156 Miscellaneous. [Feb. 



Astronomy appears to be in the ascendant. I have just this minute 

 received a note from Philadelphia, informing me that the second new 

 asteroid, discovered by Hencke, has been seen in that city. The dis- 

 covery of Le Verrier and Adams is a remarkable fact in the history of 

 science, and the wonder, with reference to it, has been increased by 

 the researches of Walker and Pierce, two American savants, who have 

 proved that the planet Neptune is not the only body that occasions the 

 perturbations of Uranus, but that there must be another, if not more 

 planets, to produce the observed effects ; or in other words, they have 

 proved that Neptune is not the hypothetical planet of Le Verrier and 

 Adams, rendered visible by the glass of the German observer, but ano- 

 ther bod}', the discovery of which was in a great degree accidental. 



Have you looked at the researches of Matteucci on endosmon and on 

 the electrical currents of the animal body ? They are highly interesting. 



Mattenci has shown that during life there is constantly a current 

 from the muscle to the blood, and thence to the fasica ; or in other words 

 that the muscle is the zinc, the blood the acid, and the fascia the copper. 



The electrical telegraph is in rapid progress of extension over our 

 country, and will soon unite the most distant extremities of the Union. 



On a late occasion the marking apparatus was worked through a 

 distance of 900 miles of wire. This was effected, however, by means of 

 a local battery, to operate the marking machine, and the circuit of which 

 was closed by the slight motion of a small tongue of soft iron between 

 the legs of a horse-shoe galvanic magnet, around which a part of the 

 wire of the long circuit was coiled. Considerable difficulty has been 

 experienced in the long reaches during wet weather in preserving the 

 insulation ; the electricity escapes along the posts. I have suggested 

 the propriety of distributing the batteries in parts along the whole 

 length of the circuit in order to obviate this difficulty. A single bat- 

 tery is now placed at one end of the line, and consequently, the 

 electricity must rise to considerable intensity to pass the whole dis- 

 tance. The resistance to the return current through the earth appears 

 to be inappreciable ; the great amount of conducting matter reduces the 

 resistances of the earth and moisture to an infinitesimal quantity, though 

 under other circumstances they are found to be considerable. This is 

 shown by the following experiment of my own. The long wire of the 

 telegraph was broken at a convenient point, and the two ends of the 



