published a treatise on New Philosophical Instruments, and he afterwards commenced the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal and the Edinburgh Journal of Science. Among his other works are -A Treatise on the Kaleidoscope, 1818; Notes to Robison's System of Mechanical Philosophy, 1822; Euler's Lectures and Life, 1823; a Treatise on Optics, 1831; Letters on Natural Magic, 1831; The Martyrs of Science (lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahé, and Kepler); Treatise on the Microscope; More Worlds than One, 1854; &c. The contributions of Sir David Brewster to scientific and literary journals would fill at least a score of volumes. A list of his scientific papers extends to 315 in number, and he contributed 74 articles to the North British Review. His work, More Worlds than One, is a reply to the treatise ascribed to Professor Whewell, on the Plurality of Worlds. This subject had been fancifully treated by Fontenelle, and was a favourite source of speculation during the last century, but it is one evidently destitute of scientific proof. Inductive philosophy disowned it, and it belonged only to the region of speculation. Dr Chalmers conceived that there were strong analogies in favour of such an opinion, while Dr Whewell, on the other hand, laboured to reduce such analogies to their true value. We cannot materialise them, or conceive of beings differing from our own knowledge and experience. Truth and falsehood, right and wrong, law and transgression, happiness and misery, reward and punishment, are the necessary elements of all that can interest us-of all that we can call government. To transfer these to Jupiter or to Sirius, is merely to imagine those bodies to be a sort of island of Formoso, or New Atlantis, or Utopia, or Platonic polity, or something of the kind.' Sir David Brewster took the opposite side, maintaining that even the sun may be inhabited by beings having pursuits similar to those on earth. The following is part of his argument respecting another planet : Is the Planet Jupiter Inhabited? maintain a temperature sufficiently genial to sustain the same animal and vegetable life which exists upon our own globe. These arrangements, however, if they are required, and have been adopted, cannot contribute to increase the feeble light which Jupiter receives from the cerned, an enlargement of the pupil of the eye, and an sun; but in so far as the purposes of vision are conincreased sensibility of the retina, would be amply sufficient to make the sun's light as brilliant as it is to us. The feeble light reflected from the moons of Jupiter would then be equal to that which we derive from our own, even if we do not adopt the hypothesis, which we shall afterwards have occasion to mention, that a brilliant phosphorescent light may be excited in the satellites by the action of the solar rays. Another difficulty has presented itself, though very unnecessarily, in reference to the shortness of the day in Jupiter. A day of ten hours has been supposed insufficient to afford that period of rest which is requisite for the renewal of our physical functions when exhausted with the labours of the day. This objection, however, has no force. Five hours of rest are surely sufficient for five hours of labour; and when the inhabitants of the temperate zone of our own globe reside, as many of them have done, for years in the arctic regions, where the length of the days and nights is so unusual, they have been able to perform their usual functions as well as in their native climates. A difficulty, however, of a more serious kind is presented by the great force of gravity upon so gigantic a planet as Jupiter. The stems of plants, the materials of buildings, the human body itself, would, it is imagined, be crushed by their own enormous weight. This apparently formidable objection will be removed by an accurate calculation of the force of gravity upon Jupiter, or of the relative weight of bodies on its surface. The mass of Jupiter is 1230 times greater than that of the earth, so that if both planets consisted of the same kind of matter, a man weighing 150 pounds on the surface of the earth would weigh 150 x 1200, or 180,000 pounds, at a distance from Jupiter's centre equal to the earth's radius. But as Jupiter's radius of bodies on his surface will be diminished in the is eleven times greater than that of the earth, the weight ratio of the square of his radius-that is, in the ratio of II XII, or 121 to I. Consequently, if we divide 180,000 pounds by 121, we shall have 1487 pounds as the weight of a man of 150 pounds on the surface of Jupiter-that is, less than ten times his weight on the earth. But the matter of Jupiter is much lighter than the matter of our earth, in the ratio of 24 to 100, the numbers which represent the densities of the two planets, so that if we diminish 1487 pounds in the ratio of 24 to 100, or divide it by 