Though the means intended to be employed are not supplied, it is probable that the holding of a brilliant light in different positions was part of the plan to be adopted. The celebrated Dr. Hooke proposed to the Royal Society, in 1684, to employ "masts and yards" for telegraphs, and it is the development of this principle which is illustrated in the long-established, and but recently abolished, semaphore. The first, as practically employed, appears to have been the invention of Chappe, and consisted of a beam, which turned on a pivot in the top of an upright post, having a movable arm at each of its extremities. From the year 1795 till 1816, the British admiralty made use of a telegraph on somewhat similar principles, and this plan may be regarded as the best. Alphabetical spelling was invariably preferred to any other method during this period. In making these communications, however, advantage was taken to omit non-essential words and letters, especially vowels. Thus the meaning of the sentence, "Order the Agamemnon out of harbour, and direct her to proceed to Spithead," would be sufficiently expressed by "Agmemn to Spthed." A pneumatic, or air-telegraph, of an ingenious kind, was invented by Mr. S. Crossley. It consisted of a tube, to be extended from one station to another, provided at each end with a vessel, containing, like the tube itself, and in direct communication, a small quantity of air. These vessels were made so as to admit of enlargement or contraction, like a pair of bellows, or a gas-holder; for in this way any change of bulk in the air of the tube is compressed. Now if any degree of pressure be given to the receiver at one end, the equilibrium will be soon restored, and the same degree of pressure observed at the other extremity, and may be read off by means of a pressure-index. Thus, if ten degrees of compression were produced by ten weights, distinguished from each other numerically, and having a pressure-index at the opposite station, marked by corresponding figures, telegraphic communications might be made of any kind, by the assistance of a code of acknowledged signals, adapted to suit the circumstances of the case. The manipulation required would be the putting a weight of the required figure upon the collapsing vessel at either station, and the same figure would be represented by the Trials were index at the opposite one. made of the plan, and a tube, an inch in diameter, was laid down for nearly two miles, one end returning to very near the place where the other one began, so that the effects could be easily examined. When the compression was applied at one end, equal to a column of seven inches of water, the effect on the index at the other end appeared in fifteen seconds of time. A plan has been recently proposed, and a model constructed, of a hydraulic telegraph, the invention of Mr. Rowley, of Chorlton-on-Medlock, and he states his belief, that a communication could be made, by these means, to Liverpool, and an answer received in Manchester, in a few minutes. The ingenuity of the proposal, rather than its practicability, is the reason of allusion to it here. A curious anticipation of f what has been actually effected appears in the Spectator, No. 241, of December, 1711. "Strada,' says Addison, "in one of his prolusions, gives an account of a chimerical correspondence between two friends, by the help of a certain loadstone, which had such virtue in it, that if it touched two several needles, when one of the needles so touched began to move, the other, though at never so great a distance, moved at the same time, and in the same manner. He tells us, that the two friends, being each of them possessed of one of these needles, made a kind of dialplate, inscribing it with the four-andtwenty letters, in the same manner as the hours of the day are marked upon the ordinary dial-plate. They then fixed one of the needles on each of these plates in such a manner, that it could move round without impediment, so as to touch any of the four-and-twenty letters." description further states, that, on the friends separating into different countries, they agreed to withdraw themselves punctually to their closets, at a certain fixed time daily, and, by the assistance of the invention, conversation was then to be interchanged. This was accomplished by one friend directing his needle to every letter which formed the words he had occasion for, making a little pause every word or sentence, to avoid confusion. The friend who was listening' to the information thus conveyed, did so by his own sympathetic needle' moving of itself to every letter which that of his correspondent pointed at. The at Arthur Young, who visited France in 1787-8-9, mentions, in his travels, the experiments of M. Lomond, who was able, by means of electricity, to convey messages from one room to another; and the Rev. Mr. Gamble, in his description of his original shutter telegraph, alludes to the project of electrical communication. A pamphlet, too, published by Ronalds, in 1823, states, that Cavallo proposed to convey intelligence by passing given numbers of sparks through an insulated wire, and that, in 1816, he had himself tried experiments on this principle, which he deemed more promising than the application of galvanic or voltaic electricity, which had been projected by some Germans and Americans. His transmission of signals through a length of eight miles of insulated wire was perfect, and the contrivance by which the principle was rendered applicable to the telegraphic correspondence was minutely described. In this