gated form, is too deeply stained with the purple tide of human existence, does not provide the least penalty for those cruel and unfeeling persons, who, in spite of all that is just, decorous, and humane, compel their unfortunate servants to mount upon the window-sills of their houses to clean their windows, and by which inhuman order the servants frequently lose their lives in an awful and cruel manner. The young woman, Pemberton, who was so dreadfully mangled on Thursday last by falling from the second floor window of a house in Charlotte-street, Fitzroy-square, it is said, was not ordered by her master or mistress to clean their windows. This may be true, but it is not very probable; and the truth or falsehood of the statement is likely to rest until the day of judgment in the tomb with the poor sufferer, for it is as much hoped for as expected that she has been by this time relieved from her sufferings. But how dreadful must be the feelings of any employer whose servant is thus destroyed, through obeying their strict commands; and it is well known that servants are almost always averse to this indecent and dangerous experimental economy; they are generally compelled to go upon this murderous employment from threats of being discharged from their situation, and many a respectable servant is turned out of employment because they will not submit to the degradation of exposing themselves on the outsides of houses, and to the danger of being dashed to pieces, to save, perhaps, 1s. to a needy or penurious economist; such economic barbarians seeming to consider a paltry sum of more value than the life of a fellowcreature. But it is remarkable that the Coroner's reporter, or penny-a-line man, always finds out that the master and mistress are very respectable people, and not at all to blame in the matter.' It is very well for these parties, no doubt, when this is the case; but the common sense of mankind runs directly against the finding of those subadjuncts of the Press, the presumption, and the fact too, being, that in nineteen cases out of twenty, the employers are not respectable, and are blameable. We should think that any person possessed of the ordinary humane and Christian feelings of our nature, would prevent any servant who was foolish enough to desire such a job, if they were aware of it. But there is a way of putting a stop to this inhuman practice, and that is by making it a criminal offence, as it undoubtedly is in the eyes of the Almighty; it classes with the unjustifiable homicides, and should be punished by various terms of imprisonment, with hard labour, according to the atrocity of the case, and we hope another Session will not pass without an Act to protect servants from such cruel tyranny, and

to punish, in a summary manner, any employers who may be atrocious enough to persist in such an inhuman practice; and we do advise all house-servants, especially females, to refuse, if any employer should, after this, be hardened enough in cruelty to order them to do this act, which does not belong to the duties for which they are hired."

MR. CROSSE'S GALVANIC AND ELECTRICAL APPARATUS.

In the Brighton Herald of Sept. 24, appeared, "An Account of Sir Richard Phillips's Visit to Andrew Crosse, Esq., of Broomfield, in the Quantock Hills, Somersetshire, in September, 1836." Passing over a great deal of Sir Richard's preliminary twaddle (who, it will be seen, claims to have anticipated Mr. Crosse), we now lay before our readers his description of the extensive and splendid galvanic and electrical apparatus fitted up by Mr. Crosse, which is exceedingly interesting:

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"On reaching the handsome mansion of Mr. Crosse, I was received with much politeness, and found that I was the first visitor from Bristol. After breakfast, Mr. Crosse conducted me into a large and lofty apartment, built for a music-room, with a capital organ in the gallery; but I could look at nothing but the seven or eight tables which filled the area of the room, covered with extensive Voltaic batteries of all forms, sizes, and extents. They resembled battalions of soldiers in exact rank and file, and seemed innumerable.

"They were in many forms. Some in porcelain troughs of the usual construction; some like the couronnes des tasses; others cylindrical; some in pairs of glass vessels, with double metallic cylinders; besides them, others of glass jars, with stripes of copper and zinc. Altogether, there were 500 Voltaic pairs at work in this great room; and in other rooms about 500 more. There were besides other 500 ready for new experiments. It seemed like a great magazine for Voltaic purposes.

There are also two large workshops, with furnaces, tools, and implements of all descriptions, as much as would load two or three waggons.

