REMEDY FOR CHOLERA. IN the Times' of September 13, appears a long paper communicated to the Board of Health by an officer of rank long resident in India, descriptive of an alleged remedy for cholera. The prescription, which is said to be of Arabian origin, is stated to have been found unfailing in its efficacy, and to be well worth the attention of the faculty. We extract the following passages referring to the method of treatment: The ingredients employed are, asafoetida, opium, and black pepper pulverised. The dose for an adult is from a grain and a-half to two grains of each; if pure, one and ahalf grains will be sufficient. These ingredients are to be made into a pill. The pills so made up, one dose in each, are to be kept ready for use in a phial well closed, as it is of great importance to check the disease the instant of its attack. The best mode of administering the pill is not by swallowing it whole, lest it be rejected in that state, but by chewing it and swallowing it with the moisture of the mouth, and a very little brandy and water to wash it down. The next best way of administering the medicine is by bruising the pill in a spoonful of brandy and water, and then swallowing it. Much liquid must not be given; but to relieve the thirst, which is great, brandy and water by spoonfuls occasionally is the best mode. The dose should be repeated every half or three-quarters of an hour, according to the urgency of the symptoms, until they have been subdued. From three to five doses have generally been sufficient for this, although as many as eight have been given before health has been restored in bad cases. Should great prostration of strength prevail, with spasm or without spasm, after the other symptoms (vomiting, purging, &c.) have been subdued, the medicine must not be wholly left off, but given in half or quarter doses, so as to keep up the strength and restore the pulse. Friction, with stimulating liniment of some kind, ought to be applied carefully to the stomach, abdomen, and legs and arms; and when pain in the stomach has been severe, and there was reason to fear congestion of the liver, eight or ten grains of calomel have been given with good effect. In cases of collapse and great prostration of strength, the application of the tourniquet to the arms and legs has been recommended, in order, as it were, to husband the vital power by limiting the extent of the circulation. This may be tried, using a ligature of tape or other substance, if the tourniquet be not available. The favourable symptoms of recovery are, restoration of the pulse, returning warmth of the body, and sleep; and after being refreshed by sleep, the recovery being complete, a dose of castor oil may be given. [A subsequent correspondent of the Times' remarks, that as the swallowing of the medicine, as above, may create nausea and vomiting, the pill should be swallowed whole in a small quantity of diluted brandy. This is a matter of detail, which we suppose cannot be difficult to arrange.] PEDESTRIANISM IN THE BRICKYARD. A Gloucester paper says:- There is a lad in a brickyard who walks, or rather runs, over a space of ground equal to sixty miles daily. Nor is the space travelled by any means the most arduous portion of his task; for he has to carry, during thirty miles of his journey, a mould or hod, containing wet clay, weighing together more than 12 lbs., and for the other thirty miles he has to carry back the empty mould weighing 4 lbs., and he has to stoop and pick up the mould no less than six thousand times! What is the gathering of a hundred stones in a single hour compared to the unintermitting exertion of this poor overworked boy, whose labour is running, stooping, and lifting, is continued for eighteen hours in succession, during which time he removes upwards of twenty-four tons of wet clay? Prodigious as all this appears, we have the authority of the boy's employer that the fact is literally as above stated, and further, that it is not a solitary performance, but has been done for five successive days during the present week. The daily carnings by this amount of labour are stated to be half-a-crown!" Newspaper. GENTLE WORD S. And glorious are the many stars The sun may warm the grass to life, And eyes grow bright and watch the light It is not much the world can give, And gold and gems are not the things But oh! if those who cluster round HYDRAULIC POWER. An engine, moved entirely by the pressure of water, has been exhibiting in operation in the premises of the Water Company for the last few days. The engine is constructed upon the horizontal principle, the cylinder being two inches diameter, and length of the stroke twelve inches. It can be worked at a speed of from sixty to eighty strokes a speed it is equal to three men's power. minute, but it is calculated to work at thirty-nine, at which observed the motion of the slide valve, which was opened We particularly and shut almost instantaneously with a very pretty mechanism, leaving the passages open for a considerable period during the stroke-thus allowing the water to discharge itself freely from the cylinder, a difficulty hitherto expe rienced in the working of hydraulic engines. The engine, we understand, was made by Messrs Steele and Sons, Lilybank Foundry, at the request of the manager of the Water Company, and is entirely an experimental engine. It proves the efficiency of water as a motive power when applied in this manner, and