Egyptian Mode of Moving Colossi.-In the King's library at Berlin is an interesting papyrus representing the Egyptain mode of moving Colossi. The Sphynx being upon a sledge, the first line of labourers are placed very close to it, and the rope is ramified, after passing under each man's arm, so that every rank in advance doubles the number in the former line, just in the way that foreign heralds exemplify quarters of descent. A drummer appears to be giving time for a simultaneous pull, a process facilitated by several attendants pouring oil where the tire of the sledge is about to pass. The latter circumstance would lead to the supposition that Egypt in prosperity was not deep in sand, as at present, or else that the ingenious inhabitants used a temporary railroad for conveying their prodigious monuments, the oil alluded to being poured upon the flange or groove that received it. The former may, perhaps, solve the means by which the huge stones at Stonehenge and other ancient monuments in this country were placed in their situations.

Belgian Railroads.-The line by which the Belgians propose to connect their western boundry looking on the sea, with their eastern, bordering on Germany, is already so far completed, as to be opened from Termonde to Ghent. The ceremony took place on the 29th September: five locomotives drew a hundred carriages; music, fireworks, illuminations, and a banquet to king Leopold augmented the pleasures of the day. When the line is completed to Ostend, and a fast-going packet placed on that station, the journey from London to Brussels may be effected in sixteen hours. Just double the time, or thirty-two hours will be required for the passage from London to Paris, by a new route proposed by a French steam packet company, which intends to convey its passengers from London to Havre by a steamer, from Havre to St. Germain by the Seine, by a small boat, and from St. Germain to Paris by the new railway.

Prise of Iron.-The contracts for the supply of rails for the Berlin and Saxony Railroad were taken by a house at Cardiff, and since that time there has been such an augmentation in the price of iron, that the shareholders, are congratulated on having saved, by "taking time by the forelock," no less than 100,000 dollars.

Poet Workmen.-It is singular enough, that Miller, the basketmaker, and author of "A Day in the Woods," has a namesake now in London, who is likewise both a workman and a poet. Nicholas Müller, a printer of Stuttgard, is author of a volume of poems which have attracted considerable notice in his own country,-Wirtemberg. He is now following his trade in London, where, although we can pretend no rivalry to the gigantic operations of the Parisian press in appropriating the works of foreign countries, there is still employment for some few printers of French and German. The king of Wirtemberg, in his recent visit to England, took notice of Müller, and presented him with what the Hamburgh correspondent calls a "truly royal" contribution to his support, and "further education." From the latter expression, it appears that Müller is following the old and approved fashion of the Germans, travelling to perfect himself in his trade. Those who are thus enabled, are, it is well known, often slenderly furnished with money, and looked upon as entitled, without any forfeiture of their respectability, even to beg on the road.

Pirates of Antwerp.-From the port of Antwerp alone, and in the month of September alone, printed books were exported to the value of 97,822 francs, or not a hundred pounds short of four thousand pounds, and it is supposed, that a much larger exportation of books takes place by land than by sea from Belgium, principally to Italy, Germany and Holland. Not one in a hundred of these works is of Belgian authorship or public property-they are almost all piratical reprints of Parisian copyrights, while the reading public of the continent is supplied with piratical reprints of all but Parisian copyrights by the Parisians themselves. The gunner is here indeed "hoist with his own petard."

Releasing Stoppers from Bottles.-Sir, as I have no doubt others of your readers, as well as myself, have frequently been inconvenienced by the stoppers of glass bottles becoming fixed, perhaps the following method of extracting them may prove useful to them. It was communicated to me by Mr. H. H. Clark of Sheffield, with whom it originated, and has, I believe, never been made public. Having wiped the neck of the bottle perfectly dry, and seen that the little groove or channel between the stopper and the neck is quite clean, pour into t e groove a few drops of spirit of wine, and having set it on fire, let it burn out, and then immediately give the stopper a few gentle taps with a light wooden instrument, as the handle of a small spatula or chisel, and try to turn the stopper in an upward direction from right to left. I have in most cases found this effectual, but if it is not so the first time, it must be repeated.-J. FORDRED.