4.17, we shall have 312 pounds as the weight of a man on Jupiter, who weighs on the earth only 150 pounds-that is, only double his weight a difference which actually exists between many individuals on our own planet. A man, therefore, constituted like ourselves, could exist without inconvenience upon Jupiter; and plants, and trees, and buildings, such as occur on our own earth, could grow and stand secure in so far as the force of gravity is concerned. In studying this subject, persons who have only a superficial knowledge of astronomy, though firmly believing in a plurality of worlds, have felt the force of certain objections, or rather difficulties, which naturally present themselves to the inquirer. The distance of Jupiter from the sun is so great, that the light and heat which he receives from that luminary are supposed to be incapable of sustaining the same animal and vegetable life which exists on the earth. If we consider the heat upon any planet as arising solely from the direct rays of the sun, the cold upon Jupiter must be very intense, and water could not exist upon its surface in a fluid state. Its rivers and its seas must be tracks and fields of ice. But the temperature of a planet depends upon other causes-upon the condition of its atmosphere, and upon the internal heat of its mass. The temperature of our own globe decreases as we rise in the atmosphere and approach the sun, and it increases as we descend into the bowels of the earth and go further from the In the first of these cases, the increase of heat as we approach the surface of the earth from a great height in a balloon, or from the summit of a lofty mountain is produced by its atmosphere; and in Jupiter the atmosphere may be so formed as to compensate to 'Clearest evidence shews how our earth was a certain extent the diminution in the direct heat of the sun arising from the great distance of the planet. once a fluid haze of light, and how for countless In the second case, the internal heat of Jupiter may be æons afterwards her globe was instinct with fiery such as to keep its rivers and seas in a fluid state, and | heat, amidst which no form of life could be sun. A more recent astronomer, MR RICHARD A. PROCTOR, differs from Sir David Brewster as to the planet Jupiter. The careful study of the planets Jupiter and Saturn has shewn him, he says, that any theory regarding them as the abode of life-that is, of any kind of life in the least resembling the forms we are familiar with-is altogether untenable. In the case of Mars and Venus, he considers the theory of life at least plausible: 747 conceived to exist, after the manner of life known to us, though the germs of life may have been present. Then followed ages in which the earth's glowing crust was drenched by showers of muriatic, nitric, and sulphuric acid, not only intensely hot, but fiercely burning through their chemical activity. Only after periods infinite to our conceptions could life such as we know it, or even in the remotest degree like what is known to us, have begun to exist upon the earth.' Jupiter he considers to be in this burning state. We see that his whole surface is enwrapped in cloud-layers of enormous depth, and undergoing changes which imply an intense activity, or in other words, an intense heat throughout his whole mass. He is as yet far from the life-bearing state of planetary existence; ages must elapse before life can be possible. Mars, on the other hand, is at a later stage of its existence, far on its way towards the same state of decrepitude as the moon. Of course, no certainty can be attained as to the supposed plurality of worlds. We have only thoughts that wander through eternity.' More popular than any of Sir David Brewster's writings was the instrument named the kaleidoscope, invented by Brewster in the year 1816. "This beautiful little toy, with its marvellous witcheries of light and colour, spread over Europe and America with a furor which is now scarcely credible. Although he took out a patent, yet, as it often has happened in this country, the invention was quickly pirated.' Sir David received the honour of knighthood in 1831. He continued his studies and experiments, with scarcely a day's interruption, until his eighty-sixth year. A few days before his death Sir James Simpson, the eminent physician, expressed a hope that he might yet rally. 