94 
power te do so. The proof would have been 
much more complete, if it could have been 
confirmed by the length of the meridian 
through the whole extent of Britain. 
Fulgurites.—W e noticed in our last No. 
the experiments made by some French philo- 
sophers to produce, by means of a powerful 
electrical battery, vitreous tubes, similar to 
those which are the effect of lightning. The 
following synopsis of the history of fulgurites 
is from the pen of Dr. Fiedler, of Dresden. 
—Fulgurites shew that lightning, the ef- 
fects of which were considered as terminated 
on its reaching the surface of the earth, is 
capable of penetrating deep into it; they 
offer to us substantial proofs of its course ; 
they exhibit to us such an astonishing de- 
gree of heat produced by lightning as was 
never known before. ‘The fulgurites are 
formed where, under certain favourable cir- 
cumstances, the lightning striking into sandy 
soil, in order to unite itself with the -- E of 
the subterraneous waters, forces itself 
through the quarry sand, and fuses it, in con- 
sequence of its being a non conductor, and 
forms, by means of the radiating nature of 
electricity, and watery vapours arising, tubes 
which run under an inclination of from 60° 
to 90°, sometimes to the depth of thirty feet, 
and from them several ramifications issue 
sideways. These tubes are internally per- 
fectly fused: the external sand in imme- 
diate contact conglomerates, and that which 
surrounds the tubes assumes a reddish colour, 
produced by the sudden heat of the lightning 
and the small particles of iron contained in 
the sand. Externally these tubes are partly 
knaggy and rough, partly roundish. From 
their being suddenly cooled, they are cracked 
into many smaller and larger bits, fitting 
perfectly into each other. Thus a fulgurite, 
of 17 feet long, discovered near Dresden, 
dug out and geognostically joined together, 
and presented to the late King of Saxony by 
Dr. Fiedler, consisted of 411 pieces. Ano- 
‘ther, still in his possession, 19 feet long, of 
532 pieces, and a third, of 7 feet long, with 
a side branch, extending to 14 inches, con- 
sisted of 168 pieces. The cabinet of Dres- 
den is the only one which possesses a fulgu- 
rite put together in its perfectly natural 
state, and which was considered by the late 
Professor Gilbert as the most remarkable 
and important object of this valuable cabi- 
net. The fulgurites and their lateral rami- 
fications in sandy soil tenuinate in obtuse, 
slightly-fused points ; amd on clay strata, as 
in Hungary, in oblong hollow bells. Al- 
though the arguments are conclusive which 
prove the origin of fulgurites by means of 
lightning, yt, since the subject has attracted 
attention, nature itself has offered several 
proofs of it, by the lightning striking before 
the eyes of several sailors into the sand 
downs of the Island of Amrum, on the Bal- 
‘tic coast, and forming a fulgurite, which was 
‘brought to Professor Pfaff, of Kiel, who hap- 
pened to be there. The lightning also 
struck at Rausthen, a bathing-place on the 
Varieties. 
[Juny, 
Baltic coast, in the presence of different per- 
sons; and Professor Hagen, of Konigsberg, 
had the spot dug, and found a fulgurite. 
Duelling.—The practice of duelling, by 
which the best blood in Europe has been 
shed during several centuries, has been 
called a necessary evil. Captain M‘Naghten, 
late Deputy Judge Advocate General in 
Bengal, in a work he has recently published, 
proposes the following admirable expedient 
for adoption in the army, in which the 
principals and seconds are,all amenable to 
military law, end all of whom, therefore, can 
be brought before a military tribunal.—Let 
there be, by the enactment of the legisla- 
ture, the necessary powers given for the es- 
tablishment of a new court, for the exclusive 
purpose of deciding in all cases of personal 
quarrels between officers, and which are not 
otherwise connected with the rules of disci- 
pline, as in the case of an inferior insulting 
his superior in the execution of his duty. 
Let these courts, under some significant de- 
nomination, be assembled, as circumstances 
may require, cither by commanders-in- 
chief, commanders of divisions, or of regi- 
ments, battalions, detachments, and so forth ; 
and let their decision—this he holds to be a 
sine qua non—hbe unalterable by any other 
power, and not remissible, as is that of a 
court-martial. Let the members be sworn, 
subject to challenge, and bound to secrecy 
of individnal opinion, as is the custom at 
present; and, in a word, let it have the aid of 
all necessary formalities. Let it now be 
supposed that, at the mess table, an officer 
has given the lie to another, that complaint 
is made to the commanding officer of the 
corps, who thereupon orders the court to 
assemble ; and, lastly, that upon due investi- 
gation, the insulting expression is proved to 
have been unprovoked, undeserved, and in 
all respects wanton. Let the decree of the 
court, which, in all possible cases, should be 
laid down in the articles of war, be that the 
offender shall, in presence of every officer, 
then with the corps or detachment, read an 
expression of sorrow for his conduct, entreat 
the pardon of the offended party in par- 
ticular, and of all in whose presence the 
outrage was committed; and let what he 
reads have been dictated and drawn out by the 
court itself, and signed by the offender ; and, 
finally, let it be recorded in the proper staff 
office, report of proceedings being made to 
head-quarters, and an authenticated copy 
of the decree given to the complainant for 
his lasting satisfaction. In more aggravated 
cases, such as that of a blow wantonly struck, 
let the penitentiary confession be still more 
forcible in its terms, more ‘public in its man- 
ner of being read, and let the offender read — 
These are suppositions of 
it on his knees. 
the extremest cases; and for offences of a 
minor degree, it were easy to modify the 
manner and measure of atonement. Like 
the existing laws, the above would be use- 
less if adequate means were not taken to 2 
Let, therefore, provision be 
enforce them, 
‘¥) 
— 