will be found of great benefit to those requiring a small supply of power, as it can be erected in any position or situation, and requires no preparation to put it in a working state, nor any particular knowledge in the management, as it is set agoing, and put of, by the simple turning of a stopcock. One great advantage connected with a hydraulic engine is, that it may be placed in any part of the premises, wherever it is found most desirable, without any risk of fire-a drawback at all times to the utility of ordinary steam-engines. It is on that account particularly valuable for wrights, &c. where a danger of fire exists. The engine has attracted considerable attention, no doubt from the consideration of the many useful purposes it can be applied to. Messrs Paxton and Sinclair, tea and coffee merchants, Reform Street, had a quantity of coffee ground by the application of the power, in presence of a number of spectators, who testified their admiration of the neat and efficient manner in which the machinery was gentlemen immediately to avail themselves of the invention propelled. We understand it is the intention of these throughout their operations.-Dundee Warder. The diameter, which is turned by no more water than what is [At Peebles, we lately saw a wheel of small size and conveyed in a leaden pipe of about an inch in the bore. tion with the public gas-works, is equal to that of two or power, which is employed to work a pump in connecthree men. How easy would it be to fit up machinery of this simple kind in cities-how inexpensive the power! A pipe of water introduced into a dwelling for domestic or other purposes, might in the first instance be led to the top of the house, and made to turn a wheel in making its descent to the lower floors. The world has not yet awakened to hydraulics.-Ed. C. E. J.] Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, High Street, Edinburgh. Also sold by D. CHAMBERS, 98 Miller Street, Glasgow; W. 8. One, 147 Strand, London; and J. M'GLASHAN, 21 D'Olier Street, Dublin.-Printed by W. and R. CHAMBERS, Edinburgh. JOURNAL CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR No. 252. NEW SERIES. ness. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1848. GLANCES AT PARIS IN SEPTEMBER 1848. Ir was with strange feelings and expectations that I arrived, at six o'clock of a September morning, at the station of the Northern Railway at Paris. I had seen the city eighteen months before for the first time, and been delighted with its singular brilliancy and cheerfulThen all was apparent peace and prosperity. It had since been the scene of a singular revolution, and the seat of a civil war, recalling by its character early and ferocious times, and forming a strange intrusion into the moral life of our age. We had heard much of the sad change which had consequently taken place in the domestic circumstances of the great mass of the citizens, and of this I expected to see many prominent symptoms even as I walked the streets. It was therefore with an almost nervous apprehension that having at length got my baggage passed in the waitingroom, and my lady companions put along with it into a voiture-I set forth on foot, in order to while away a little of the morning by a quiet promenade to our destined hotel. The first observations were disappointing—that is, agreeably so; for nothing met my eyes but the usual accompaniments of morning in a large city-shops opening, streets cleaning, people going to their employments, market vehicles and peasant women coming in with articles of consumption, and so forth. Nothing like depression or distress was observable. 'Yes,' I thought, attempting to explain it, after all, people must work, and people must eat. The common routine of human life will proceed, with little variation, even in the most historical circumstances. I might have thought of all this before, if I had reflected.' Remembering that some of the fiercest struggles of the affair of June took place in the Faubourg St Denis, I went a little out of my way in order to pass through that district. Even there, however, men were calmly sweeping out or brushing up their shops. There were the usual appearances of low life, but all was quiet and inoffensive. At the Boulevard, where there had been some of the strongest barricades, I looked in vain, round and round, for marks of the strife. It was not for some time that I discovered a few white marks on the triumphal arch-here and there small defacements of the sculptures-also an adjacent Commerce des Vins (which I afterwards learned had been the seat of an insurgent committee) spotted here and there over its painted surface with bullet marks. But the tide of humble city life flowed under that arch, and past the battered wine-shop, as if there had been not a musket fired in Paris since the Fronde. I subsequently spent nine days in this city of revolutions, and at no time could discover any great change in external and obvious things. The usual crowded streets, the usual affluence of goods in shops and shop PRICE 1d. windows, the usual cheerful cafés overflowing with customers. As nice dinners as ever at Very's and the Trois Frères Provençaux in the Palais Royal [for the meantime, and until further orders, Palais National]. Ladies sitting and chatting at work, as before, under the trees in the Tuileries Gardens, while the children played around them with skipping-rope and ball, and their white-capped bonnes bore along their infant charges, as yet insensible to the bane of political strife. There are, indeed, some obvious enough changes-for example, every palace and public building labelled with the words' Propriété Nationale,' and all these and the churches too inscribed with 'Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Still, the general outward appearance is much as it used to be. So are many of the common experiences of a stranger. For instance, although we are told that so many lodgings are vacant, our party found it not very easy to obtain suitable accommodation at a reasonable rate. In shopping, the ladies discovered that all things, jewellery included, are at their ancient prices. 