St. Petersburgh and Zarskojeselo Railway.-The first public trial of the iron railroad to Zarskojeselo was made Oct. 7. It was five wersts in length, and begins in the midst of the city, near the church and parade of the Semenow Regiment of the Guards. The price of 24 rubles for seats in the first and second carriages is considered to be much too high for such a short distance. A private trial of the two engines lately received from England was made on Tuesday. Though but a short notice was given, and only to the police, many thousand persons had collected to see this novel sight. Many persons crossed themselves at the sight of these gigantic machines, as if they had been demons.-Hamburgh paper.

Acoustic Telegraph.-A new telegraph has been invented in Austria by a M. Kfeninger. It is an acoustic telegraph, consisting of a tube in the form of a speaking trumpet six feet five inches long, which conveys the sound in 11 and 1-10th seconds to a distance of 12,000 feet. A trial made of this instrument at Vienna proved very satisfactory. The government intends to employ it in the army for the purpose of conveying military orders to troops dispersed over a great tract of land, &c.-National. Brussels Improvement Society.-A company has just been formed under the name of "Civil Society for the Enlargement and Embelishment of theCapital of Belgium." The object of this new company is to build new quarters within or without the city of Brussels, particularly a quarter between the Louvain and Namur gates, to be called the Quarter Leopold. The capital of the company is five millions. The affairs of the society are to be managed by seven directors without salary, and a secretary.-Brussels paper.

SYMINGTON'S PATENT SYSTEM OF
CONDENSATION.

The encrustation of the boilers of marine engines has been long acknowledged one of the greatest drawbacks to the application of steam to navigation: and the many evils arising from it, particularly in sea-going vessels, are too familiar to every practical engineer to require explanation. The great loss of power from blowing out the boilers the great waste in fuel to supply the place of so much hot water; the valuable space occupied by a larger quantity of coals than would otherwise be required; together with the rapid wear of the boilers themselves, even under the most careful management; are among the disadvantages with which steam ships, engaged in the coasting trade, or destined for foreign staticns, have to contend.

With

The inventor, who prides himself on being the son of the originator of steam navigation, thinks that he has devised a remedy for these evils, simple and cheap in its application, taking up no room, adding nothing to the tonnage of the vessel, and perfectly efficient in its operation. It appeared to him not a little singular that so many attempts should be made to condense inside the vessel by means of unwieldy tanks, which at the best must be but imperfect coolers, when there is so simple and perfect a condenser outside as the open sea or river. this idea, the inventor thought that by cooling down the water in the hot well to the temperature of the external water, by means of a pipe, so placed outside the vessel as to receive the direct action of the sea, in order that condensation might be effected by injecting again and again a portion of the same water, while the remainder is returned to the boiler, he would succeed-more especially as such a plan would involve no alteration in principle-in producing a most simple and perfect mode of preventing encrustation, applicable with the greatest facility to any vessel in a few days, and without making any alteration in the engine itself. By his method, the injectionwater, after condensing the steam, is conveyed in the usual manner by the airpump, into the hot well, from whence a portion of it enters the refrigerating pipe at about 96°, and by the rapidity with which the pipe is brought into contact with the constantly changing particles

* See Mechanics' Magazine, vol. xxv. p. 295.

of water by the motion of the ship, every portion of warmth is speedily given out; and long before the water completes its passage, it will become of the same temperature as the external water, and thus be ready for injection again.

It will be seen by the position of the pipes, that they are so embayed as to render it almost impossible for them to receive any injury, unless it be of such a nature as would be equally injurious to the vessel; but in the event of any unforseen accident occuring, as the old injection passage and discharge pipe from the hot well will be left free to act, the the engineer has merely to turn on the injection water, and the same process will go on as if they had not been attached. In vessels that take the ground at their mooring, the pipes can be placed with equal advantage, as represented in fig. 3, where they will be free from any danger.