'Why, Sir James, should hope that?' he said, with much animation. The machine has worked for above eighty years, and it is worn out. Life has been very bright to me, and now there is the brightness beyond.' He died February 10, 1867, and was interred in the cathedral burying-ground at Melrose. Bacon and Newton. you In the economy of her distributions, nature is seldom thus lavish of her intellectual gifts. The inspired genius which creates is rarely conferred along with the matured judgment which combines, and yet without the exertion of both, the fabric of human wisdom could never have been reared. Though a ray from heaven kindled the vestal fire, yet a humble priesthood was required to keep alive the flame. The method of investigating truth by observation and experiment, so successfully pursued in the Principia, has been ascribed by some modern writers of great celebrity to Lord Bacon; and Sir Isaac Newton is represented as having owed all his discoveries to the application of the principles of that distinguished writer. One of the greatest admirers of Lord Bacon has gone so far as to characterise him as a man who has had no rival in the times which are past, and as likely to have none in those which are to come. In a eulogy so overstrained as this, we feel that the language of panegyric has passed into that of idolatry; and we are desirous of weighing the force of arguments which tend to depose Newton from *Science Byways (London, 1876), an interesting volume of essays on scientific subjects popularly treated. The Home Life of Sir David Brewster, by his daughter, Mrs Gordon, 1869. the high-priesthood of nature, and to unsettle the proud destinies of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. That Bacon was a man of powerful genius, and endowed with varied and profound talent-the most the age which he adorned-are points which have been skilful logician, the most nervous and eloquent writer of established by universal suffrage. The study of ancient systems had early impressed him with the conviction that experiment and observation were the only sure guides in physical inquiries; and, ignorant though he was of the methods, the principles, and the details of the mathematical sciences, his ambition prompted him to aim at the construction of an artificial system by which the laws of nature might be investigated, and which might direct the inquiries of philosophers in every future age. The necessity of experimental research, and of advancing gradually from the study of facts to the determination of their cause, though the groundwork of Bacon's method, is a doctrine which was not only inculcated but successfully followed by preceding philosophers. In a letter from Tycho Brahe to Kepler, this industrious astronomer urges his pupil 'to lay a solid foundation for his views by actual observation, and then by ascending from these to strive to reach the causes of things; and it was no doubt under the influence of this advice that Kepler submitted his wildest fancies to the test of observation, and was conducted to his most The reasonings of Copernicus, splendid discoveries. who preceded Bacon by more than a century, were all had exhibited in his treatise on the magnet the most founded upon the most legitimate induction. Dr Gilbert perfect specimen of physical research. Leonardo da Vinci had described in the clearest manner the proper method of philosophical investigation; and the whole scientific career of Galileo was one continued example of the most sagacious application of observation and experiment to the discovery of general laws. The names of Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and Cardan have been ranged in opposition to this constellation of great names, and while it is admitted that even they had thrown off the yoke of the schools, and had succeeded in experimental research, their credulity and their pretensions have been adduced as a proof that to the bulk of philosophers' the method of induction was unknown. The fault of this argument consists in the conclusion being infinitely more general than the fact. The errors of these men were not founded on their ignorance, but on their presumption. They wanted the patience of philosophy and not her methods. An excess of vanity, a way. wardness of fancy, and an insatiable appetite for that species of passing fame which is derived from eccentricity of opinion, moulded the reasonings and disfigured the writings of these ingenious men; and it can scarcely admit of a doubt, that had they lived in the present age, their philosophical character would have received the same impress from the peculiarity of their tempers and dispositions. This is an experiment, however, which cannot now be made; but the history of modern science supplies the defect, and the experience of every man furnishes a proof that in the present age there are many philosophers of elevated talents and inventive genius who are as impatient of experimental research as Paracelsus, as fanciful as Cardan, and as presumptuous as Van Helmont. Having thus shewn that the distinguished philosophers who flourished before Bacon were perfect masters both of the principles and practice of inductive research, it becomes interesting to inquire whether or not the philosophers who succeeded him acknowledged any obligation to his system, or derived the slightest advantage from his precepts. If Bacon constructed a method to which modern science owes its existence, we shall find