mode of telegraphing, the electric current is used to convey intelligence, the signals being given by the different actions of the current that is carried from station to station, along insulated conductors. While the current generated by frictional electricity was the only one known, experiments on this subject performed in the last century were limited to the use of a discharge obtained either from a Leyden jar, or from an electrical battery, and the correspondence was carried on by the luminous phenomena elicited. This mode of telegraphing was especially defective in this, that the signals could not be made to follow in sufficiently rapid succession, and on account of the high tension of frictional electricity, it was extremely difficult to insulate the current. This last obstacle was subsequently surmounted by the use of the voltaic current, the chemical effects of which are rendered available as telegraphic signals. In 1807, Sömmering, at Munich, proposed the construction of an electric telegraph on the principle of the decomposition of water by the voltaic current, as discovered in 1800, by Nicholson and Carlisle. He employed the divergence and collapse of a pair of pith-balls as the telegraphic indication, and a single wire perfectly insulated by being suspended by silken strings, or buried in glass tubes, was extended between the stations, and from the end of the wire was suspended in front of the dial of a clock a pair of pith-balls, so that while the wire was charged the balls would remain divergent, but would instantly collapse when the | a wire, by contact with the earth, or the hand of the operator, was discharged. A person at one end having therefore an electrical machine, by which he could maintain the wire in an electrified state, and the pith-balls at the farther extremity consequently in a state of divergence, had it of course in his power to give an instantaneous indication to an observer at that farther extremity by touching the wire with his hand, which, discharging the electricity, would allow the balls to collapse for an instant." Instead, however, of merely employing the successive movements of the pith-balls to denote the various signals, M. Ronalds added another apparatus for this purpose. Two accurately adjusted clocks, had, instead of the ordinary seconds hand, light discs, on which the letters of the alphabet figures, and other required signals, were engraved. These discs turned, by a regular step-by-step motion, behind screen of metal, in which a small opening was made, sufficient to permit one letter at a time being seen. As the discs moved round, each letter in its turn would thus be rendered visible through the space; and it is evident, that, if the clocks were started with the same signal visible, the movement of the discs would bring similar signals into view at the same time. One of these instruments was situated at each end of the communicating wire, which extended in M. Ronalds' experiments for several miles, by being carried backward and forward across his ground. When intelligence was to be transmitted, the operator watched his clock till the letter he wanted was visible, and he then discharged the wire, while the momentary collapse of the balls at the distant end would warn the observer to note the letter visible on his instrument, which would form a part of the intelligence he was to receive. In order to avoid the constant necessity of the observation of the attendant, arrangements were made by which a pistol was fired when his attention was required.* The first person who clearly established the reciprocal action of magnetic bars and the voltaic current was professor Oersted, of Copenhagen, in the year 1819. He noticed, that, on the passage of a galvanic current along a wire, placed parallel, and near to a magnetic needle, free to turn on its centre, the needle is deflected to one side or the other, accord * Ronalds' Description of an Electric Telegraph. illustrated thus:-N. S. is a magnetic needle, freely suspended in the magnetic meridian, while connexion is maintained with the poles of a galvanic battery by any two of the mercury cups, (m, m, m,) by means of a wire passing round it, and thus a current may be sent either above, below, or round it. N is the north, and s the south pole of the needle. When the current passes, the needle will instantly change its position, that end of the needle which is next to the negative side the battery immediately turning to the west. Now the negative side is that towards which the positive electricity flows, and hence, if the current is above, the needle, or magnet n, will turn to the east; if below, to the west. "If a wire, along which the current passes, is placed in the same horizontal plane with the needle, no movement to the east or west takes place, but n will be elevated when to the west of the current, and depressed when to the east. If the galvanic current passes round the needle in the direction of its axis, the magnet will be deflected at right angles from the current. Upon this principle galvanometers are constructed. The difficulty of remembering which way the needle will be deflected may be overcome by supposing oneself for a moment the conducting wire, and that the positive current, as the eyes are turned towards the wire, passes from the head to the feet; the needle will always turn to the right hand."