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lights revolving at different intervals, which, he says, are often mistaken on a stormy night, and the adoption of Morse's telegraph signs. Each lighthouse should have its own letter, which it should show incessantly from sunset to sunrise by means of Morse's dots and dashes, this being accomplished by a simple mechanical contrivance which would drop a screen before the gaslight, eclipsing it at intervals, thus by light and darkness showing the letters on Morse's plan; the length between the dots and dashes indicated by intervals of darkness, the dots and dashes themselves, that is the letters, by short and long flashes; this is called an occulting light. The originator of this idea was Babbage the mathematician, and his paper on the subject may be found by the curious in the pigeon-holes of Trinity House, though warmly approved of by such high authorities as Professor Tyndall and Sir William Thomson, the latter of whom has invented an eclipsing gaslight to be employed in lighthouses, which was exhibited at a conversazione of telegraph engineers on December 2nd, 1874.

lime light, electric light, magnesium, and | far from perfect, and would have all lightgas. Sir William Thomson, however, houses so distinguished that they could considers that "the lighthouse of the not possibly be mistaken for ship or shore future is to be illuminated by gas, except lights. He recommends the abolition of when the situation is on an isolated rock, or where, for any reason, the price of coal is prohibitory." Professor Tyndall coincides in this opinion, and in a paper by Mr. Wigham, gas engineer, we find that this theory has been put into practice by the Irish Board of Lights at Howth Bailey, in Dublin Bay, where an actual saving has been effected by the substitution of gas for oil. The most beautiful and interesting, perhaps, of all lights, is that discov ered by Professor Faraday, the electric light. It is really nothing more than the white heat caused by the meeting of two opposing electrical currents, generated by a powerful machine, and conveyed by two copper wires, each terminating in a carbon point. These points are kept at a certain distance from each other, and when the two opposing currents meet there, the resistance of both causes the carbon to glow and become white hot; the incandescent state of the carbon is the brilliant electric light itself. It was utilized by Mr. Holmes, who invented an apparatus for producing it, which was tried in 1859 at the South Foreland lighthouse; it has, however, only been steadily used for six years, but has proved itself so successful that it merits a somewhat detailed notice. The stream of electricity which supplies the two lighthouses standing one above the other on the chalk cliffs of the South Foreland promontory, is not derived from a pile or a battery, but is ground out of huge magneto-electric machines worked by a twenty horse-power steam engine - the current being conducted by wires from the machine-house to the lighthouses. The light generated by this beautiful contrivance is kept constant by means of a clockwork arrangement which draws the carbon points closer together as they disperse themselves by combustion; it is necessary, however, to change them altogether every three hours, but as this is accomplished by the keeper in a few seconds, no real inconvenience is experienced. The cost is a more serious consideration, for we are told, while three keepers suffice for an ordinary lighthouse, a staff of eight men is constantly needed to sustain the electric light at the South Foreland.

This branch of scientific discovery is, like so many others at the present day, still capable of further development, and the perfection and extension of the labors of our savants will doubtless furnish a theme of interest to the future historian of scientific research, and its practical application to the wants of commercial navigation. A. G.

From The Saturday Review. BOOKWORMS.

IN the long and bitter struggle for su premacy which has gone and is still going on between the bookish few and the unread many, we must reckon to the score of the latter two signal advantages, when, in times past, they invented the terms "bookworm " and "blue-stocking." These were immense achievements, such as their opponents could scarcely match, and all the more noticeable because the party from which they have proceeded is, as a A large majority of lights on the British rule, the inarticulate one. Such an incoast are fixed, but a considerable number stance of the force of expression whereby are revolving. Sir William Thomson con- it has once upon a time delivered itself is siders the present system of lighting very | a measure of the feeling which lies smoul

everybody who wields a pen. By sedu lously shutting his eyes to the truth and courting the society of his kind, such as can be found in large towns, the bookworm may for a time succeed in forgetting that he is not a hero, but a sort of pariah among his fellowmen. Indeed, as has been said, his blindness sometimes leads him to the length of railing against the unlearned, as though he were carrying the whole world along with him. For a proper awakening, and in order that society may have its full revenge upon him, let the bookworm be tracked out alone, and taken away to spend a few months in the midst of an agricultural neighborhood; that is to say, let him be put for once among a people occupied not with the fictitious interests of imagination or of the past, but with those real and constantly recurring interests which attach to turnips considered either in respect of their own qualities or of the quantity of game to which they will afford a shelter, the conflicting merits of different kinds of guns and cartridges, the capacities and the ailments of the horse and the dog, etc. In the midst of these things he soon discovers how remote his speculations have lain from the practical business of life. To such varied subjects will be added about nightfall disquisitions upon the purchase and history of wines and of cigars-is he more at home here? or upon that never-failing topic, the history of the coloring of a meerschaum pipe. Among the other sex, besides the universal and purely feminine