its cultivators grateful for the gift, and offering the richest incense at the shrine of a benefactor whose generous labours conducted them to immortality. No such testimonies, however, are to be found. Nearly two hundred years have gone by, teeming with the richest fruits of human genius, and no grateful disciple has appeared to vindicate the rights of the alleged legislator of science. Even Newton, who was born and educated after the publication of the Novum Organon, never mentions the name of Bacon or his system, and the amiable and indefatigable Boyle treated him with the same disrespectful silence. When we are told, therefore, that Newton owed all his discoveries to the method of Bacon, nothing more can be meant than that he proceeded in that path of observation and experiment which had been so warmly recommended in the Novum Organon; but it ought to have been added, that the same method was practised by his predecessorsthat Newton possessed no secret that was not used by Galileo and Copernicus-and that he would have enriched science with the same splendid, discoveries if the name and the writings of Bacon had never been heard of. Lord Macaulay's epitaph on an English Jacobite (see page 429 of this volume) was much admired by Sir David Brewster, but he was dissatisfied with the want of Christian resignation expressed in it, and he wrote the following imitation-not much inferior to Macaulay. Epitaph on a Scotch Jacobite. To Scotland's king I knelt in homage true, Should tyrants chase thee from thy hills of blue, The broken heart may heal in life's last hour before the Royal Society-a work which was continued to 1856, and afterwards published separately in four volumes. For many years he gave lectures at the Royal Institution, which were highly popular from the happy simplicity of his style and his successful illustrations. His publications on physical science are numerous. In 1835 a pension was conferred on Faraday. At first, it is said, Lord Melbourne, then premier, denounced all such scientific pensions as humbug, upon which Faraday wrote to him: 'I could not, with satisfaction to myself, accept at your lordship's hands that which, though it has the form of approbation, is of the character which your lordship so pithily applied to it.' Lord Melbourne explained, and the pension was granted. Faraday was a simple, gentle, cheerful man of genius, of strong religious feeling and unassuming manners. His Life and Letters, by Dr Bence Jones, two volumes, 1869, and Faraday as a Discoverer, by Mr Tyndall, are interesting works. The latter considers Faraday to have been the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen, and he describes his principal discoveries under four distinct heads or groups-magno-electric induction, the chemical phenomena of the current, the magnetisation of light (which,' says Tyndall, I should liken to the Weisshorn among mountains-high, beautiful, and alone'), and diamagnetism. Faraday used to say that it required twenty years of work to make a man in physical science; the previous period being one of infancy. When lecturing before a private society on the element chlorine, Faraday, as Professor Tyndall tells us, thus expressed himself with reference to the question of utility: 'Before leaving this subject I will point out the history of this substance, as an answer to those who are in the habit of saying to every new fact, "What is its use?" Dr Franklin says to such, "What is the use of an infant?" The answer of the experimentalist is, "Endeavour to make it useful." FromChemical History of a Candle. What is all this process going on within us which we cannot do without, either day or night, which is so provided for by the Author of all things, that He has arranged that it shall be independent of all will? If we restrain our respiration, as we can to a certain extent, we should destroy ourselves. When we are asleep, the organs of respiration, and the parts that are associated When hope shall still its throbs, and faith exert her with them, still go on with their action, so necessary is power. MICHAEL FARADAY. In electricity and magnetism valuable discoveries were made by MICHAEL FARADAY (1791-1867), a native of Newington, in Surrey, the son of a poor blacksmith, who could only give his son the bare rudiments of education. He was apprenticed to a bookbinder, and early began to make experiments in chemistry and electricity. He had attended Sir Humphry Davy's lectures, and taken notes which he transmitted to Sir Humphry, desiring his assistance to escape from trade and enter into the service of science.' Through Davy's exertions he was appointed chemical assistant in the Royal Institution in 1813. In 1824 he was admitted a member of the Royal Society. In 1831, the first series of his Experimental Researches in Electricity was read 6 this process of respiration to us, this contact of air with the lungs. I must tell