the circuit. The number of dials in use was first ten, and has now been increased to a hundred or more, and, so far, the system has worked steadily and accurately.

New Design for Iron Bridges.

A NEW form of iron bridge, combining the arch and suspension bridge, has been designed, that deserves attention. The arch may be either a true segment of a circle or a hipped arch, and is intended to be made of channel bars or I beams, and is rested on the abutments of the bridge, or on iron uprights raised above them. From the same points and under the arch, is hung a suspension bridge, the cable being formed of flat bars. This combined arch and suspension bridge thus form an elliptical truss in which the thrust of the arch balances the pull of the suspension cable. The pull of the cable, on the other hand, is equipoised by the thrust of the arch. The advantages of this design may be found in the economy gained in balancing the thrust and pull of the two members. In the bow-string arch, the thrust is expended on the abutments, or in useless strain on the horizontal straight bar that joins the arch together. This new form of bridge is intended to be used with any of the usual forms of iron truss bridges.

New Telegraphic Transmitter.

TYPE-FORMS Containing all the types used in printing one side of a newspaper, or the stereotype copies of these forms, have been recently made available as telegraphic transmitting instruments. The stereo-plate is cast in the usual way, and is then brushed over with shellac or some other nonconducting plastic substance so as to fill all the spaces between the letters and yet leave the face of the types exposed. Sand-paper is then rubbed over the type to clean them, and the plate is then ready for its new duty as a transmitter. The plate is put in the electric circuit by connecting it with the battery, and it then forms part of a broken circuit. To close the circuit, a fine brush, made of a bundle of wires twisted in a spiral and connected with the line, is drawn over the plate, and whenever a point of the brush touches a type, the circuit is closed, and whenever it meets the non-conducting material, the circuit is broken. At the receiving end of the line, a plate of metal of the same size and shape of the transmitting plate is covered with paper sensitive to electricity. The two plates are caused to move exactly together while the brush is moving over the types; each point of the brush makes a mark on the sensitive paper so long as it touches a type, and as the points of the wires are close together, the marks come sufficiently near to repeat the form of every letter and word on the plate in turn. When the wires pass the non-conducting material, the circuit is broken, and the sensitive paper moves on unaltered, and in this manner all the spaces are accurately repeated. By means of this device an entire page of a newspaper may be sent by wire any distance, and within a short time

reproduced in every detail upon the sensitive sheet, so that it may be used as a copy for the printers.

Electric Gas-lighting.

IN lighting gas by electricity both batteries and frictional machines are used. Among the improvements in this class of work is a new form of combined electrical machine and leyden jar and a system of electric switches for diverting the current from a battery to any desired group, or circuit of lights. The frictional machine is a disk of vulcanite revolv

ing on its axis and having "rubbers" placed on both sides. The leyden jar is composed of layers of hard rubber, metallic foil and soft rubber placed on over the other in a certain order and bound together in a compact bundle. Only a few turns of the handle of the machine are needed and then the 'discharge," connected with the two wires that form the circuit of gas jets, is pressed down and the accumulated charge is delivered, lighting all the lamps at once. Each circuit may include one or two hundred lamps, and to light more, extra circuits each returning to the machine are employed. The whole apparatus may be inclosed in a box 30.5 centimeters (12 in.) wide and long and 10 centimeters (4 in.) deep, that may be fastened to the wall in any convenient place. It can be used at any moment and remains in good condition for a long time, and then only requires a renewal of the amalgam in the "rubbers." When a battery is used and many lamps are to be lighted, as in a theater or mill, a main cable or line is used, and each circuit of one or two hundred lights is branched off from it. To switch the current from one circuit to another, a small supplementary battery and electromagnet is used, so that the switch may be moved from a point near the battery. Circuits are also erected in mills so that a distant circuit can be lighted from the circuit itself without going to the battery. An automatic device is also used in some places, so that the movement of the machinery that dips the metals in the battery may also open each circuit in turn, and switch the current from each circle of lamps, one after the other, as fast as they are lighted. Electric gas-lighting is now carried on with unfailing precision and at very slight expense, and may be recommended as far more simple, easy and safe than the ordinary methods, with torch and

match.

New Weighing Apparatus.

IN a new form of weighing apparatus designed to give two or three different standards of measurement, a triangular bar is used in place of the usual weighing lever. This bar has a circular hole bored through its length and is slipped over a round bar that makes the arm for the weights. This triangular piece has notches cut on one edge for the metric standards of weight, and others on the other corners for other standards, and by turning it over, either one of the three standards of measurement may be brought uppermost and used for a rest for the weights.