dering in the breasts of all its members, I would go further and apply the phrase to the "great silent souls" to borrow a phrase of Mr. Carlyle - who belong to what we may call the unintellectual class. It should serve as a wholesome caution to the literary minority, who are too apt to forget because, forsooth, they can make their side of the dispute sound the loudest || — that there is this balanced conflict going on, and to imagine that the fighting is all on one side, that they have now nothing more to do than to inflict the proper chastisement upon their opponents. Nothing can exceed the depth of their error upon this and kindred questions; a natural error, perhaps, because they are here concerned with the subject of their own influence and importance in the world. What the literary man is pleased to call (euphemistically) fame or reputation arising from his successes is by this very term bookworm exposed at its true valuation in the eyes of the laity. When expanded into its full meaning for the utterances of the silent class are as concise and pregnant as those of an oracle-the word seems to express some such sentence as this addressed to the man of letters: You are a poor creature, who, from the unkindness either of nature or fortnne, have failed past all hope of success in the real efforts of life; you have never been an athlete, a maker of scores at cricket, or a rower in university eights; you have shown no skill as a sportsman; and, as you grew in years, you did not grow in your knowledge of horseflesh or in your discrimination of vintages. You are letting the years pass over you without hav-interests of dress and babies, some local ing learnt or done one of the things which it is the common desire of mankind to learn and do. You never won a Derby or a shooting-match, or made a great "bag" or a good “book;" you have not got so much as a single cup or a single brush to show that your life has not been lived in vain. But, to avoid the stings of conscience, and a too crushing sense of defeat, you bury yourself in the frivolous and fanciful pursuits of literature or science, and surround yourself with a clique of unhappy wretches of the same mould lepers and outcasts in reality- who agree in pretending that their unhealthy hues are the natural complexion of man in his highest development.

This is the real opinion of the world the vast majority in any country-concerning fame and literary reputation. Balzac said that critics were les impuissants qui manquent à leur début; most men

disturbance - the dispute between the clergyman and his archdeacon, between the schoolmaster and the Dissenting minister-involves, it is evident, some deepest considerations of policy or of religion, but so intricately that they are quite inexplicable to the uninstructed layman.

At first, with a sinful hankering after forbidden pleasures, our bookworm hopes to gain some consolation from his accustomed companions. He carries the accursed thing in pocket volumes about with him, and tries to steal away into arbors or unused morning rooms. But he is oppressed by a sense of guilt and a constant fear of detection, which eat into and in time quite wear away his power of enjoyment. There are some hosts and hostesses who feel it to be a reflection upon their character if their guest is seen occupied with a book, deeming that nothing but the extremity of dulness could ever bring one

to such a pass. And so, if he goes to the country, early chiefly in the direction of library at all, the bookworm must go there retiring to rest, are a great inducement under the plea of writing letters, and take towards reading in bed, supposing any ingood heed not to become too absorbed, ducement to such an indulgence were lest he should find that some expedition necessary; and for ourselves we have out of doors has been waiting for him to never known any moments of this enjoyjoin it. Or he must stand by the book- ment more keenly pleasurable than such shelf in an attitude of pretended irresolu- as were won under the circumstances in tion the true dawdling attitude of a which we have placed the bookworm. Incountry house as though only casually, crease of appetite has not in these cases and as it were accidentally, peering into grown from what it fed on, but from a terthe volume. When he drives to a picnic rible and protracted fast. Fortunately in he longs for a seat on the box, which might the present day no household is so unletafford a chance for gratifying his craving; tered as not to offer us plenty of matter but if he gets there he is allowed no peace, worth reading; indeed there is a certain and is almost required to twist his head class of literature almost always to be met off for fear of missing the sights of the with in those country wildernesses, and neighborhood. These are penalties suffi- seeming to have a peculiar appositeness cient for whatever contemptuous expres- and vitality there, We can remember sions he or his associates may in happier making our first close acquaintance with moments have been betrayed into towards Bewick's "British Birds" in the most the unreading public. For, if he is a true bookless house in which it was ever our brother of the order, some daily dose of fortune to be cast. Bewick and Walton literature is as necessary to the bookworm and White of Selborne are of course sure as his daily drops are to the opium-eater; to be lurking somewhere; and these three without it he must die, or abruptly end his authors, less than any that we know, visit. Towards the end of the day his should be read in copies furnished from a agonies grow very intense. During the lending library. If we do not possess protracted discussion of wines in the them ourselves, we should certainly wait dining room his spirits have been rapidly till we can borrow them from a friend; for falling, just as the opium-eater's spirits they are treasures too sacred and individfall when the hour for his dose has long ual to form a part of any communal passed, and at last threaten a total extinc schemes. In addition to these classics, tion; and when he gets into the drawing- the country house may be reckoned upon room and the music is found fairly under to hold a number of works which are too way-"John Peile" for the benefit of the rapidly disappearing from our town bookcountry gentlemen he is mechanically shelves the bygone classics, standing drawn to the one bookshelf the room con- monuments of wit and beauty as they were tains. Alas, it has glass doors and they esteemed by our fathers, now almost utare locked! A row of standard authors in terly faded from the recollection of the virgin bindings-sleeping beauties lie present generation. Here they find their before his eyes, ready for a touch to awake asylum, their harbor of refuge, where the them into life; but he has not the audacity peace of their last resting-place is seldom of the true prince. Certainly the enchant- broken. Such books as we mean are ment consists of nothing more than two"Tom and Jerry," or Seymour's " Sportcomparatively inexpensive glass doors. He could break through it, after such a period of torture; but his resolution is not fixed before he is recalled to the excitement of a round game at cards.