'Yes,' the people said, things are beginning to be as they were;' but I question if the change in these respects ever actually was as represented. We went to one of the St Cloud fêtes, and found that beautiful park crowded in the usual manner with well-dressed and happy-looking people, bent on amusement, and largely indulging in it. Mountebanks were tumbling and dancing in front of show-booths: cafés chantants were in full flow of custom: merry-go-rounds, horizontal and vertical, went round as merrily as ever. The only difference in the multitude of little shooting-galleries was the prevalence of poor Louis Philippe's bust among the little stucco marks set up for the sportsmen. There evidently was money to spend, and the same ingenuity in inducing its expenditure, as of old. Then we went to the principal theatres-all well filled. That pattern audience at the Théâtre de la République (formerly Théâtre Français) sitting with such drawingroom-like propriety and quietness to behold Rachel as Andromache, as in days past. Seventy muslined nymphs drawing the usual applause in the ballet at the French Opera-and so on. So it was in the main everywhere, as far as positive things and things which we may call objects were concerned. After a little time, such differences as really exist began to be observable. It was seen that, amidst the rows of shops, there were a few, yet, after all, only a few, closed, and to let. Amidst the carriages in the streets, a private one of any kind was a rarity, and I only saw one presenting aristocratical luxury and elegance. The multitude, even in the Tuileries Gardens, and in the first-class theatres, was almost wholly of a plebeian or middle-class character-scarcely any fashionables. Some remarked that it was the season of the year when cities are usually emptied of their richest inhabitants; and this no doubt accounts in part for the phenomenon, but only in part, for, as others observed, Paris was in a great degree an exception to the common rule-the French being, as a nation, little addicted to country life, and the fact being, accordingly, that the beau monde used never altogether to desert their city residences. One new feature, of great significance, soon came under observation. Walking into the palace of the Luxembourg one day, we found its great galleries used by soldiers as a barrack. In the magnificent Panthéon, where a marbled solitude once reigned, there are now two thousand five hundred troops bivouacking. You see their straw-beds along the diced floor, and the men engaged in various occupations-some burnishing their accoutrements, some taking meals, a few reading newspapers; while out of doors, women selling food and liquor at stalls give the place much the appearance of a fair. Peeping one day into the beautiful new court of the Hôtel de Ville, we saw a range of cannon, and a number of horses in an extempore stable reared against the walls-the latter ready of course to draw out the former into action at a moment's notice. In many spaces of free ground throughout the city there are little camps for the soldiery. One comes much under attention amidst the shows of the Champs Elysées. I often sauntered about it to observe, which I did for the first time, the arrangements of a camp, and the forms of camp life. The tents are in regular rows, with crossing lanes, of various breadths, between; beds of straw within; shingle kitchens on the outskirts of the square. Sentinels, continually walking along on the outside, forbid all intrusion. Vivandieres-that is, female dealers in articles of consumption required by soldiers-hover about with kegs painted tricolor, or take up a permanent stand with little stalls. To see all the paraphernalia of active warfare in the midst of a fine city, while streams of omnibuses and cabs, and all the usual objects of a crowded thoroughfare, present themselves on the other side of a thin screen of trees, has a curious thrilling effect; although one cannot all the time but feel that this military force is the best assurance of peace and quiet which the circumstances admit of. Such are perhaps the most important of the tangible novelties in the condition of Paris at the time when I saw it; but these are, after all, as nothing in comparison with the changes that have taken place in the domestic conditions and prospects of individual men and families. Confidential conversation soon brings out the general expression of suffering which the revolution has given rise to. Almost every person has a special tale of wo to tell: business lessened in amount and in security, property reduced in value, the future troubled and clouded. It appears as if the new state of things were one which nobody wished, and which all would already willingly