370 Miscellanes. 
Coal-fields are opening out in this country and railways intersect- 
ing the country in all directions. Probably ere ten years are oves 
the mail between London and Edinburgh, will be carried by rail way 
th on the east and west side of England.” 
25. Law of Magnetic attraction and repulsion—Mr. R. W. 
Fox, concludes ‘ that the Jaws of magnetic attraction and repulsion 
alter according to the distance of the magnets from each other, the 
force at small distances being in the simple inverse ratio of the dis- 
tance and when further separated, in the inverse ratio of the square 
of the distance. This change of ratio in the case of attraction, grad- 
ually took place at the distance of from one eighth to one quarter of 
an inch, and even at half of an inch when larger magnets were used ; 
and in the case of repulsion the change in the law occurred at much 
greater distances, especially when the forces of the respective mag- 
nets were materially different. 
The influence of the terrestrial magnetism may probably extend to 
a vast distance from our globe ; and if the magnetic forces be com- 
mon to the planetary system, the remarkable uniformity in the places 
of the nodes of most of the planets in relation to the plane of the so- 
lar equator may perhaps be referred to their agency.—Lon. and 
Edin, Phil. Mag. July, 1834. 
26. Soap Stone—To tHe Epitror.—Dear Sir—In a late ex- 
tract from your Journal I observed a notice of the steatite or soap- 
stone of Middlefield, Mass. together with a request that other notices 
of this class of minerals might be communicated. 
I have observed this mineral in seven places in the Green aa 
tain range, and have supposed it to be an extensive formation 
stretching through no inconsiderable portion of this chain. In the 
town of Bethel in the north part of Windsor County I obtained spe- 
cimens of this mineral, which are considerably harder than those of 
the old quarry in Middlefield and less unctuous to the touch. In the 
town of Grafton in the Northern part of Widham county there is.a 
valuable bed of steatite, bearing a strong resemblance to that at Mid- 
dlefield and remarkably free from foreign substances. It is exten- 
sively used in this region for aqueducts and is found to be a cheap 
and imperishable material for this use. From the gentleman who 
laid an aqueduct of this kind for our seminary and my own dwelling 
house, I learned that the stone is first sawed into blocks about three 
inches square, and from one to two or three feet in length and these 
