/878.J 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
227 
tween the braids, as shown in figure 1 (and more plainly 
in figure 2. The “feather-stitch” was very thoroughly 
described and shown in the May No. of the American 
Agricultwist, 1877). You can mark tiie Vandykes with 
(/VVVV\?\) 
Fig-. 3.— PIECE FOR HANDLE. 
the corner of a square card. Double the braid and sew 
it around the edges of the two circular pieces (like welt¬ 
ing). Sew on the braid, and work the feather-stitch as 
in figure 4. Sew the salvages of the main piece around 
the circles, allowing the button-hole hem to lap about an 
inch over the buttons. Now make your two handles. 
Baste each two pieces together and sew the braid along 
each (ns in figure 3), then bind them around with the 
braid, and sew them on to the bag, as shown in figure 5. 
They are called “ Shawl-Covers,” but are used as satchels, 
Fig. 4.—END OF SHAWL-COVER. 
and you will be astonished to find how comprehensive and 
convenient they are. Figure 5 shows the cover complete. 
F. B. H. asks, “ Who were the Seven Sleepers, and how 
long did they sleep ?”—A widely diffused legend of the 
early days of Christianity has it, that seven noble Chris¬ 
tian youths of Ephesus, named Dionysius, Maximilian, 
John, Malchus, Serapion, Martinian, and Constantine, to 
Fig. 5.—SHAWL-COVER FINISHED. 
escape the persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian (A.D. 
283-304)—some say of the Emperor Decius (A.D. 249-251) 
(both emperors persecuted the Christians)—took refuge 
in a cavern, where they were walled up to perish, but 
were made to fall asleep, and miraculously kept so for 230 
years. When they awoke, they ventured down to Ephesus, 
and were amazed to find Christianity honored every¬ 
where. It is said, that when they died their bodies were 
Fig.3. PLAN OF GARDENER BIRD’S GARDEN.(&«£>. 228.) 
taken to Marseilles, where a huge stone coffin is still 
shown as containing their remains in the Church of St. 
Victor, once a Benedictine Convent of the eleventh cen¬ 
tury. (What happened to the remains between A.D. 500 
and 1000, history doesn’t tell.) Reference is made to the 
same legend in the Koran, where it is told in “the 
Chapter of the Cave.” The names of the sleepers there 
given, are Shazzernoos, Jemlika, Debbcrnoos, Kephestct- 
joos, Meshilina, Mernoos, and Mislina. The Turks think 
all these names of good omen, and put them on their 
buildings by way of fire insurance, and on swords to pre¬ 
vent them from breaking. Ketmehr, the dog, which is 
said to have accompanied them and to have stood guard 
over them the entire time, is also said to have been ad¬ 
mitted to Ileaven, together with the ram of Abraham’s 
sacrifice, Balaam’s ass—the ass upon which our Lord 
rode into Jerusalem, and the mare on which Mohammed 
mounted to Paradise. The story of Rip Van Winkle, by 
Washington Irving,no doubt grew out of tiie above legend. 
The Doctoi ,, si Correspondence. 
When in answer to several letters I promised to tell you 
About tUe Telephone, 
I knew that I had undertaker, a difficult job. I last month 
told you something about sound, and how it could be sent 
to a distance. Sound is produced by the air, which, 
though we can not see, we can weigh, measure, and 
study it. But in the Telephone we have to do with 
electricity—something that can not be weighed and 
measured as air can be. Much is known about the 
effects of electricity, but just what it is and many other 
things about it, even the most learned are in the dark. In 
describing such difficult things as the Telephone to young 
people, we can only tell what is done, for it would take a 
volume to tell all that is known about matters concerned 
in it. You know a little about 
One Kind of Electricity; 
when you stroke the cat’s back on a cold dry day. you 
hear a crackling, and in the dark see sparks. You have 
known the same kind of electricity—on the grandest scale, 
when you see the flashes of lightning and hear the thun¬ 
der. Nearly all of.you have seen the telegraph poles, and 
the wires stretching from one to another, and know in a 
general sort of way that messages are sent along that wire 
somehow by electricity. The electricity used in the tele¬ 
graph is not the same kind that we get by rubbing the 
cat’s back, or that crackles, when you suddenly pull off 
your silk neck-tie on a cold clear night, but a very quiet 
and manageable kind. If you are near a telegraph station, 
you may have seen several glass jars partly filled with a 
liquid in which are some bright pieces of metal. These 
jars together are called a Battery, and here is produced 
the electricity to work the telegraph. If we have a plate 
of copper, and another of 
zinc, and place them in a 
jar in which is some Sul¬ 
phuric Acid(Oil of Vitriol), 
made weak with 12 or 
more times as much water, 
the acid will soon begin 
to dissolve the zinc, but it 
will not appear to trouble 
the copper very miich. 