"In the great room there is also a very large electrical machine, with a 20-inch cylinder, and a smaller one; and in several cases all the apparatus in perfect condition, as described in the best books on electricity. The prime-conductor stood on glass legs, 2 feet high; and there was a medical discharger on a glass leg of 5 feet. Nothing

could be in finer order; and no private electrician in the world could, perhaps, show a greater variety both for experiments and

amusement.

"Beneath the mahogany cover of a table, on which stood the prime-conductor, &c., was enclosed a magnificent battery of 50 jars, combining 73 square feet of coating. Its construction, by Cuthbertson, was in all respects most perfect. To charge it required 250 vigorous turns of the wheel; and its discharge made a report as loud as a blunderbuss. It fuses and disperses wires of various metals; and the walls of the apartment are covered with framed impressions of the radiations from the explosion, taken at sundry periods. Mr. Crosse struck one while I was present; and he has promised me one as an electrical curiosity, and a memento of my visit.

"But Mr. Crosse's greatest electrical curiosity was his apparatus for measuring, collecting, and operating with atmospheric electricity. He collects it by wires the sixteenth of an inch, extended from elevated poles, or from trees to trees, in his grounds and park. The wires are insulated by means of glass tubes, well contrived for the purpose. At present he has about one-fourth of a mile of wire spread abroad; and in general about one-third of a mile. A French gentleman had reported to the Section at Bristol, that the wires extended 20 miles, filling the entire neighbourhood with thunder and lightning, to the great terror of the peasantry, who in consequence left Mr. Crosse in the free enjoyment of his game and rabbits. This exaggeration Mr. Crosse laughed at most heartily, though he acknowledged that he knew that no small terror prevailed in regard to him and his experiments.

"The wires are connected with an apparatus in a window of his organ-gallery, which may be detached at pleasure, when too violent, by simply turning an insulated lever; but in moderate strength it may be conducted to a ball suspended over the great battery, which connected is charged rapidly, and is then discharged by means of an universal discharger. He told me that sometimes the current was so great as to charge and discharge the great battery 20 times in a minute, with reports as loud as cannon; which, being continuous, were so terrible to strangers that they always fled, while every one expected the destruction of himself and premises. He was, however, he said, used to it, and knew how to manage and control it; but when it got into a passion, he coolly turned his insulating lever, and conducted the lightning into the ground. It was a damp day, and we regretted that our courage could not be put to the test.

"Every thing about this part of Mr.

Crosse's apparatus is perfect, and much of it his own contrivance, for he is clever in all mechanical arrangements, and has been unwearied in his application, almost night and day, for thirty years past. I learned, too, that in the purchase and fitting up of his apparatus he has expended nearly 3000l., although in most cases he is his own manipu lator, carpenter, smith, coppersmith, &c.

"About 12, Professor Sedgwick arrived, and in the afternoon one or two others, besides seven or eight gentlemen of the neighbourhood, who had been invited to meet us at dinner, for Mr. Crosse unites to the rank of esquire that of a county magistrate, in the duties of which he is respected alike for his humanity to the poor and for his liberal opinions in politics. Mr. Crosse himself was educated at Oxford; and his second son holds the living of Broomfield. He is master of all his father's experiments; and, in spite of the complaints of an Oxford education, I found him to be a very expert mathematician, well read, and variously accomplished. We next morning renewed our survey, previous to fresh arrivals, and I took notes of every thing connected with his aqueous Voltaic batteries, in the following order, errors excepted:

"1. A battery of 100 pairs of 25 square inches, charged, like all the rest, with water, operating on cups containing 1 oz. of car bonate of barytes and powdered sulphate of alumine; intended to form sulphate of ba rytes at the positive pole, and crystals of alumine at the negative.

"2. A battery of 11 cylindrical pairs, 12 inches by 4. This, by operating six months on fluat of silver, had produced large hexahedral crystals at the negative pole, and crystals of silica and chalcedony at the positive.

"3. A battery of 100 pairs, of 4 square inches, operating on slate 832, and platina 3, to produce hexagonal crystals at the positive pole.

"4. A battery of 100 pairs, 5 inches square, operating on nitrate of silver and copper, to produce malachite at the positive pole; at the negative pole crystals already appear with decided angles and facets.