see exchanged for another, if that were possible without producing worse evils. Each man speaks as if he were obliged to submit in this matter to some power beyond himself, and which he cannot control. We have got the republic, and we must make the best of it.' Such is the general remark, implying anything but that favour for the existing institutions which Burke would have recognised as their cheap defence. I could not doubt, from what I heard, that numberless persons have been brought to know privations which they never formerly dreamt of, and that there was much downright misery among the labouring poor. And yet, with reference to the very lowest class of the population, I could not but remark it as a strange thing at the conclusion of my nine days in Paris, that I had not once been accosted by a mendicant, whereas I do not know any British town where a well-dressed person could walk through a single street without more or less of that kind of molestation. Having felt much interest in regarding the events of February and June in their romantic aspect, I took an early opportunity of seeing the localities in the company of a friend who had been an eye-witness of some of the chief proceedings. Right opposite to the front of the Palais Royal, we see what might be termed the stump of a nearly isolated house-that is, merely its lower storey, the rest having evidently been destroyed by fire and otherwise. A screen of boards, separating it from the street, bears the usual array of placards which covers every spare foot of wall space in a large city. This is all that remains of the municipal guard-house, where a party made so obstinate a stand against the February insurgents. They were compelled to do so by their commander; and the consequence was, that, except a few who broke through into an adjacent house, and escaped, the whole were destroyed along with the building. My friend had seen the beautiful glass-covered gallery in the Palais Royal filled with the wounded insurgents on this occasion. When I remarked how curious it was to see the place now, with all its gay cafés and shops as brilliant as ever, he added, 'Oh yes; and in the very afternoon of Louis Philippe's departure from the palace, the Tuileries Gardens had their usual crowds of ladies walking about. Nay,' said he, 'I can assure you of it as a fact, that in the evening of the day of the revolution two Parisian gentlemen went into a café, sat down to play at dominoes, and never once during the evening made a remark on the public events of the preceding few hours.' I thought of Sicilian swains dancing beside the chinks of the cooling lava. It will be remembered that the Panthéon was the scene of some of the fiercest struggles in the June affair. It formed the post of the extremity of the left wing of the insurgents' chain of operations. Accordingly, as I expected, the face of this superb building was thickly interspersed with bullet marks, by which much of the architectural ornament had been defaced. The door was getting wholly renewed, for this had been broken by a cannon-shot, which it was found necessary to discharge before the people would surrender the post. We saw with thrilling sensations the trunk of a colossal statue at the head of the room, and a hole in the wall immediately behind it, the memorials of the progress of this shot in its fearful mission. The respectablelooking old man whom we remember showing the place with such pride in its days of perfect beauty, pointed to these things and to the military intruders on his domain with a sort of broken-hearted air. All along the Rue St Jaques, a narrow street descending from the Panthéon to the river bank, the bullet marks on the faces of the houses were many and frequent. Painted plaster fronts were indented, or we saw the fresh plaster filling up what had lately been holes. Bits of the mouldings of windows were broken off, and there were significant renewals of spokes in the outer shutters so universal in Paris. At the junction of this street with the quays, several buildings, or walls of buildings, appeared to have been renewed, or at least newly plastered over, since the insurrection. In a progress which I next made through the Rue St Antoine to the Place de la Bastille-the seat of central action, and the part most obstinately defended by the insurgents-I observed even more signal traces of recent warfare. The bullet marks are there very numerous, particularly upon the corner houses. A respectable café in an exposed angle still showed its broken mirrors within, along with many patches of new plaster without. One could not but be a little amused at seeing some of those whimsical pictures of sages-femmes with fresh babies in their arms, which abound in this, as in other districts of Paris, standing up in all their usual composure of aspect, with two or three bullet holes drilled in them. The greatest show of destruction was presented at the eastern outlets of the Place de la Bastille, where the barricades, it seems, had been of unusual strength. From the Place, the troops and artillery had poured all their force on these posts, with slow effect on the desperate men who defended them, but to the ruin of several of the adjacent houses. We saw the cleared stance of one which had been wholly destroyed. Others had been patched up. It was just within the opening of one of these streets that the poor Archbishop of Paris, having cleared the barricade, and