He had de mos' cur'uses' notions 'Bout jokin' an' havin' o' fun;

An' dar wasn't no stoppin' dat darkey

Ef ever he onst had begun.

I'se seed him like bustin' his westcot
A-laughin' at things dat mos' folk,
Spite o' whatever funny he found dar,
Never 'sidered a joke.

He would laugh when his chillun was cryin',
He would laugh when de cryin' was done,
Seems like ev'rything struck him ridic❜lous,
Dat de Lord has made onder de sun.
An' whatever frolic dar happened
'Mongst de darkeys, ef Laughin' warn't dar,
Things mos'ly went on purty solemn;

For dey missed him, I 'clar'.

One day we was crossin' Jeems River,
Ole marster, Ole Laughin' an' me;
An' somehow de boat got upsotted,
An' in soused de whole o' us three.
I made for de shore like a beaver,
Ole marster he struck for dar too;-
But somehow or 'nother Ole Laughin'
He passed out o' view.

Yet when we got out, on de bank dar,
De very fus' thing tetched my eye

Was Laughin', wid mouf stretched wide open,
A-roarin' ez if he would die!

I tell you ole marster was hoppin',-
I thought he'd 'a' went for dat man:-
"Ef it jes wasn't-but it's Ole Laughin';
I'll be dogged ef I can!"

I'se seed folk whose laughin' was hurtin',
Seemin' like it were scornful some way;
But hisn warn't dat sort o' music,-
Ez dif'rent ez night am f'om day!
When he opened dem jawbones o' hisn,
An' let it all out in one ro',

Ev'rybody what heard him laughed wid him,
An' wanted some mo'.

Laughin' seemed ter take life sort o' cur'us,
For I never did know him ter cry;

Yet often I'se noticed a misty
Kind o' sorrowful look in his eye.
Ole marster, he said: "A philos'pher
Ole Laughin' is, sartin an' sho',-
He look on de bright side o' all things,
An' who can do mo'?"

When marster got sick, an' deceasded,
Ez de coffin sot dar on de groun'
By de grave, all de plantashun darkeys
Kim weepin' an' moanin' aroun';
An' Laughin' was dar; but de devil,
In spite o' de grief in his face,
Seemed ter have a grip on him as usual,
Eben dar at dat place.

For when arter de words, "Dust ter ashes,"
De preacher stood silent in pra'r,
Ole Laughin' he 'rupted de silence
Wid his regular music, I 'clar'.

But he did'n' live long arter marster,
An' he died wid a smile on his mouf;
De bot' on. 'em sleeps in Ferginyer,
Down dar in de Souf.

The Poetry of the Future.

THE Wagnerian music drama has taught us that the last word has not yet been said by the tonemaster. There is reason to believe than an equally extensive undiscovered country lies before the poet. The old poetic fields have been so well worked and so sparingly fertilized that their productive capacity has become seriously diminished, and they are no longer able to furnish a decent subsistence to the emaciated beings who cultivate them. But within easy reach on every side lie vast and fertile tracts which are capable of supporting countless generations of future poets. As fast as the pioneer, Science, advances and makes rude clearings, the landscape gardener, Poetry, should follow and reduce them to stately pleasure-grounds.

In every branch of science a mine of wealth awaits the poet. If he has exhausted the fragrance and modesty of the violet, he has only to acquaint himself with its wonderful means for securing cross fertilization, to give it another lease of life. If he is tired of the tame and insipid character of the flora known to literature, let him study the habits of Drosera and Dionæa and the other carnivorous plants. If he wishes to keep up his connection with the lower world, are there not Clerk Maxwell's demons, who open and shut the doors for gaseous molecules? If he would sing the music of the heavenly spheres, have not astronomers made them very easy of access? Pollock, it is true, permitted his fancies to rove among other worlds than ours, but his knowledge of the chemical constitution and laws of motion of the planets and asteroids was very defective. A poet who wishes to work this field will hardly find in bim a rival.

Ruins have always been considered extremely suggestive of poetic thought, and our American poets have sought in the newness of the country an excuse for their poverty; but they need only turn their atten.. tion to Paleontology to find an inexhaustible field for doleful meditations. If the extinction of a single individual has been so sung as to be cause for tears, what pathos must there not lie in the extinction of whole species, genera and families?

Milton made a very creditable poem out of such poor material as the Mosaic account of creation. Where is the poet, as yet mute and inglorious, who is destined to find undying fame in the revelations of Stratigraphical Geology? Shakspere has been highly commended for the great variety of his characters, but their number and specific differences are small when compared with what we find in the long descent from Protobathybius to man. Beyond question, the development theory alone, if properly worked up, would suffice to keep our poets well employed for many years to come.