you, in the briefest possible manner, what this process is. We consume food: the food goes through that strange set of vessels and organs within us, and is brought into various parts of the system, into the digestive parts especially; and alternately the portion which is so changed is carried through our lungs by one set of vessels, while the air that we inhale and exhale is drawn into and thrown out of the lungs by another set of vessels, so that the air and the food come close together, separated only by an exceedingly thin surface: the air can thus act upon the blood by this process, producing precisely the same results in kind as we have seen in the case of the candle. The candle combines with parts of the air, forming carbonic acid, and evolves heat; so in the lungs there is this curious, wonderful change taking place. The air entering, com *He was of the small sect called Sandemanians, who endeavour to keep up the simple forms and unworldliness of the primitive Christians, with certain views concerning saving faith and charity. 749 bines with the carbon (not carbon in a free state, but, as in this case, placed ready for action at the moment), and makes carbonic acid, and is so thrown out into the atmosphere, and thus this singular result takes place : we may thus look upon the food as fuel. Let me take that piece of sugar, which will serve my purpose. It is a compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, similar to a candle, as containing the same elements, though not in the same proportion; the proportions in sugar being as shewn in this table: This is, indeed, a very curious thing, which you can well remember, for the oxygen and hydrogen are in exactly the proportions which form water, so that sugar may be said to be compounded of 72 parts of carbon and 99 parts of water; and it is the carbon in the sugar that combines with the oxygen carried in by the air in the process of respiration, so making us like candles ; producing these actions, warmth, and far more wonderful results besides, for the sustenance of the system, by a most beautiful and simple process. To make this still more striking, I will take a little sugar; or to hasten the experiment I will use some syrup, which contains about three-fourths of sugar and a little water. If I put a little oil of vitriol on it, it takes away the water, and leaves the carbon in a black mass. (The Lecturer mixed the two together.) You see how the carbon is coming out, and before long we shall have a solid mass of charcoal, all of which has come out of sugar. Sugar, as you know, is food, and here we have absolutely a solid lump of carbon where you would not have expected it. And if I make arrangements so as to oxidise the carbon of sugar, we shall have a much more striking result. Here is sugar, and I have here an oxidiser-a quicker one than the atmosphere; and so we shall oxidise this fuel by a process different from respiration in its form, though not different in its kind. It is the combustion of the carbon by the contact of oxygen which the body has supplied to it. If I set this into action at once, you will see combustion produced. Just what occurs in my lungs -taking in oxygen from another source, namely, the atmosphere-takes place here by a more rapid process. You will be astonished when I tell you what this curious play of carbon amounts to. A candle will burn some four, five, six, or seven hours. What, then, must be the daily amount of carbon going up into the air in the way of carbonic acid ! What a quantity of carbon must go from each of us in respiration! What a wonderful change of carbon must take place under these circumstances of combustion or respiration! A man in twenty-four hours converts as much as seven ounces of carbon into carbonic acid; a milch cow will convert seventy ounces, and a horse seventy-nine ounces, solely by the act of respiration. That is, the horse in twentyfour hours burns seventy-nine ounces of charcoal, or carbon, in his organs of respiration, to supply his natural warmth in that time. All the warm-blooded animals get their warmth in this way, by the conversion of carbon, not in a free state, but in a state of combination. And what an extraordinary notion this gives us of the alterations going on in our atmosphere. As much as five million pounds, or 548 tons, of carbonic acid is formed by respiration in London alone in twenty-four hours. And where does all this go? Up into the air. If the carbon had been like the lead which I shewed you, or the iron which, in burning, produces a solid substance, what would happen? Combustion could not go on. As charcoal burns it becomes a vapour, and passes off into the atmosphere, which is the great vehicle, the great carrier for conveying it away to other places. Then what becomes of it? Wonderful is it to find that the change produced by respiration, which seems so injurious to us (for we cannot breathe air twice over), is the very life and support of plants and vegetables that | grow upon the surface of the earth. It is the same also under the surface, in the great bodies of water; for fishes and other animals respire upon the same principle, though not exactly by contact with the open air. AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. This distinguished mathematician and teacher (1806-1871) was born at Madura, in Southern India, son of Colonel De Morgan of the Madras army. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and studied for the bar, but in 1828 was appointed Professor of Mathematics in the University of London. Professor De Morgan contributed largely to the Penny Cyclopædia, Notes and Queries, Athenæum, &c. Among his works are - Elements of Arithmetic, 1830; Elements of Algebra, 1835 ; Elements of Trigonometry, 1837 ; Essay on Probabilities, 1838; Formal Logic, 1847; &c. In 1858 Professor de Morgan contributed to Notes and Queries some clever and amusing strictures on Swift's Gulliver's Travels, an extract from which we subjoin: Dean Swift and the Mathematicians. Swift's satire is of course directed at the mathematicians of his own day. His first attack upon them is contained in the description of the flappers, by which the absorbed philosophers were recalled to common life when it was necessary. Now there is no proof that, in Swift's time or in any time, the mathematician, however capable of withdrawing his thoughts while actually engaged in study, was apt to wander into mathematics while employed in other business. No such thing is recorded even of Newton, a man of uncommon power of concen tration. The truth I believe to be, that the power of bringing the whole man to bear on one subject which is fostered by mathematical study, is a power which can be, and is, brought into action on any other subject: so that a person used to mathematical thought is deep in the concern of the moment, totus in illo, more than another person; that is, less likely to wander from the matter in hand. Swift's technical knowledge is of a poor kind. According to him, beef and mutton were served up in the shapes of equilateral triangles, rhomboids, and cycloids. This beats the waiter who could cover Vauxhall Gardens with a ham. These plane figures have no thickness: and I defy all your readers to produce a mathematician who would be content with mutton of two dimensions. As to the bread, which appeared in cones, cylinders, and parallelograms, the mathematicians would take the cones and cylinders for themselves, and leave the parallelograms for Swift. The tailor takes Gulliver's altitude by a quadrant, then measures all the dimensions of his body by rule and compass, and brings home the clothes all out of shape, by mistaking a figure in the calculation. Now, first, Swift imagines that the altitude taken by a quadrant is a length, whereas it is an angle. It is awkward satire to represent the mathematician as using the quadrant to determine an accessible distance. Next, what mathematician would use calculation when he had all his results on paper, obtained by rule and compass? Had Swift lived in our day, he would have made the tailor measure the length of Gulliver's little finger, and then set up the whole body by calculation, just as Cuvier or Owen would set up some therium or saurus with no datum except the end of a toe. Is not Professor de Morgan somewhat hypercritical? When Swift used those mathematical terms, we may believe he did so in mere sportiveness, and that he did not, in the shapes of his beef and mutton, ignorantly exclude substance. When he says there was a shoulder of mutton cut into an equilateral triangle, it seems to us that the whole fun lay in the choice of that figure. He means a pyramid, each face of which is an equilateral triangle. There is, or used to be, in the confectioners' shops a certain comfit known as a triangular puff, which the children would care little for if it had no substance! So when the satirist talks of cutting a piece of beef into a rhomboid, it is into a rhomboidal form, as we have rhomboidal crystals, rhomboidal leaves in plants, and so on the meat is not annihilated, into whatever surface figure you cut it. The story of the tailor who took Gulliver's measure by a quadrant, refers, we believe, to a blunder made by Sir Isaac Newton's printer, who, by carelessly adding a cipher to the astronomer's computation of the distance between the sun and the earth, had increased it to an enormous amount. DR ALEXANDER BAIN. Treatises on The Senses and the Intellect, 1855; The Emotions and the Will, 1859; Mental and Moral Science, 1868; and Logic, Deductive and Inductive, have been published by DR BAIN, Professor of Logic in the university of Aberdeen. These are able works, and Professor Bain has written various text-books on astronomy, electricity, meteorology, grammar, &c. The professor is a native of Aberdeen, born in 1818; in 1845 he was appointed to the Professorship of Natural Philosophy in the Andersonian University, Glasgow. In the latest work of Dr Bain's we have seen, Mind and Body: the Theories on their Relation, 1873, he gives an account of the various theories of the soul, and the general laws of alliance of mind and body. 