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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 244 



an undertone of melancholy which enhances their interest. That 

 he enjoyed his fame at first, and the social entertainments it brought 

 him, is manifest ; and yet in one of the latest letters of the series, 

 written from Philadelphia, he declares that he doesn't care any 

 more for praise, or for abuse, or for reputation of a literary sort. 

 For the rest, the letters reveal the same qualities of mind and 

 character that his novels exhibit, with perhaps a little more tender- 

 ness as he unbosoms himself to his friends. There is the same 

 smooth and brilliant style, the same satirical wit and badinage, the 

 same keen eye for the superficial elements of life, and, it must be added, 

 the same apparent inability to see any thing deeper. Only once or 

 twice, as on pp. 35 and 95, does he strike a deeper vein ; and one 

 cannot help wondering whether he did not care for such things, or 

 whether he did not venture to say what he thought about them. 

 The letters are certainly very interesting, and will doubtless long 

 continue to be favorites with readers of English literature. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



This year is remarkable for the number of accidents in the 

 Swiss Alps. It is stated by a Swiss newspaper that the season's 

 death-roll is an unusually heavy one. In the short space of not 

 quite a month twenty-two tourists met with accidents, of whom 

 eighteen were killed. The accident on the Jungfrau (canton of 

 Bern) involved the loss of six lives ; that on the Falkniss (Gran- 

 biindten), three. One life was lost in each case in the accidents on 

 the Morteratsch glacier (Granbiindten), Molesa (Waadt), Gantrist 

 (Bern), Leissigergrat (Bern), Sautis (Appenzell), Kaisereck (Frei- 

 burg), Dent de Corjan (Waadt), Schachenthal (Uri), and Diablerets 

 (Wallis). There were no guides among the eighteen killed, and 

 only too many persons make ascents without guides. The four 

 injured persons were all tourists. 



— Although automatic telegraphy has long been known, says 

 the London Times, it has not, so far as we are aware, proved a 

 commercial success, owing to the circumstance that the instruments 

 used in conducting it are expensive, the system slow, and the syn- 

 chronism unreliable. In this system the messages are first written 

 with insulating ink on tinned paper, and fed into instruments 

 whereby they are transmitted. At the other end they are received 

 on chemically prepared paper, but the messages soon fade. A very 

 pronounced improvement upon this system was made by Mr. E. A. 

 Cowper, C.E., some few years since, in his writing-telegraph. Here 

 the movement of a pen at the sending-station introduced varying 

 resistances into two electric circuits connected with the receiving- 

 station. The varying currents acted upon two electro-magnets at 

 the latter station, and caused them to impart movements in two 

 directions at an angle to each other to a receiving-pen, which was 

 made to reproduce the writing formed by the sending-pen. Mr. 