Nevertheless, let him take courage, for his time will come at last. Have we not said that otherwise he must perish? It comes when the household has retired for the night. There in bed, at the double danger of murder and suicide-only that, like Macaulay, he has too often run the risk of committing patricide, matricide, and fratricide to attach much weight to such a consideration as that - we may leave him to his orgies. The early habits of the

Our

ing Sketches," or "The Book of Beauty, Edited by the Countess of Blessington," with its story by B. Disraeli, Esq., and elegant verses by Thomas Haynes Bayly, or Mrs. Radcliffe or Mrs. Gore, or immortal Joanna Baillie" herself - the expression is Scott's-and many immertals more back to the time of the author of "Douglas ; " or, again, some of the antique numbers of magazines and reviews - the Gentleman's Magazine of sixty years ago, or the Quarterly and Blackwood under the editorship of Southey and Lockhart. When we read such relics of the past, we see that the historic imagination may be exercised without going further away than

the youth time of the last generation; and for any unkindly rubs of fortune in our own case, some unaccountable blindness of the reading public towards our merits, we gain the solace of a free criticism of other former reputations. How remote some of these things seem from us-impossible beauties, impossible sentimental

stories, impossible political theories of Southey and Lockhart. We might be exploring an antediluvian literature. The proverb is something musty. "Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet! then there is hope that a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year."

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so wondrously white. Surely it is an error to
banish the orchard and the fruit garden from
the pleasure-grounds of modern houses, strictly
relegating them to the rear as if something to
be ashamed of.
Pall Mall Gazette.

NESTS.

AN OLD-FASHIONED ORCHARD. - In these modern days men have lost the pleasures of the orchard; yet an old-fashioned orchard is the most delicious of places wherein to idle away the afternoon of a hazy autumn day, when the sun seems to shine with a soft slumberous warmth without glare, as if the rays came through an aerial spider's web spun across the sky, letting all the beauty but not the heat slip through its invisible meshes. There is a shadowy coolness in the recesses SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION OF WASPS' under the trees. On the damson trunks are -Some time ago the house of Genyellowish crystalline knobs of gum which has eral P. M. Arismendi (now consul of Venezu exuded from the bark. Now and then a leaf ela, in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad) in this city, rustles to the ground, and at longer intervals had a rather narrow escape from being set on an apple falls with a decided thump. It is fire by the spontaneous combustion of a large silent save for the gentle twittering of the wasps' nest (a species of Polistes) in a closet swallows on the topmost branches-they are under a roof. The day was exceedingly hot; talking of their coming journey- and per- but this circumstance, I think, has a very haps occasionally the distant echo of a shot slight connection (if any at all) with the outwhere the lead has gone whistling among a break of smoke from the nest. Roofs in this covey. It is a place to dream in, bringing country are constructed of tiles supported by with you a chair to sit on-for it will be a thick layer of compact earth, which rests on freer from insects than the garden seats and the usual lath-work of dry canes (the stems of a book. Put away all thought of time; often Gynerium saccharoides, or aborescent grass), in striving to get the most value from our both being substances that conduct heat very time it slips from us as the reality did from badly. The source of heat must therefore the dog that greedily grasped at the shadow; have been in the nest itself. In bee-hives the simply dream of what you will, with apples temperature rises sometimes as high as 380 C. and plums, nuts and filberts within reach. (teste Newport, as cited in Girdwoyn, “Anat. Dusky Blenheim oranges, with a gleam of gold et Physiol. de l'Abeille,” p. 23). We may be under the rind; a warmer tint of yellow on allowed to suppose that something similar the pippins. Here streaks of red, here a happens occasionally also in wasps' nests. tawny hue. Yonder a load of great russets; Such a heat might be caused by an alteration near by heavy pears bending the strong beginning in the wax, hydro-carbons being branches; round black damsons; luscious formed, which, on being absorbed by the paperegg-plums hanging their yellow ovals over-like, porous substance of the cell-walls, must head; bullace, not yet ripe, but presently sweetly piquant. On the walnut-trees bunches of round green balls-note those that show a dark spot or streak, and gently tap them with the tip of the tall slender pole placed there for the purpose. Down they come glancing from bough to bough, and, striking the hard turf, the thick green rind splits asunder, and the walnut itself rebounds upwards. Those who buy walnuts have no idea of the fine taste of the fruit thus gathered direct from the tree, when the kernel, though so curiously convoluted, slips its pale yellow skin easily, and is

get still more heated, so that a comparatively small access of oxygen would be sufficient to set the whole nest on fire.

I have been assured that the spontaneous combustion of wasps' nests is a well-known fact in the interior of Venezuela, and as I do not recollect having found it mentioned in books, it appeared to me worth while to inquire whether something similar has been observed in other parts of the world, and if so, whether my explanation will hold good in all A. ERNST.

cases.

Carácas, July 15.

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