entered into conference with its defenders, telling them that God had willed all men to be brothers, and to love one another, fell under a random shot. As we stood on the spot, one of our party pointed out, on the front of a public-house-for even trifles in such a case have an interest-the word LIQUEURS, which appears in the common print representing this piteous tragedy. I made a pilgrimage also to the Barrière d'Italie on the other side of the river, where General Brea was assassinated. Some geological ramblings in the preceding year had made me familiar with the place, so that I had a perfect conception of it from the newspaper reports. A tall rail crosses the street, with a wide gate where entering merchandise is taxed, and a narrow gate beside it, usually shut. Here the insurgents had had a strong post, with a sort of guard-room in a neigh-ful at a far corner stands up, though only to receive bouring house. The unfortunate general, having gone amongst them with another officer to endeavour to effect a peace, was conducted to the guard-room. There an alarm of treachery took possession of the combatants, and both officers were mercilessly slaughtered. I inquired about the affair of an octroi man attending at the rail. I saw General Brea,' said he, come through that gate (pointing to the narrow gate) to speak to the men.' Never to return! I was curious to see some of those groups of the June insurgents which still filled the jails of Paris; but this I failed to accomplish. It was even with a difficulty, and only by the energetic kindness of a deputy of the Thiers party, whom I had once conducted to some public places in Edinburgh, that I obtained access to a sitting of the National Assembly. It meets, as is well known, in a wooden building of very plain character, just fitted to hold nine hundred members in pews around its floor, while a few spectators are accommodated in certain narrow galleries around the upper part of the room. The day being one of routine business, there was little excitement on the occasion; yet I could not behold the place, and the members as they successively came in and took their seats, without intense interest. After all, the whole scene had more of a common-world air than one expects from a popular council forming, as it were, the legitimate successor of the Constituent Assembly and Convention of former days. The members-though here and there an abbé with his black cap, or some other extraordinary figure, meets the eye-are generally very practical-looking persons, such as one sees at ordinary public meetings in England. The huissiers, walking about in formal dress of antique cut, with swords by their sides, gave a slight tinge of dignity to what otherwise must have been pronounced as unmixed simplicity. Marrast, the president, did not take the chair at first, but came in about the middle of the proceedings. He is a mean-looking little man, of unpromisingly short forehead. There is Lamartine!' and I saw a tall slender man of thin visage and mild aspect enter and place himself in a front seat. That is Thiers,' and behold a neat little man, with a round sallow face and gray short hair, seated a little behind Lamartine. The Abbé Lamennais was pointed out to me, and I afterwards had some conversation with him; a thin old man, with eyes which seek the ground, but a face of great mind-life and sensitive never-resting lips. Pierre Bonaparte sits among the Mountain men, with the thick square head and Italian complexion of his uncle. At the end of a seat next the tribune is a soldier-like person in a closely-buttoned blue coat and a moustache. There is a portrait in every print-shop window, which leaves no room to doubt who he is. It is General Cavaignac: a Wellington-like man, with much iron evidently in his composition, but probably a sterling character at bottom. The business of the house proceeds amidst disregarded cries of En places and Silence, for groups cumber the floor and the entrances, and an incessant chatter goes on. At length an unexpected event produces universal stillness-Cavaignac is called on by a member to state how his government stands at present, and what are its prospects. All is silence as he ascends the tribune. He speaks, in short pithy clauses, like cracking musketry, and with the easy dash of a soldier. There have been little clouds between him and some parties in the Assembly, but they are of no moment, and are passing away. For the future, he can only adhere to his resolution to preserve order by all the means in his power. A more violent assailant succeeds, but the house listens with impatience, and he descends grumbling. Then Marrast asks those who have confidence in the government to stand up, when the whole house instantly seems to spring to its feet. Le tout!' I hear a neighbour exclaim with delighted surprise. It is not, however, quite the whole house, for when the malcontent are requested to rise, a handthe derision of the majority. And so ends the sitting. During my week in Paris, the elections for the Seine were going on, and producing considerable excitement, which, however, seemed chiefly to expend itself in placards on the walls. The critical state of the ruling power in France was shown by the uneasiness felt with regard to the expected arrival of Louis Bonaparte-a person in himself of no sort of importance. Fresh outbursts of the wild party were generally expected, though not without a confidence that they