5. A battery of 16 pairs, of 2 inches, in small glass jars, acting on a weak solution of nitrate of silver, and already producing a compact negatation of native silver.

6. A battery (esteemed his best) of 813 pairs, 5 inches, insulated on glass plates on deal bars, coated with cement, and so slightly oxydated by water as to require cleaning but once or twice a year by pumping on them. I felt the effect of 458 pairs, in careless order and imperfectly liquidated, and they gave only some tinglings of the fingers; but this power in a few weeks produces decided effects.

"7. A battery of 12 pairs, 25 inches zinc and 36 copper, charged two months be

fore with water, and acting on a solution of nitrate of silver, poured on green-bottle glass coarsely powdered. It had already produced a negatation of silver at the positive pole.

"8. A battery of 159 galley-pots, with semi-circular plates of 14 inch radius, placed on glass plates, and acting five months through a small piece of Bridgewater porous brick, on a solution of silex and potash. 1 saw at the poles small crystals of quartz.

"9. A battery of 30 pairs, similar to No. 8, acting since 27th July on a mixture, in a mortar, of sulphate of lead, of white oxide of antimony, and sulphate of copper, and green sulphate of iron (205 grains), and three times the whole of green-bottle glass (615 grains). The result has been, in five weeks, a precipitation on the negative wire of pure copper in two days, and crystallised iron pyrites in four days. It had been expected to produce sulphurets of lead, copper, and antimony, by depriving the sulphates of their oxygen. On August 10th and 28th, 25 grains and 40 grains of sulphate of iron were added.

"10. A battery of 5 jars, with plates of different metals, as 2 copper and platina, 1 lead and lead, 1 silver and iron, and I copper and lead. Experimental.

❝ 11, 12, and 13. About 200 pairs, in 3 batteries, working in a dark room, of which I took no note.

"While I was an inmate with Mr. Crosse, we had various conversations about the power which he employed. I had in some degree anticipated his début, by hazarding, in the last edition of my Million of Facts' (1835), an assertion that, inasmuch as metals are found only in a mixed or confused state of different rocks, among which a galvanic action on air or water would necessarily arise, and in long time generate the compound or matrices of metals; but I did not regard this public anticipation as any interference with his original merits, and I was deeply penetrated by the view of his labours and the ex-. pense and zeal with which he had prosecuted his experiments. Yet he had a round conductor for a minimum of power, instead of a combination of flat or parallel ones for a maximum.

eleven, when the great laboratory of nature is evolving the most oxygen-than in the same period in the evening, when we may imagine the contrary effect takes place. He considered the air as so non-electric in damp weather, that no plate of air lying between the coating of a cloud and the earth could then be disturbed; and he stated to me, as a general fact, that the earth is always positively electrified.

"On my part, I enlarged to him and his son on the universality of matter and motion in producing all material phenomena, independently of the whimsical powers invented in ages when we would have been burnt for a magician; and in this way I endeavoured to return the various information which he had unreservedly imparted to me. I impressed on him, that all this creative energy of atoms was merely a display of developments by the great motions of the earth as they affect the excitable parts of different solid bodies; the results of which are necessarily regular, and their ultimate laws of re-action and combination also regular, so as to produce that universal harmony which surprises beings, who in eternal time live and observe within only a unit of time. Hence that terrestrial galvanism, arising from the operations of the internal frictions and varied pressures called heat; hence those factitious productions of metallic matrices and crystalline galvanic effects, where different substances are proximately opposed; hence magnetism itself, tangentally displayed as a resultant of terrestrial currents of electricity; hence the fluctuations of the phenomena from obliquity of the axis of rotation, which in regard to the axis of the orbit generates two variable directions of massive pressure; hence, in fine, the wisdom displayed by Mr. Crosse in resorting to the modus operandi of Nature in his attempts to imitate her most curious productions.

"Observing that continual fresh arrivals rendered it ineligible for me to prolong my visit, I proceeded to Taunton, a distance of six or seven miles, the nearest place at which a stranger can meet with public accommodation."