'The arguments for the two substances have, we believe, now entirely lost their validity: they are no longer compatible with ascertained science and clear thinking. The one substance with two sets of properties, two sides, the physical and the mental a double-faced unity-would appear to comply with all the exigencies of the case. We are to deal with this, as in the language of the Athanasian creed, not confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance. The mind is destined to be a double study-to conjoin the mental philosopher with the physical philosopher; and the momentary glimpse of Aristotle is at last converted into a clear and steady vision.' ROBERT STEPHENSON. This eminent engineer, son of George Stephenson, was born at Willington, December 16, 1803. He was educated partly at the university of Edinburgh, and early displayed a decided inclination for mechanics and science. He laboured successfully to bring the railway locomotive to its present perfection. To his genius and perseverance, aided by the practical knowledge of Mr (afterwards Sir William Fairbairn), we also owe the principle of the tubular bridge, characterised as the greatest discovery in construction in our day.' At the Menai Strait, two spaces of four hundred and sixty feet in width are spanned by these iron tubes. The high-level bridge over the Tyne at Newcastle, the viaduct (supposed to be the largest in the world) over the Tweed valley at Berwick, and the Victoria tubular bridge over the St Lawrence, near Montreal, are among the most celebrated of Mr Stephenson's works. He was also largely engaged in foreign railways. Like his father, he declined the honour of knighthood. Mr Stephenson was author of a work On the Locomotive Steamengine, and another On the Atmospheric Railway System. He died October 12, 1859, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. It is worth noting, that as Lardner predicted that no steam-vessel could cross the Atlantic, Stephenson considered that the Suez Canal was an impossibility. 'I have surveyed the line; I have travelled the whole distance on foot; and I declare there is no fall between the two seas. A canal is impossible; the thing would be only a ditch !' SIR WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN. Some valuable works on the use of iron and engineering operations have been published by SIR WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN, Bart. Among these are Mills and Mill-work; Iron, its History and Manufacture; Application of Iron to Building Purposes; Iron Ship-building; &c. Sir William was a native of Kelso, Roxburghshire, born in 1789. He was long established in Manchester, and engaged in various public works. In the construction of the tubular bridge across the Menai Strait, he was of great service to the engineer, Mr Robert Stephenson, and has drawn up Useful Information for Engineers, as to the strength of iron, iron ship-building, the collapse of tubes, &c. This eminent engineer was chiefly self-taught. He died August 18, 1874. SIR CHARLES WHEATSTONE. In the application of electricity to the arts, CHARLES WHEATSTONE-born at Gloucester in 1802-has been highly distinguished. The idea of the electric telegraph had been propounded in the last century, but it was not practically realised until the year 1837. The three independent inventors are Mr Morse of the United States, M. Steinheil of Munich, and Mr Wheatstone. Of these, the last has shewn the greatest perseverance and skill in overcoming difficulties. To Wheatstone we also owe the invention of the stereoscope— that beautiful accompaniment to art and nature. Professor Forbes says: Although Mr Wheatstone's paper was published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1838, and the stereoscope became at that time known to men of science, it by no means attracted for a good many years the attention which it deserves. It is only since it received a convenient alteration of form-due, I believe, to Sir David Brewster-by the substitution of lenses for mirrors, that it has become the popular instrument which we now see it, but it is not more suggestive than it always was of the wonderful adaptations of the sense of sight.' The electric telegraph, however, is the great source of Wheatstone's fame; and the late President of the Royal Society, the Marquis of Northampton, on presenting him with the Society's medal in 1840, said the honour had been conferred 'for the science and ingenuity by which Professor Wheatstone had measured electrical velocity, and by which he had also turned his acquaintance with galvanism |