 Cowper, however, was not alone in his invention of the writing- 

 telegraph, for, as not unfrequently happens, another diligent worker 

 was busy in the same direction and at the same time. This was 

 Mr. J. Hart Robertson, an American electrician, who, without being 

 aware of Mr. Cowper's invention, produced an instrument upon 

 the same plan. He found, however, that it involved heavy expense 

 in operating, and, pushing his research further, he in course of time 

 produced an improved instrument. This is the writing-telegraph 

 which we recently saw in successful operation in the American 

 Exhibition. The principle involved consists in changing the strength 

 of the electric currents by the movements of the pen when writing, 

 varying the pressure on a series of carbon disks included in the cir- 

 cuits. By this means simplicity, greater speed, and the utmost accu- 

 racy in reproduction, are secured. In this apparatus the transmitter 

 consists of two series of carbon disks placed at right angles to each 

 other in a hard-rubber receptacle. Each pile of disks has a screw 

 follower for adjusting the normal pressure of the disks on each 

 other. A rod carr>'ing the pen or stylus is pivoted at its lower end, 

 and has pressure-points opposite the piles of disks. The operator 

 manipulates the stylus or pen as in writing, although he can only 

 move the point of the stylus over a small circumscribed area. As 

 the stylus describes the various letters, the pressure-points are 

 pressed against the carbon disks ; and as this pressure is increased 

 or diminished, varied currents are sent into the lines to the receiv- 

 ing-magnets, which cause the receiving-pen to reproduce every 



movement of the pen of the writer at the transmitting-station. The 

 receiving-instrument consists of two electro-magnets set at right 

 angles to each other. At the point where the poles would reach if 

 extended is a rod for carrying the armatures. Near where the rod 

 is pivoted at the bottom a spring wire is inserted, so that its arma- 

 tures can easily and quickly respond to the varying attraction of the 

 electro-magnets. The armature rod extends above the table, and 

 carries the recording-pen. Each machine is both a sender and a 

 receiver, and the working of the system is most simple. The oper- 

 ator at the sending-station uses the stylus as a pen to form imagi- 

 nary letters, words, and sentences : in short, to write. He sees the 

 writing produced by the recording-pen in ink on a slip of ordinary 

 paper ribbon which slowly passes before his eyes. At the receiv- 

 ing-end the operator sees precisely the same thing going on, for the 

 written message is being reproduced by the little pen, line for line, 

 in perfect facsimile, on a slip of paper passing before him. We 

 thus have a really beautiful system of written messages, and one 

 which is already working commercially in the United States, where 

 it is taking the place of the telephone with marked success. In- 

 stead of the repeated shouting and comparative publicity of the 

 telephone, the message is written by the sender and the visible an- 

 swer received in perfect quiet. But should the surroundings be 

 noisy, it matters not, for the little pen silently writes away regard- 

 less of noise of any kind. The writing at both ends has all the 

 characteristics of the writing of the sender, and the message con- 

 stitutes a record which cannot be disputed, and is therefore invalu- 

 able to business-men. There is a facsimile record at each end, and 

 neither of them can be altered without detection. The invention is 

 at once ingenious and practical, and is the completed expression of 

 the long-cherished desire to produce a writing-telegraph. 



— On a part of Sir Joseph Banks's Museum, at the back of 22 

 Soho Square, being pulled down, in a recess with doors which had 

 not been opened for about half a century, a very interesting col- 

 lection of relics of Captain Cook's voyages in the South Seas has 

 been discovered. Inside the panelling the following inscription was 

 written in the handwriting of Sir Joseph Banks, who accompanied 

 Captain Cook on his travels : " Instruments used, carvings, weap- 

 ons, and heads, collected by Captain Cook during the voyage of 

 the 'Endeavour.' — J. Banks." These relics have been bought by 

 Sir Saul Samuel, the agent-general for New South Wales, and will 

 shortly be despatched by him to Sydney for the State House 

 Museum at that place. Among the collection are the following in- 

 teresting articles : old quadrants and other instruments used by 

 Captain Cook on board the ' Endeavour,' four of which are in oak 

 cases; two mummied tattooed heads of New Zealand chiefs; two 

 native models of New Zealand canoes, one carved ; two large carved 

 canoe-paddles ; carved spears and war-clubs ; a native chief's pad- 

 dle, beautifully worked with idolatrous carving ; a very fine stone 

 hatchet with handle, and upon it the following inscription in the 

 handwriting of Sir Joseph Banks, "Brought to England in 1775 by 

 Captain Cook from Otaheite ; " and a wooden bowl with lip, used 

 for handing round human blood in the daj's of cannibalism. There 

 is also a carved wooden sceptre with the following words scratched 

 on it, presumably by Captain Cook : " Made for me by Wanga. — 

 J. C." Sir Joseph Banks's handwriting can be identified. 



— As a result of his experiments on the maxillary palpi of man- 

 dibulate insects, myriapods and female spiders, Plateau comes to 

 the conclusion that in the arthropods they subserve no functional 

 purpose whatever, and are to be looked on as organs which have 

 become useless, like the mammae of male mammals. Plateau also 

 discovers by experiment that not the slightest trace exists of any 

 visible external respiratory movements in arachnids, such as Blan- 

 chard describes, or in chilopod Myriapoda, and suggests that the 

 action must be wholly intrapulmonary, supporting himself partly by 

 some observations of MacLeod, who thought he had discovered 

 evidences of muscular tissue between the pulmonary lamelte. 

 Locy, however, was unable to discover signs of it in the young. 



— Dr. Mercier is about to publish, as an introduction to the 

 scientific study of insanity, a work on the nervous system and the 

 mind. It will contain an exposition of the new neurology as 

 founded by Herbert Spencer and developed by Hughlings Jackson ; 

 an account of the constitution of mind from the evolutionarv stand- 



