will be impossible to extinguish. Or per haps you may think it more prudent to begin at once by forcing the British cabinet to capitulate, which you may easily do, as you will have it in your power to set fire to the city of London, or to any of the maritime towns of England. From the calculations I have made, I am convinced that with this machine you may go from Paris to London, and return back again to Paris in twenty-four hours,

without descending. The object I propose is to establish in the great ocean of the atmosphere a general navigation, infinitely more certain and more advantageous than maritime navigation, which has ever disturbed the tranquillity of maukind-to restore the perfect liberty of commerce, and to give peace and happiness to all the nations of the universe, and unite them as one family. By great labour I have surmounted the multiplied obstacles which presented themselves before me; and my progressive discoveries are developed in a work which I have prepared, consisting of about 400 pages, and divided into five parts." How lucky for England that the "new Jupiter" had other things on hand, to divert his attention from this most ap palling (though not more appalling than sensible) scheme of national destruction!

Cold and Hot Blast-manufactured Iron.-" I observe that Mr. Glynn of the Butterley Iron-works, promises to send you for inspection specimens of hot-blast manufactured iron, in order to do away with the prejudice existing against this description of iron, on account of its supposed deficiency in strength. Permit me to offer a suggestion to Mr. G. and yourself, with respect to the sort of experimental proof that would be fairest to all concerned. Let Mr. G. take indiscriminately from two lots of cold and hot blast manufactured iron bars, one of each-try himself their comparative strength-and report to you the results.. Let him then forward two other bars, also taken indiscrimi nately from the same lots-having care only that they are of the same sectional area and weightand let these be tested here by the Editor in the presence of any two or more scientific persons he nay choose to invite to his assistance. The results of the two experiments ought, of course, to correspond nearly, and should they be only as lavourable to the hot-blast iron as the Staffordshire masters, would have the public believe, Mr. G. will have no occasion to regret his compliance with this sugges tion." M., 27th July, 1835.-The number of specimens proposed to be tested, is rather limited-two or three of each would be better; but with this exception, we think the mode of proceeding, suggested by our correspondent, would be entirely satisfactory.-Ed. M. M.

"A Sufferer" had better forward a statement of his case to Lord Brougham; but, according to his own account, his specification was not so perfect

as it might," and therefore ought to have been.

Communications received from R. E.-M. F.Mr. Walford-R. M. D.-Philanthropist-H. C. -Cornubiensis-A Poor Inventor.

Patents taken out with economy and despatch; Specifications prepared or revised; Caveats entered; and generally every Branch of Patent Business promptly transacted. Drawings of Machinery also executed by skilful assistants, on the shortest notice.

Our Publisher will give One Shilling and Six. pence for copies of the Supplement to Vol. IX.

LONDON: Published by J. CUNNINGHAM, at the Mechanics' Magazine Office, No. 6, Peterborough-court, between 135 and 136, Fleet-street. Agent for the American Edition, Mr. O. RICH, 12, Red Lion-square. Sold by G. G. BENNIS, 55, Rue Neuve, Saint Augustin, Paris. CUNNINGHAM and SALMON, Printers, Fleet-street.