The saving of expense by this plan from boilers alone would be important, as nothing can be more vexatious to a company than being obliged to lay their vessels up to have their boilers repaired or replaced with new, at a very heavy expense, and loss of time; in addition to this, however, a great saving in fuel will be consequent upon the adoption of the plan. The non-conducting nature of the crust which forms on the bottom of the boiler by the use of sea water, in spite of repeated blowing out, and the utmost diligence on the part of the engineer, renders an intense heat necessary to be kept up in the furnace in order to raise a sufficient quantity of steam to supply the engines, and thus a much larger quantity of fuel is consumed than is necessary with a clean boiler. iron of the boiler is also exposed to the destructive effects of this intense heat without the protecting influence of the water, which is intercepted by the nonconducting crust.

The

as a condensing jet, and the remainder serving to supply the boiler.

Fig. 2 is a cross section of a vessel and the engines, which shows more clearly the protected position of the pipes, E F. Fig. 3 is another arrangment in which the refrigatory pipes E F, are placed on the sides of the vessel.

Instead of the refrigerating pipe being only single, it may be divided into a series of small tubes, by which means there would be less projection upon the sides of the vessel, and a greater cooling surface obtained, although at a somewhat increased expense.

ON THE NATURE OF ELECTRICITY.

Sir,-According to the course proposed in a former letter (Mechanics' Magazine, Dec. 10, 1836,) on the subject of electricity. I commence by enquiring— whether electricity be matter? and under this head, first, whether it possess the quality to which materiality is essential, called gravity? That it does, has been attempted to be proved by experiment, but I think not by the best method. An ordinary conductor, however, intensely charged, has but a very small portion of electricity compared with a Leyden jar, and to weigh a Leyden jar would be useless, as we know what one surface gains, the other loses. I propose to obviate these difficulties by separating the posisive state from the negative; placing the former at one end of the balance, to make it heavier; the latter at the other end of the balance, to make it ligher. Thus arranged, both states would concur in producing the effect sought for. To effect this, I would suggest, that at each end of a horizontal beam, balanced on knife edges, should be placed a vertical circular conductor, formed of two flat parallel plates, about one inch apart, and rounded off at the edges, so as to unite and offer the greatest obstacle to the exit of the electricity.

These conductors are intended as coatings of one side of plates of air. The other coatings to be formed of fixed flat metallic plates uninsulated, and of such a size that the suspended plates are far from their edges; indeed they cannot be too large. These fixed plates may be placed parallel, to both of the sides or faces of the suspended plates, so as to enable one or both sides of the latter plates to receive a charge. The beam of the balance should be nonconducting.

There should also be metallic points placed opposite the exterior edge of each suspended plate, in a line with the balance beam; one of them connected with the prime conductor, and the other with the insulated rubber of an electrifying machine. Then the balance being made to rest as nearly as possible in equilibrio, is to be fixed; the electrifying machine, turned so as to charge the suspended plates as highly as possible; the charging points removed, and the beam released and left to the action (if any) of its electricity. The experiment should be repeated, reversing the positive and negative, and should the former descend in each case, it will not only prove the gravity, and consequently, the materiality of electricity, but also that the positive is the plus state.

It seems clear, that the opposed fixed plates, extending a considerable distance beyond the suspended plates in every direction, would have no power to determine either the motion or rest of the latter.

The stem of a common keck, or thistle, are the lightest things I know of that would serve for balance beams, and I presume would be nonconducting when well baked.

October 8, 1837.

CORPUSCULUM.

REMARKS ON THE SIXTH REPORT OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

Just at the period when all the world is at gaze on the proceedings of the British Association at their Liverpool meeting, the record of their doings last year, at the older commercial metropolis of the west, has very quietly stolen into existence. The present volume forms only the fifth of the series, the reports of the first two meetings, those at York and Cambridge, having both been included in the first which appeared.