* The subject of telegraphic communication now increasingly occupied the public attention, and M. Ampère suggested a plan to professor Ritchie, which was so far carried out, that a model was exhibited by him at the Royal Institution. The complexity of the arrangement, however, formed a great obstacle to its advancement, as t required no less than thirty pairs of wires to render the communication perfect. In 1832, M. Schilling proposed another form of telegraph on a similar plan; * Electricity, published by the Religious Tract Society. and it was still further elaborated by M. Alexander, in 1837. This instrument required, however, a distinct needle for each letter to be indicated; these needles bearing at one end light screens of paper, which concealed from view a letter or figure, till, by the deflection of the needle, the screen was removed, and the letter brought to sight. He made one considerable improvement on the work of his predecessor, in contriving to render only one return-wire necessary, and he spent much time in endeavouring to perfect the communication by the use of one wire only, but, death occurring, prevented the further development of his plans. The Penny Cyclopædia states, that, "in both of these telegraphs, all that was requisite, in addition to the indicating apparatus and conducting wires, was a contrivance by which the connexion of the voltaic batteries could be made with any pair of wires in the former, and with any single wire and the return-conductors in the latter of the two inventions. M. Alexander's instrument, a set of keys, resembling those of a pianoforte, and corresponding to the number of needles, were arranged on a frame or table. One pole of the battery being connected to the return or common wire, the other pole was joined to a plate of metal, or to a trough of mercury, extending beneath all the keys." On depressing any key, the wire belonging to it was brought into contact with this bar or trough, and the current would then flow along the conducting wire, around the multiplier-coil in the distant instrument, and then return by the common wire to the battery. Thus the operation was maintained with an ease never before experienced in telegraphic communication; for as the keys bore the same letters as the needles to which they were connected, the right key had only to be pressed downwards, and the letter was immediately indicated at the opposite end. In In the next paper, the progress of electrical communication will be further traced, and an account given of WhetF. S. stone and Cork's apparatus. DISCOVERY OF ANCIENT MINES. THE Valley of Mukatteb takes its name from the inscriptions carved upon the "When we rocks; and Dr. Wilson says: had satisfied ourselves with the view of them, Mr. Smith, Dhanjibháí, and I, proceeded to take a peep through our telescopes at the high range of red granite | mountains lying to the east. We were so much struck with their absolutely naked flanks, and with what appeared to be numerous dark metallic veins, or basaltic dykes, running up to their summits like a series of bars or ribs, that we resolved to visit them. At the risk of exciting the alarm of our friends, who had gone on before us, and were ignorant of our determination, we left the usual track through the valley, ordering our camel-men not to wait for us, but to overtake their companions. The mountains appeared to us, at starting, to be quite near; but they seemed to recede as we advanced upon them; and we spent fully two hours before we could reach them. We had no idea of the extent of the exertion which we should thus be compelled to make; but we felt that we were richly rewarded for our enterprise. On a hill in front of them, which we had to surmount before we could get to their base, we were surprised to see immense quantities of debris and slag, with fragments of stone mortars and furnaces, which, we doubted not, had been used in the remotest antiquity for the pounding and smelting of ore. When we actually reached the mountains, we found that they had been peeled and excavated to a great extent where the veins and dykes had occurred; and that only their coarser contents had in some places been spared. Numerous grooves and channels seemed to be cut in the extraction of the ore, from the very top to the bottom of the mountains, even where they were most perpendicular; and the mountains are completely spoiled and stripped of their treasures. How they were wrought-whether by the aid of scaffoldings reaching from the bottom, or by supports let down from above by ropes or chains—it is impossible to say. Great must have been the exposure and the waste of human life in the working of them. We looked upon them with much interest; and we could account for the fact that they have hitherto escaped the notice of travellers only by the circumstance that they are out of the way, and that the wonderful inscriptions in the Wádí Mukatteb have naturally enough monopolised attention." Other mines in the neighbourhood have come under the observation of travellers; but these, inasmuch as the excavations have been made, not by digging down into the roots of the mountains, but by cutting away the precious ores which seamed their sides. It can scarcely be doubted that the author of the book of Job had them before him when he penned the following passage: "Surely there is a vein for the silver, And a place for gold where they fine it. And copper is moulten out of the stone, The stones of darkness, and the shadow of death There is a path which no fowl knoweth, He (man) putteth forth his hand upon the rock; But where shall wisdom be found? The extreme antiquity of these workings, says the North British Review, seems to be proved by the singular monuments at Surabit el-Khadem in the neighbourhood, where