No. 11. 



Editorial Notices. 



357 



comes a fly. The moth-worms, which have 

 lived through the winter, will commence 

 leaving the comb the last of March and be- 

 ginning of April, and continue to do so till 

 late in May ; by which time those that came 

 first have become flies — ready to enter the 

 hives and carry on their work of destruction. 

 These insects pass through all their differ- 

 ent changes, from the egg to the fly, during 

 the hot months, in the course of five or six 

 weeks. In 1836, I put some of these worms 

 in a glass jar, on the 9th, l'2th and 14th of 

 April ; — the flies came out after the 23rd of 

 May. Few worms were found under the 

 hives after this date. 



To mitigate the ravages of the Bee moth, 

 I spread salt on the bench below the bee 

 hive, and keep it there from March to No- 

 vember. If the worm should descend when 

 the salt is damp, it will be so far prostrated 

 as seldom to recover ; but if dry, it has very 

 little effect. Frequent attention is still ne- 

 cessary to meet with success in the manage- 

 ment of bees. For further information, I 

 would refer your readers to " Bevan's Trea- 

 tise on the Honey Bee." 



An Octogenarian. 



Albermarle, Va., May 31st, 1844. 



THE FARMERS' CABINET, 



AND 



Philadelphia, Sixth Month, 1844. 



Electro Magnetic Telegraph. 



We justly speak with admiration, of the rapidity 

 with which steam enables us to pass from one place 

 to another. It is certainly among the intellectual tri- 

 umphs of the age, that the genius of Fulton, has en- 

 abled us to travel without fatigue or extra risk, at the 

 rate of twenty, or thirty, or forty miles an hour— to 

 breakfast with one's family in this city — transact 

 business in New York or Baltimore, and return to our 

 homes by reasonable bed-time. We reach Liverpool 

 in ten or eleven days, and thus reduce the width of the 

 Atlantic to a line not longer than the road from Phila- 

 delphia to Pittsburg used to be. 



These are practical applications of science and skill, 

 with which ourselves were astonished within the last 

 quarter of a century, and to which no credit would 

 have been given, had they been foretold to our fathers 

 fifty or sixty years ago. We have little dreamed, 

 while complacently resting under these achievements 

 of our day, that an agent of communication, very 

 simple in its construction, and unerring in its reports, 

 was about to be brought into operation, whose rapid- 

 ity of action would as much outstrip the speed of 

 steam, as light does that of the wind. Yet such is the 

 fact. 



Morse's Electro Magnetic Telegraph, has been com- 

 pleted within the last two or three weeks, between 

 Washington and Baltimore, and messages are sent 



back and forth, by its means, just as rapidly as they 

 can be prepared by the attendant at either end. A 

 person at Baltimore, for instance, inquires the time iff ' 

 rfay at Washington ? Should the cluck, at the latter 

 place, have just commenced striking twelve, by the 

 time it has finished, the fact that "the clock is strik- 

 ing, twelve," may be transmitted and known at Balti- 

 more. Some of our readers, to whom these statements 

 may be new, may possibly conclude that we are not 

 serious in making them: we assure them they are in 

 error. Numerous well authenticated facts, in relation 

 to this machine, have been published, which show 

 that there is no appreciable time between the setting 

 in motion of the apparatus at one end, and its corres- 

 ponding report at the other. Experiments made, both 

 in England and on the Continent, have been confirmed 

 by those recently made here, and they leave no doubt 

 of the practicability of this mode of communication. 

 It may either be by means of copper wires, placed 

 within leaden pipes under ground, or through similar 

 wires above ground, resting on posts. The expense 

 will be $1.50 or $-200 a mile. The cost being compara- 

 tively small, and its whole construction simple, the 

 operation of the Telegraph need not be,— as one would 

 at first, perhaps conclude, so powerful an agent must, 

 —confined to the great national thoroughfares, for 

 great national purposes — it may readily be brought 

 into play, wherever it is desired : persons, for instance, 

 may connect their dwellings with their places of busi- 

 ness, and thus communicate with them as frequently 

 as they choose. It may be borne in mind that the dis- 

 tance is immaterial — it is not limited to that between 

 the Capitol and Baltimore— or even to that between 

 those places and New Orleans— the electric fluid, with 

 a sufficient battery, may be transmitted, and will per- 

 form its office, at probably, any distance, and almost 

 with the rapidity of thought. Were the Telegraphic 

 wire extended from Quebec to Mexico, the intelligence 

 entrusted to it, would just as unerringly, and in the 

 twinkling of an eye, be transmitted between those 

 two places, as it would along a line of twenty miles. 

 It is known that light travels with the amazing velo. 

 city of 190,000 miles per second, and the electric fluid 

 does not at all lag behind, in the speed of its flight. 



What an amazing field is thus laid open for the re- 

 searches of science? and what limit shall we venture 

 to assign to its future developments? Space, in refer- 

 ence to the Electro Magnetic Telegraph, is literally 

 annihilated; and time is only limited in its reduction, 

 by the period we necessarily occupy, in preparing 

 what we would transmit. We mean to advert to this 

 subject in a future number, when we will perhaps, 

 give further details, and a clearer description of the 

 machine: meanwhile we may add, as one of the very 

 curious circumstances connected with it, that intelli- 

 gence may be transmitted through a single wire at 

 the same time, from opposite points: thus, two mes- 

 sages, the one from Baltimore, and the other from 

 Washington, will pass each other on the same wire — 

 traversing it in contrary directions — turning out as it 

 were, without any detention. The same posts will 

 answer for several lines of communication. Each 

 wire, however, must be insulated: and if two are 

 placed horizontally at some distance apart, and one is 

 charged, a similar effect will be produced on the 

 other. 