SYSTEMS OF CONDENSATION. Sir,-If Mr. Howard feels inclined to take a jaunt to Tedworth, near Andover, he will there, in all probability, see w what I saw on the property of T. A. Smith, Esq., M.P., a method of condensation,

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by withdrawing the warm water from the condenser, and injecting it again amidst the steam-the heat in the mean time having been abstracted from it-in

which a very rapid and effectual condensation of the steam, with the advantage of continually returning to the boiler the same water, or nearly so, is effected." And if he be not satisfied with this proof of his having been rather hasty in his proceedings, I would recommend him to travel a little farther northward, and he will find what he terms his method, principle, or process, has been in use for forty years in Messrs. Lock, Blackett, and Co's., white lead and shot manufactory, Gallowgate, Newcastle; where may also be seen the very ingenious method in which they have availed themselves of a principle, the refrigeration of shot, by allowing it to drop into a pit or well," instead of letting it fall from a tower or garret."

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When Mr. Howard has from ocular demonstration or unquestionable authority rendered himself able to disprove my statements, 1 may, if called upon with courtesy, answer his various quesbut if he do not diminish very tions; considerably the authoritative tone he has thought proper to assume, he may call, but I will not answer-leaving the question to the judgment of those who may have examined the drawings accompanying our specifications,-openly avowing that I think my method infinitely more simple and convenient than Mr. Howard's; and observing, that to lose temper is no sign of being in the right.

I remain, Sir,

Your most obedient servant, WILLIAM SYMINGTON. 1, King William-street, Sept. 30, 1836.

NOTES AND NOTICES.

Cannons. We long since stated (says Galignaui) that a commission had been sent to England and Scotland, with a view to examine the superio ity of the iron cannon manufactured there over the brass ones at present used in the French service. The Report was, we learn, favourable, but the Government have resolved not to determine the question until after a course of experiments made under the direction of a commission appointed for that purpose. They have invited the Swedes and English to the trial, with nine cannon of different dimensions cast after patterns sent from France. The Belgian Government having judged that Belgian iron would well bear the competition with that of England and Sweden, has also entered the field as a competitor, and several cannons cast at Liege have been sent to La Fere, where they are to be proved.

Alarm Lamp. A gun-maker of Easingwold, Yorkshire, has invented an alarm-lamp to replace spring guns, which it is no longer legal to make nse of. The inventor states, that the lamp may be placed against a tree or post in a stack-yard, or in any place where property is kept; and if any one comes within its limits, it lights up and fires fifteen or twenty reports, which may be heard at some miles' distance. When used for preserves, it may be made to send up a skyrocket, to show in what direction the poacher may be found. It is described as being perfectly free from danger to servants or others having the care of it, but said to be calculated when it goes off to strike terror into the breast of the most audacious depredator.

Railway Travelling by Wind.-Since the opening of the Durham and Sunderland Railways, a novel experiment has been tried upon the line, which proves the practicability of railroad vehicles being propelled by wind. A temporary mast and sail were erected on a vehicle, which was set going at an easy rate. On the sail being trimmed to the wind, the speed increased to the rate of ten miles an hour. A train of five coal-waggons was afterwards attached, but no additional sail hoisted.

Peat Tiles for Druining.-A Mr. Calderwood, of Blackbyres, Fenwick, has invented a 'spade to cut peat tiles in a most expeditious manner. These tiles are shaped something like a clay tile, and on moor-lands will answer the purpose equally well. In such districts clay is not to be had, and the expense of carting tiles would be heavy, With the newly-invented spade a farmer may cut two or three thousand tiles a day, expose them to dry in the sun, and lay them in his drains within a few yards of the place where they were cut. When properly dried, they will be porous, and will not soften with wet. Mr. Calderwood would confer a benefit on the agriculture of the country by making public a description of his invention. Scotch Paper.

Mr. Crosse's Galvanic Experiments.-We have just been informed, says the Plymouth Gazette, that Dr. Simon of this city has been favoured with the following communication from Mr. Crosse :"Since I left Bristol I have formed red sulphuret of silver and crystallised arsenate of copper; and caused the magnetic needle to be deflected eleven degrees from the north by a pair of cylinders com. posed of copper and zinc, with water alone."

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