would be put down. As an illustration of the strange appositions of things likely to occur at such a time, M. Marrast was giving his splendid weekly reception to probably three thousand worshippers of power on the Saturday night, when between six and seven hundred of the June men were passing amidst wind and rain through the first step of their march into a hopeless exile. On the same evening I went with two English friends to mingle in the shrunken attendance at the usual reception of M. Lamartine, for whose character as a man of letters I of course felt undiminished respect. Two rooms, hung round with a number of very pleasing pictures by Madame Lamartine, among which is included an admirable full-length portrait of her husband, sufficed to receive easily all who came, amongst whom I saw no remarkable persons besides Pierre Bonaparte and the Sardinian ambassador. It was impossible to look in the face of Lamartine, and hear a little of his conversation, without becoming impressed with the full force of that amiableness of character which seems to have partly been at the bottom of his failure. Men of fine feelings are not for great political crises, though their thoughts may have helped to bring them on. I here found myself somewhat awkwardly placed, as the only person with the British conservative feelings of the present crisis, in the midst of a set of gentlemen whose sentiments went to very opposite results. A Parisian expressed to me a wish that we should soon have a republic in England, to which-not thinking it worth while to give a serious reply-I only answered very quietly, Not, I hope, till the English are republicans." I could see that the words told. They do, indeed, badinage as they were, touch the whole case of France at the present moment. It has the misfortune to be a republic, while not one-fourth of the people have any positive affection for that form of government. Any government, as we well know, with a small amount of cordial support from the people, must, in order to live, be a tyranny. France, therefore, being under a rule which rests on so narrow a basis, necessarily exhibits practical restraint, while nominally conducted on the broadest democratic principles. It is but the simplest converse to this fact, that a despotism which all were well affected to, might be practically more liberal than the reddest republic that ever breathed. And it necessarily follows that, for those who desire to be under a liberal and gentle rule, the object ought to be, not to set up some new form of ideal excellence, but either to maintain that which already possesses a decided preponderance of popular affections, or to set up that which may be most likely to obtain such a degree nomers on the qui vive wherever an observatory is to be found. of support. France has been surprised into a republic; but as this form, though certainly it has not a third of the sincere suffrages, has more than any other would now be likely to obtain, her only wise course will be to maintain the existing system with all possible energy, as the best that can be had, though in such circumstances true freedom must be long in abey-phenomena, some of which are of periodical recurrence, ance, and an oligarchy, like those of the Swiss cantons, may, after all, be the best result to be hoped for. The peculiar misfortune, however, of France-a misfortune perhaps inseparable from those to whom free institutions are a novelty-is, that no ten persons with peculiar opinions have the least idea of its being their duty to abstain from imposing these at the sword's point upon the remaining thirty-five millions. Hence continual insurrections, and, as a necessary consequence, continual fresh encroachments on liberty. Hence the ludicrous contrast between the omnipresent inscription, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité,' and the actual state of things; while in England, under a well-supported constitutional monarchy, no man can recollect having ever in his life experienced anything like personal control, much less annoyance, from the government. It is highly instructive to read in recent events the utter failure of theoretical plans to answer the purposes expected of them, while a mere accident of time, like the British constitution, maintains political peace, and enables the people to follow out their economical pursuits in perfect freedom and security. In the streets of Paris and of Frankfort, bodies elected on ultra-democratical principles, and which theoretically ought to be, accordingly, a perfect representation of the popular will, have been attacked with military force by dissatisfied minorities, as if they were no better than the ancient despotisms. If such be their character, the principle of election has failed. If from any cause these representative bodies are not true representations, the principle of election has failed. Give the minority the upper hand, the principle of election has even more signally failed. Or say that the minority is to be kept down by the strong hand, equally has the whole idea failed to produce a mild and tolerant government. In short, it is palpable that all political dreams are pregnant with great disappointments; the extreme advocates of such kinds of regeneration being ever, as by an irreversible doom, the most direct agents in their frustration. R. C. In connection with astronomy, another interesting subject-that of Bolides, meteors and shooting-stars-is