Now let us attach a wire 
to each, the zinc and the 
copper (and for this pur¬ 
pose it is best to use wire ... ^ 
wound with fine cotton b ' 
thread), as in figure 1. If we bring the two ends, A, 
B, of this wire together in the dark, a tiny spark may bo 
seen; if we put between the ends of these wires a bit 
of very fine platinum wire, the platinum will become so 
hot that you can not touch 
it, perhaps hot enough 
to light a match, or even 
red-hot. If you join the 
ends of the copper wire, 
and bring a compass near 
it, you will find the needle 
pays no attention to the 
North Star, but will place 
itself at right angles to 
the wire. All these show 
that these copper wires are 
unlike ordinary wire, that 
something is happening in 
them, and if you think that 
this has something to do 
with the action of the acid 
on the zinc, you will be 
very near right. But here is something still more curi¬ 
ous. Take 
A Bar of Soft Iron, 
and having one of the wires, A, B, long enough, coil 
it around the iron bar, and then unite the two ends as 
before. Figure 2 shows this arrangement. Nothing will 
appear to have happened to the bar, but if you bring a 
compass needle near to one end of it you will see tliat it 
is very much disturbed, and will dance about, as you 
move it from side to side, in the wildest manner. Now 
Fig. 2.—ELECTRO-MAGNET. 
bring a shingle nail, a small key, or other bit of iron, to 
the end of this bar ; when very near it will jump towards 
it, and be held there with considerable force. Very likely 
the nail, or key, already on the bar, will hold up another, 
and perhaps several. You have no doubt seen a magnet 
—boys often have their knife-blades magnetized, and 
they amuse themselves by picking up needles, tacks, etc. 
—and you will at once say that this iron bar has been 
made a magnet, or has been magnetized. You may think 
that now you have a very nice large magnet that will be 
very amusing to have, so you unhook your wires, A, B, 
and down goes your nail, or key. You apply the bar to it 
—it behaves nothing like a magnet, and cares nothing at 
all about the nail. Hook together your wires again, and 
you have the bar as good a magnet as before. Bring to¬ 
gether, and separate the wires, A, B, as rapidly or as 
often as you please, and the bar changes from no mag¬ 
net and to a magnet every time. Now 
We must have Names 
for these curious acts, and the articles used to produce 
them. The glass jar with the two metals and acid is 
called a “ Galvanic Battery,” and frequently, only a 
“Battery.” To increase the power, 10, 50, or more, may 
be joined, and it is still a battery. In practice, the metals 
are so arranged that the action only goes on when the 
battery is in actual use, and this is a great saving of ma¬ 
terials. You have seen that, when the wires, -4. B, are 
Fig-. 3.— MAGNET, COIL, AND COMPASS NEEDLE. 
joined, something happens in them—it appears as if 
something was passing through the wire from the zinc to 
the copper, and it is very convenient to call it a “cur¬ 
rent.” Whatever it is, it is a form of electricity, and to 
distinguish it from “ frictional electricity,” produced by 
rubbing other things besides the cat’s fur, it is called 
“Galvanic Electricity.” As it passes along a wire, that 
is called a conductor, and the ends of the two wires, 
whether tiiat may be a foot or 100 miles long, are the 
poles. Here is one point I wish you especially to recol¬ 
lect : the wire was coiled around the bar of soft iron, and 
when tiie current passed through the wire, it did not 
touch the iron at all, as the thread around it prevented, 
so no electricity passed into the bar, but only around it— 
yet this bar behaved in a most unusual manner, it pick¬ 
ing up nails, etc., and it was for the time a magnet. 
There are many cases in which an electrical action in one 
body, causes a similar action in a body near by. If you 
will recollect that the wire coiled around the bar induced 
it to act like a magnet, you will not forget the philoso¬ 
pher’s name for it—as they call it induction , that is, mag¬ 
netism—which is still another form of electricity, is in¬ 
duced in the bar of soft iron. 
Recollect about Induction, 
for it is a most important matter, as upon it depends the 
working of the Telegraph as well as the Telephone. But 
you know that some magnets stay active, and not like 
this iron bar, come and go. If we prepare a very strong 
“ Electro-magnet,” as this kind, like the iron bar is call¬ 
ed, and then properly rub it against a bar of steel , that 
steel will become a magnet, and remain so. This maybe 
a small bar like a needle, or a large one, a foot or more 
long. If we hang the needle by a very fine hair, or stick 
it through a bit of cork and float it on water, one end will 
point north, and the other south; the end that points 
north is the north pole, and the other the south pole of 
the magnet—names applied to a magnet of any size. If 
tiie magnetic bar is straight, its north and south pole are 
far apart; if bent up like the letter IJ, it is called a horse¬ 
shoe magnet, and its poles, though close together, are 
still north and south. Now, suppose you have a bar 
magnet, and a coil of wire, as in figure 3; pass the magnet 
within the coil, and immediately there will be a disturb¬ 
ance set up in the wire; a compass needle, if surrounded 
by tiie wire, will at once dance about and take a position, 
and when the magnet is removed from the coil, the needle 
will go back to its former place, and as often as this is 
repeated, just so often will the compass be disturbed. If 
the coil were a sufficiently large one, made of a very long 
wire, and the bar magnet very strong, we would take 
away the compass needle and bring the two ends of the 
wire of the coil near together; then, on passing the 
magnet into the coil, we should get a spark I Now yon 
have this wire acting just as the wire did in No. 1, when 
a current of electricity was passing through it. Yoh have 
seen that a current of electricity passing througn a coil o£ 
