140 
THE YOUNG SCIENTIST. 
four new names would secure Pember- 
ton's work on Drawing, or Phin's large 
book on the Microscope. Three new 
names will secure Shooting on the Wing, 
or The Steel Square. One name and ten 
cents will secure a copy of the Workshop 
Companion — a book which contains more 
for the money than any other volume that 
we know of. For other premiums we 
refer to our advertising pages. 
Electrical Humbugs. 
I^HE wonders which can be actually per- 
- formed by electrical agencies are so 
marvellous that it is no wonder that the 
public in general have unlimited faith in 
the powers of this force. In the presence 
of the telegraph, the telephone, the elec- 
tric light and a dozen other successful ap- 
plications, he would be a bold man who 
would pronounce against the possibility 
of any achieveuient. This fact does not, 
however, prevent us from deciding against 
certain obvious humbugs and swindles 
which are to-day too common. Elec- 
tricity has its laws as well as gravitation, 
and the man who proposes a scheme to 
which they are obviously opposed is either 
a fool or a knave. Some of the swindles 
Avhicli are now before the public are ex- 
ceedingly barefaced, and yet they are 
wonderfully successful in drawing the 
money out of the pockets of the people, 
and the most emphatic testimonials from 
"respectable" clergymen. One man 
sells a hair-brush for which is claimed all 
the virtues under heaven— all due to elec- 
tricity. To convitice the gullible portion 
of the public that the brush has great 
electrical power, those who sell it exhibit 
its action on a magnet, and as the brush 
is apparently made of non-magnetic ma- 
terial, the effect is supposed to be due to 
the electricity which is somehow stored in 
the brush. The fact is, however, that 
there is a small steel magnet concealed in 
the substance of the back of the brush, 
and it is to this that the action is due. 
Others present to the public what they 
call magnetic or electrical garments imder 
various names. What adjectives are too 
strong to characterize the fraudulent 
claims made for these articles ? That 
electricity is a most valuable remedial 
agent when properly directed and ju- 
diciously applied there can be no doubt. 
But these men know nothing either of 
electricity or medicine ; all they want is 
money, and they make up for the lack of 
knowledge by the most unblushing as- 
surance and the most lying claims. The 
articles which they sell, violate the most 
elementary principles of natural science, 
and our young readers are cautioned to 
beware of them. The most astonishing 
thing is that their advertisements are ad- 
mitted into professedly scientific, and 
even into some medical papers, thus lend- 
ing to them a qua^ii endorsement which 
no respectable paper should give even in 
its advertising columns. 
Death of Charles A. Spencer. 
THIRTY years ago the scientific world 
was thrown into a ferment by the an- 
nouncement that "an object-glass, con- 
structed by a young artist of the name of 
Spencer, living in the back woods, had 
shown three sets of lines on a very deli- 
cate diatom, when other glasses of equal 
power, made by the first English opti- 
cians, had entirely failed to define them." 
This passage, which marks an era in the 
history of the microscope, occurs in the 
first edition of Quekett's work on the Mi- 
croscope, but has been expunged from 
subsequeDt editions. At that time Eoss 
had declared that an angle of aperture of 
135° was as great as could be given to the 
object-glass of a microscope. Spencer, 
with a true American unbelief in the im- 
possible, went to work, and in a short 
time succeeded in making glasses having 
an angle of aperture of 172°, and since that 
time the angle has gone on increasing, its 
increase being an accurate indication of 
the advancement of microscopy. Spencer 
was an entirely self-taught optician, and 
his talents and success made American 
microscopes known all over the world. 
He died at Geneva, N. Y., on the 28th 
day of September, 1881, at the age of 68 
years. 
A fine portrait of Mr. Spencer, together 
with a lengthy biography, will appear in 
the forthcoming number of the American 
Journal of Microscopy. 
