Art. XVI. — A New Form of Darkfield Illumination 

 Micrometer. 



By R. L. J. Ellery, F.R.S. 



[Read 11th October, 1883.] 



Art. XVII. — Notes of an Interesting Fact in Connection 

 with the Early History of the Electric Telegraph. 



By Mr. Ellery, F.R.S. 



[Read loth November, 1883.] 



It is no new thing to say that the one who, by intellectual 

 process or rational experiment, makes a discovery seldom 

 reaps the benefit either as regards reputation or more sub- 

 stantial results. The man of science or the patient investi- 

 gator is nowhere in the race, as compared with the man of 

 business ; and so it often, almost always, happens that the 

 discoverer is forgotten, while those who, ghoul-like, turn his 

 brains to account are the only ones who reap the reward 

 and are remembered. This is because men like Faraday, 

 and many more, are not business men ; their life is spent in 

 inquiring of nature's forces and nature's laws, and giving 

 the results for the benefit of mankind, and not in learning 

 and following the more popular ways of money-making. 

 The instance I am about to refer to is a case in point. Let 

 us think for a moment what a mess we should be in if we 

 were suddenly deprived of the electric telegraph, or elec- 

 tricity, as a means of communication at a. distance, and we 

 may perhaps form some sort of an idea of what we owe to 

 those early workers who laid the foundation-stones of this 

 great and universal benefit. Nevertheless, one, and, as it 

 now seems likely, the first, who by his discoveries made the 

 electric telegraph a fact has been hidden among us for over 

 thirty years, scarcely known except as a country surgeon, 

 and certainly never till now recognised as one to whom 