hieroglyphics occur of Osirtasen, who is supposed to have been reigning when Joseph came into Egypt, of Shopho or Cheops, the founder of the great pyramid, and of another Pharaoh, whose name is also found in the same pyramid. OLD HUMPHREY ON ARTHUR'S SEAT. WHEN a man on a cloudy day climbs a high hill in an interesting neighbourhood, his sensations are somewhat singular. He is, as it were, starving in the midst of plenty, and suffering thirst when surrounded with running streams. He knows that there is a great deal to be seen, though he cannot see it; and is sensible that there is much to be enjoyed, though he cannot enjoy it. By and by, however, the exercise of his patience is rewarded,- for the cloudy atmosphere clears up, and hill and valley, winding brook and village spire, become visible. He gazes ardently around, as the chaos assumes an appearance of order; and interest and delight, according to circumstances, take possession of his heart. I But though, at the present moment, am pencilling down these passing *Not brass, as in our translation. "It was an oversight! it was an oversight!" and walked away with my heart brimful of kindly feelings towards every Scotchman, both in the Highlands and the Lowlands, from Oban to Berwickupon-Tweed, and from the Pentland Frith to the Mull of Galway. After a while I may have something to say more at length about Scotland, but at present I am only an observer. I could not, however, go up to the top of Arthur's Seat, without bearing a hasty testimony to its commanding position, and thankfully acknowledging the gratification it has afforded me. per THE HINDOO DWELLING. THE service of a Hindoo meal is, says the Rev. W. Arthur, as primitive as can be. In Europe, we summon all nature and all art to wait upon us at dinner, and do us honour. The forest yields its rich woods; the mine its steel and silver, copand tin; the field its fine linen; the hard flint appears in delicate and variegated porcelain; the tusk of the elephant presents our cutlery in smooth and beautiful cases; the sand of the sea comes in crystal goblets to moisten our lips. Then, how turner and joiner, weaver and miner, cutler and silversmith, potter and glassworker, have shown their skill! But none of this elaboration is known in India. A good man just sits down upon the floor; a few leaves sown together contain his food; and with his own fingers he conveys it to his mouth, as satisfactorily as if all Sheffield had been at his service. When the repast is over, the leaf-plate is thrown away, and another provided as the next meal is preparing. But the simplicity of a Hindoo meal is not more striking than its loneliness. In all the length and breadth of vast Hindostan, such a thing as a family-board is not known! We look on that simple thing, a family-board, as an indifferent, almost an unavoidable, accident of family life; but go to India, and you see no such thing. Let all the homes of that wide continent open to your eye to-day, and in every one you see a man sitting down alone, eating his food in silence; his wife abjectly waiting upon him till he has done, then taking away the food, and silently eating in a separate apartment. You may then exclaim, "Is it possible that even my family-board, where affections circulate and joys revive, is another of the boons for which I am indebted to the gospel?" The furniture of a Hindoo home is not more inferior in comfort to that of an English one, than are its domestic relations in joy. There the heart is ruled by another code than that which warms our hearths. Amongst all the unaccountable things said about India in Europe, perhaps, considering the character and opportunities of sir Thomas Munro, the most unaccountable is that which he said before a Committee of the House of Commons, in 1813, respecting the domestic character of the Hindoos: "A treatment of the female sex full of confidence, respect, and delicacy." What that most respectable man could mean by these words, I cannot even conjecture; unless that, having lived in India from boyhood, he, in his laudable attachment to the natives-an attachment to which they gave a merited return-had learned to appreciate the Hindoo treatment of females, not by the just standard of Christianity, which he had seen in practice in Scotland when a boy, but by the detestable oppression of Mohammedanism, which had been under his notice during all his active life. The Hindoo woman is not, like her more unhappy Mohammedan neighbour, doomed to perpetual prison: she has the privilege of other animals, of seeing the sky, and breathing the free air. On this, therefore, may she congratulate herself; but in view of the rights given her of God she has much ground to complain. Her husband is taught in the popular "Punchatuntara," that one essential quality of a great man is severity to women. Wickedness, deceit, impurity, and baseness, are pronounced inseparable from her nature! "Let the wife," says the "Skanda Purâna," quoted by Dr. Wilson, "who wishes to perform sacred ablution, wash the feet of her lord, and drink the water; for a husband is to a wife greater than Shankara or Vishtnu. The husband is her god, and guru, and religion, and its services; wherefore, abandoning everything else, she ought chiefly to worship her husband." From the "Padma Purâna," Dubois cites the following, and similar passages:-" "Let him (the husband) be choleric and dissipated, irregular, a drunkard, a gambler, a debauchee; suppose him reckless of domestic affairs, -even agitated like a demon; let him live in the world destitute of honour; let |