What poet has not sung of love? But love is a slight and fickle passion compared with the force by which the atoms cleave together, and the complexities of situation to which it gives rise are as nothing to the relations, say, of the homologous and heterologous series of alcoholic radicals. The mysteries which underlie the elective affinities of atoms and of

souls are equally fascinating subjects of research, and equally baffling to those who seek their solution.

I communicated the substance of what I have here written to a young poet of my acquaintance the other day, and this morning he brought me the following verses:

Ode to a Pea.

Thou lovely mass of protoplasmic cells!
Thou golden germ of future exogen!
Descend, that thou mayst soften thy hard walls,
Into this warm hydrate of hydrogen!

Dost thou remember those far distant days
When thou, pale ovule, 'neath the heavy shade
Of pericarp didst lie in idle dreams,
Soothed by the murmurs that the breezes made?

Dost thou recall the wandering pollen tube
Who chose thee, fairest ovule, for his mate?
Thy gentle substance, quickened into life,
Did then begin to differentiate.

What! art thou soft already? Is thy substance
So soon to render up its last account?
No future thine,-save that I shall one section
In glycerine and acetic acid mount.

First let me draw from thee, by gentle pressure,
One drop of liquid through thy micropyle!
How like art thou unto the fabled cygnus,
Who dies, and sings his sweetest song mean.
while!

Now yield thee to my slender-pointed needles
While I remove thy testa ochreous!
'Tis somewhat thicker here,-is this thy hilum,
Where once was borne thy brief funiculus ?

Unguarded by the mealy endosperm,

See where the thickened cotyledons lie! Close pressed beside them is the radical, And here the dainty plumule meets the eye.

Now comes the sharp-edged razor from his sheath;
Now quickly shrive thy soul leguminous !
No more carbonic acid shalt thou breathe,
Thou embryo dicotyledonous !

Ha! Is not this a section smooth and thin! Remove it gently to this glassy slide! Here's the one-fifth objective; screw it in! Six hundred times shalt thou be magnified!

How lovely are the epidermal cells

Which on thy margin lie contiguous! How fair within, in closely seried ranks, Extends thy tissue parenchymatous !

How full the rounded grains of pearly starch Stretch out their bounding walls of cellulose! Bring iodine! Has protein not begun

Its slow dissolving of their granulose?

Behold the radical's primeval masses
Of cells undifferentiated still,
Faint prophecies of future tissue systems,
Whose promise, Pisa, thou shalt ne'er fulfill!
CHRISTINE Ladd.

A Woman's Letter.

BY MARY AINGE DE VERE.

My letter's late by one day,
But truth is, Jenny dear,
Ned Grayson came on Sunday-
It seems he's always here.
He, and young Fred M'Kenzie,
They staid three blessed hours,
And ma was in a frenzy,-

He brought some lovely flowers.

I meant to tell you, Jenny,
The news and everything,
But I find there isn't any;-
Oh, next week, Ned's to sing
With the Mozart Club at Irving;
I'll manage, dear, to go,

The Fates and weather serving,-
I don't want ma to know!

Jen, lovers are a nuisance!
George brought the ring last night-
A solitaire, like Susan's;
It gave me such a fright!
I cried and wouldn't wear it;
How, underneath the sun,
Do girls contrive to bear it-
This narrowing down to one?

Poor George, the foolish fellow,
Began to storm and fling,

And turned quite green and yellow-
I hate that sort of thing.
Now, Ned is always quiet;
I think his cool, gray eye,
Would still an Irish riot,
Or make a regiment fly.

But what's so very funny
About him,-Ned, I mean,-
He hasn't any money;

I heard from Clarence Green
Just how he's situated-
Keeps books for Webb & Ware.
Ah, well-those things are fated!
George owns a million, square.

Yes, dear, Fate trims the corners,
Rough-hew them as we may !
We can't go clad like mourners,
Or weep the livelong day.
But, oh, don't breathe it, Jenny!
I'd marry Ned, you see,
Without one single penny,
If only he loved me!

Ah, well-well-well-that's folly,
But sometimes, Jen, I've thought,
He, too, seemed melancholy;
Quick glances that I've caught,
Looked full of speechless sadness-
There goes a silly tear,

To blot the page-what madness!
Good-bye, pet, George is here.

We dine at Ella Johnson's.
P. S.-I must decide,

He wont stand too much nonsense.
The crêpe comes full yard wide.
Don't get the buff, it fades so;
Have train and split-up sacque,
For organdies are made so.
My heart aches. Love to Jack.