

ELECTRICITY. 



187 



i ('rote. It was inferred 



from this and from <>tli.-r measure-, that In- 



!lilllM-lf more ami Iii.ilV illde- 



Mt of Turkish rule. 



The Vioaroy promised tin- I'.ndi-li (lovern- 



t.i intervene in behalf <>f tins English 



captive- iii Al>\sMiiia, and when this offer 



U;l - i( >ut the middle of Octo- 



a i, -tier to King Theodore, of 



which tin 1 following are the main points: II.- 

 informed hi- Maje-ty that in consequence of 

 li'i-i having detained the English consul, 



, ;i!id others, the British (ioverillilcllt. 



\\ere so offended that they had determined 

 to release them hy force, to which end 

 an army was being organized and furnished 

 with all the appliances of war for invading 

 Abyssinia; that if ho did not wish to see his 

 country overrun by foreign troops, sacked, and 

 pillaged, he implored him, in virtue of his (the 

 Viceroy's) office of good neighbor, to surrender 

 tho prisoners as the only way of averting the 

 destruction which must otherwise befall him; 

 if lie refused, seeing the English were so 

 powerful, Ismail Pacha himself would he obliged 

 to join them in their hostile proceedings against 

 his Majesty. To this epistle Theodore sent a 

 jeering answer, acknowledging the receipt of 

 the Viceroy's letter, and saying that he had al- 

 considered him a Moslira, dependent on 

 tho Sultan, till he received this letter, which 

 plainly showed that he was a mere tool of tho 

 Franks; that if he, Ismail, was a friend of tho 

 English, lie, Theodore, was not. He adds that he 

 does not know by what right Ismail is in Egypt, 

 which was originally a Christian country, and 

 that when the business with the English is 

 settled, he means to reestablish Christian rule 

 from Habesh to Alexandria. 



In December the Viceroy sent a contingent 

 of troops to Abyssinia to aid the English expe- 

 dition against King Theodore. The English 

 commanders were, however, afraid that hatred 

 of the Egyptian Mohammedans might lead to a 

 union of all the Abyssinian Christians against 

 England, and therefore concluded to send the 

 Egyptian troops back to their own country. 



the Suez Canal is now sufficiently advanced 

 to enable the company to charge itself with the 

 conveyance of goods from the Mediterranean to 

 the Red Sea, and vice versa. This provisional 

 working is carried on partly by the Maritime 

 Canal, and partly by the Sweetwater Canal ; and 

 the English Government, in 1867, availed itself 

 of the facilities offered by forwarding by tho 

 new route horses, forage, and other stores re- 

 quired in connection with tho Abyssinian expe- 

 dition. Tho French Minister of Marine also, 

 on several occasions, availed.himself of the new 

 route in the dispatch of stores for Cochin China. 

 Every thing forwarded has, however, to bo 

 transshipped <'> route from the Sweetwater Ca- 

 nal to tho Maritime Canal. According to an 

 account given by Mr. D. A. Lauge, English 

 Director of the Suez Canal Company, there re- 

 mained, on Sept. 30, 1867, 44,000,000 cubic 



metres of earthworks to be removed. Daring 



that mouth no le-s than I,!M2,000 cubic metres 

 had been excavated, the hij/hc-t rate \- t accom- 

 pli>hed. Only 4!J dredging machine^ hail been 

 employed. By the addition of 85 dredging 

 machines more, the entire earthworks of tho 

 Canal, it i- will bo completed within 



twenty months. . 



ELECTRICITY. Tlie Conversion ofDynam- 

 >nto Electrical Force. At the February 

 meeting of the Royal Society, E. W.Siemens 

 presented a paper on the accomplishment of 

 this object without the aid of permanent mag- 

 netism. The experiment was made by him at tho 

 suggestion of his brother, Dr. Werner Siemens, 

 of Berlin. The apparatus employed was an 

 electro-magnetic machine, consisting of one or 

 more horse-shoes of soft iron (surrounded with 

 insulated wire in the usual manner), of a rota- 

 ting keeper of soft iron surrounded also with 

 an insulated wire, and of a commutator connect- 

 ing the respective coils in the manner of a mag- 

 neto-electric machine. If a galvanic battery 

 were connected with this arrangement, rotation 

 of the keeper in a given direction would ensue. 

 If the battery were excluded from the circuit, 

 and rotation imparted to the keeper in the op- 

 posite direction to that resulting from the gal- 

 vanic current, there would be no electrical 

 effort produced, supposing the electro-magnets 

 were absolutely free from magnetism ; but by 

 inserting a battery of a single cell in the cir- 

 cuit, a certain magnetic condition would be set 

 up, causing similar electro-magnetic poles to be 

 forcibly approached to each other, and dissimi- 

 lar .poles to be forcibly severed, alternately, the 

 rotator being contrary in direction to that 

 which would be produced by the existing cur- 

 rent. Each forcible approach of similar poles 

 must augment the magnetic tension, and conse- 

 quently increase the power of the circulating 

 current ; the resistance of the keeper to the 

 iotati6n must also increase at every step until 

 it reaches a maximum, imposed by the available 

 force and the conductivity of the wires em- 

 ployed. The cooperation of the battery is only 

 necessary for a moment of time after the rota- 

 tion has commenced, in order to introduce the 

 magnetic action, which will thereupon con- 

 tinue to accumulate without its aid. With the 

 rotation the current ceases ; and if, .upon re- 

 ^tarting the machine, the battery is connected 

 v.-ith the circuit for a moment of time with its 

 poles reversed, then the direction of the con- 

 tinuous current produced by the machine will 

 also be the reverse of what it was before. In- 

 stead of employing a battery to commence the 

 accumulative action of the machine, it suffices 

 to touch the soft iron bars employed with a 

 permanent magnet, or to dip the former into a 

 position parallel to the magnetic axis of the 

 earth, in order to produce tho same phenome- 

 non as before. Practically, it is not even 

 necessary to give any external impulse upon 

 restarting tho machine, tho residuary magnet- 

 ism of the electro-magnetic arrangements em- 