*

According to the now-established custom, the volume is prefaced by the Address with which the proceedings were opened, which, on the occasion of the Bristol meeting, it fell to the lot of Dr. Daubeny to prepare. This was the second time of the Doctor's officiating as one of the local secretaries, he having filled that office when the Association visited Oxford in the third year of its

* Report of the Sixth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Bristol, in August, 1836. Vol. V. London: 1837. Murray. 8vo. pp. 364-168.

existence, by virtue of his position as one of the professors of the University; and having been again selected, in the sixth year, on account of his being a Bristolian, "native, and to the manner born.' It can hardly be expected that an Oxford professor should display so ample a share of oratorical excellence, as the Association had listened to the twelvemonth before, on the similar occasion, when the speaker was not only a warm-hearted Hibernian, anxious to do the honours of the capital to a whole host of distinguished visitors, but had had all his energies redoubled, and his thick-coming fancies, stimulated by the descent of the honour-giving sword of the Lord Lieutenant on his knightly shoulders! Alas! the blood of the men of Bristol runs more sluggishly through their veins, than the sanguine stream of a genuine Milesian, even though he should be devoted heart and soul to the dry study of the mathematics; and, worse than all, the "second city in England" holds no representative of Majesty, gifted with the faculty of quickening the circulation by holding forth the bait of courtly honours. It is not in the nature of things, that the peripatetic Association should often achieve a meeting so brilliant in respect to external show as the Dublin one of 1835; nor is it fairly to be expected that the " opening address of succeeding years should display so many marks of spirit, or of inspiration from surrounding circumstances, as the favoured one of Sir William Hamilton.

It must not be supposed, however, that Dr. Daubeny has been slovenly in the performance of his task. Far from it. But he has laboured under many disadvantages, one of the most formidable of which happens to be inseparable from its nature, and from his own position. It every succeeding year, it must, of course, be found more and more difficult to say anything new on the standing subject of the discourse; the advantages, real or supposed, of the plan and constitution of the Association. To the first comer, "the world was all before him, where to choose;" but each of his successors, in turn, must have felt the difficulty of finding something new to say on a topic in some sort exhausted. Luckily, the peculiar "advantages" of the institution are in their nature something questionable; and this circumstance given an opportunity for the

initial speakers to impart a controversial air to their orations, and to launch out at length in defence of their castle of science, quite as often in repulsion of a mere imaginary, as of a real, attack. Dr. Daubeny partially avails himself of this approved system of tactics, and by far the most eloquent, if not the most convincing, burst in his discourse, occurs in that portion in which he seems, as it were, to stand on the defensive. From this portion, we shall extract the most novel and effective paragraphs. After enumerating the principal subjects to which the attention of the Association has been hitherto directed, Dr. D. continues

"What proportion of such inquiries may be attributable to the influence of this Association, and how much might have been merely the result of that increased taste for physical research to which the Association itself owes its existence, I do not pretend to determine; this, however, at least must be be allowed, that many of the most important truths communicated, might have been long in winning their way to general recognition, and in ridding themselves of those exaggerated and mistaken views which are the common accompaniments of every infant discovery, had it not been for the opportunities which these meetings afford, of examining the very authors of them, with respect to their own inquiries; of confronting them with others who have prosecuted similar trains of research; of questioning them with respect to the more doubtful and difficult points evolved; and of obtaining from them, in many instances, an exhibition of the very experiments by which they had been led to their conclusions.

"And it is this personal intercourse with the authors of these great revolutions in science, which in itself constitutes one of the principal charms of these meetings. Who would not have listened with delight to a Newton, had he condescended to converse on the great truths of astronomy; to a Jussieu, imparting to a circle of his intimates in his own garden at Trianon, those glimpses with respect to the natural relations of plants, which he found it so difficult to reduce to writing; or to a Linnæus, discussing at Oxford his then novel views with respect to the vegetable kingdom, and winning from the reluctant Dillenius a tardy acknowledgment of its merits? And, in like manner, who does not value the privilege of hearing a Dalton discourse on these occasions, on his own atomic theory; or a Faraday (who, however, I regret to say, is on this occasion prevented by illness from attending) explain orally the steps by which he has paced the relations