attracting notice. Most readers are aware that the most generally-received explanation respecting these is, that they are fragmentary remains of a planet revolving in an orbit round the sun, which orbit being crossed, or nearly approached, twice a year by the earth in its revolution, we are thus brought into such proximity as to see the swiftly-moving objects, which, with rare exceptions, are invisible at other times. The theory now advanced (Sir J. Lubbock, in Taylor's Philosophical Magazine') assembles these bodies into a group of planets, revolving round the earth with incredible velocity, some of them performing the circuit in less than two hours. We see them because they reflect the sun's light shining on their surfaces, and their almost instantaneous disappearance is accounted for by their sudden immersion within the shadow of the earth. It is supposed that the meteors seen from time to time in different parts of the world are nothing more than these petty planets pursuing their ordinary course. The theory is ingenious; but evidently a large number of observations must be made before any accurate data can be established. If the measures contemplated for this object can be carried into successful operation, we may hope to hear something definite on what has so long been a subject of mere wonder-shooting-stars. Meantime the inquiry may be regarded as another evidence of the systematising spirit of the present day. The stars, as every one knows, have in all ages been made use of as time-measurers; but it was reserved for the nineteenth century to discover a perpetual clock in the north polar sky. Pontécoulant, somewhere in his writings, speaks of 'immense pendulums of eternity beating the ages;' but here we have that which will mark the hours. We refer to the Polar Clock, invented by Mr Wheatstone, and exhibited at the late meeting of the British Association at Swansea; and from the report, as published in the 'Athenæum,' we abridge an account of the instrument and the principle of its construction:-'A short time after the discovery by Malus of the polarisation of light by reflection, it was ascertained by Arago that the light reflected from different parts of the sky was polarised. The observation was made in clear weather, with the aid of a thin film of SCIENTIFIC JOTTINGS. mica and a prism of Iceland spar. He saw that the SOME excitement has been created within the past few two images projected on the sky were, in general, of weeks by the discussions in the French Academy of dissimilar colours, which appeared to vary in intensity Sciences on the subject of the planet Neptune, from with the hour of the day, and with the position, in re-d which it would appear that the newly-discovered divi-lation to the sun, of the part of the sky from which the nity does not possess all the potency with which he has been theoretically invested. On some hands, it is asserted that the discovery is no discovery at all, and that M. Leverrier, whose reputation has become famous throughout the civilised world, and who has been honoured with medals and diplomas, is entirely mistaken in his calculations. The true state of the question, however, is, that M. Babinet, an old and eminent member of the Academy, affirms that Neptune, in so far as observations have been practicable, does not satisfy all the necessities of the case, leaves the perturbations of Uranus to a great extent unaccounted for, and that its actual orbit does not coincide with that laid down by theory. Without disputing M. Leverrier's claim to the discovery of Neptune, M. Babinet contends that the discrepancies can only be reconciled by supposing another planet, for which he proposes the name Hyperion, to exist beyond Neptune-the combined action of the two being then sufficient to explain away the difficulties that have been started. M. Leverrier replies, that time and further calculation will prove the influence of Neptune to be such as was ascribed to its mass: and thus the matter rests for the present. There is little doubt, however, that the discussion will set astro rays fell upon the film.' The law assigned for this phespectator standing at such a height, with the sun overnomenon may be thus familiarly explained: suppose a head, as to overlook the whole circumference of the earth down to its central line, he would see that at the equator the polarisation was most intense, and diminished gradually upwards to the pole, where it would become nil. This law, however, is not universal in its action, as certain neutral points have been discovered since it was enunciated; and as regards the instrument in question, it is more a consideration of the plane of polarisation than of the intensity. In the words of M. Babinet-For a given point of the atmosphere, the plane of polarisation of the portion of polarised light which it sends to the eye, coincides with the plane which passes through this point, the eye of the observer, and the sun.' This statement is fully verified by the facts. 'Let us now,' continues Mr Wheatstone, turn our attention to the north pole of the sky. As the sun, in its apparent daily course, moves equably in a circle round this pole, it is obvious that the planes of polarisation at the point in question change exactly as the position of the hour circles do. The position of the plane of polarisation of the north pole of the sky will, at any period of the day, therefore indicate the apparent or true solar |