ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 312, 26 July 1848, Page 4

ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

There are on the Spanish army list nearly 800 generals for an. army of 100,000, being * general for 125 officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates. The Glasgow Argus published its last number on the 29th November, after a career of about fourteen years. The break-up, ajt the late election of the party who established it was the proximate, cause of its discontinuance. On Tuesday, the 30th November, died,, at the house of his son at Islington, in the 97th year' of his age, Mr. Thomas Cobbett, the elder brother of, the late,WilliamCobbett'. j This j geut^eman was the last surviving of four brothers.

The site of Victoria' Park, with the building' ground attached to it, cost £87,298 ; the total, outlay for the Park, up to the sth Janu- { ary last, was £117,819. Miss Edgewortb, who is now upwards of seventy years of age, has written a tale, called " Orlandino," for " Chambers' Library for Young People," a new secfet]*^- - The electric telegraph between Montreal and New York, a distance of one thousand and twenty-one miles,' is now open. The New York Mirror states that the sum of 75,000 dollars has been recently offered for the patent right j>f an artificial leg, lately invented by a Yankee in New Hampshire. It is estimated that one leg per day is wanted in New England alone, while the Mexican war is creating a good market in the south. The American colony of Monrovia, consisting chiefly of free negroes placed on the coast pf Africa by the Colonisation Society of the United States, has declared itself a free and independent republic. Thousands of bushels *of human bones? mixed with those of horses, mules, &c, &c, collected at Leipsic, Austerlitz, Jena, Waterloo, aad other battle fields, have been imported into Hull, from the continent, and after being ground to dust, have been used as manure in the fields of Yorkshire. So much for glory The Royal Manchester Institution having advertized for a porter, at 16s. a week, upwards of 400 applications have been received, many of them from small tradesmen and others of respectability. The author of " Adventures in Mexico," mentions that on tbe 17th August there was a disturbance at Vera Cruz, and he asked a negro spectator the cause : " Nothing, sir, nothing," was the reply " only a revolution." In 1842, the greatest draught of vessels enteriog the Clyde was 14 feet; in 1847, the draught "has been 19 feet. A new eight-wheel engine, named the Emperor, just started on the Great Western line, recently ran at the rate of eighty-six miles an hour, with a load of eighty tons. The Danish Government has engaged an Irish flax-grower to instruct the Danish peasants in the best mode of cultivating the flax, a crop which it is sought to introduce into Denmark. The proprietor of two windmills, 150 yards from the Ouse embankment, has got £1,000 compensation for " loss of wind." The annual capital engaged in pottery manufacture is £2,500,000, and the number of hands employed in it average between 80,000 and 100,000. Of the 170,000 weavers in Lancashire, there are only 48,000 now (December,) employed. Upwards of £20,000 are every year distributed amongst those who apply to her Majesty Queen Adelaide for assistance. The Morning Post says, that the physician who enjoys the largest practice in London, in his last return for the income tax, stated his professional earnings at £33,000, and that several other physicians made returns varying from £15,000 to £5000. The Sudbian Mercury states the number of persons who emigrated from Prussia between the Ist of October, 1844, and tbe 30th of September, 1845, to have been 9239 ; who carried with them capital to the estimated amount of 1,681,000 thalers. In the corresponding period of 1846, the number of emigrants was 16,662 ; and tbe amount of capital taken out of the country by them was 2,516,000 thalers. Dr. Mackie, a medical practitioner near Aberdeen, was found dead in bis bed, and slightly burned, on Thursday, having been suffocated through smoking in bed. A French club called the " Cercle Francais" has just been established in London. Its rules are similar to those of our English clubs. The Marqriis BoufL't de Montauban presided at the inauguration supper, which was. held at Dubourg's Hotel. An American paper says that the New York shopkeepers hire fashionably dressed I young ladies to call in and walk out of their I stores once in ten or fifteen minutes' during the day, to attract customers. The church of All Hallows, in London, { still possesses an income originally given to it for the purpose of buying faggots for burning heretics. From the Registrar-General's return just published, we' learn the population of London is now 1,948,211. Tbe Earl of Auckland' has conferred the good service pension of £150 per annum, ! which Rear- Admiral Harvey relinquished on his promotion, on Captain Frederick JVlarryatt, C.8., the celebrated naval novelist. i \ Facts connected with the Electric I Telegraph. — Sir Robert luglis, in his ad- i ! dress at the meeting of the RpUish Associa r jticn at Oxfcrd in June last (1847), gave exj tracts from a, report presented to, the Legislative Council and Assembly. t\ Ne.Wr.Brun*. ! jwick, relating tq the formation of • telegra.-

phic line from Halifax to Quebec." Among other matter's mentioned in the report was the following :— " When the Hibemkiu stein*er arrived at Boston, in January, 1847> with the news of the scarcity in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of Europe, s add with heavy orders for agricultural produce, tlie farmers in the interior of the State 1 of New York, informed of the state of things by ttie magnetic telegraph, were thronging the streets of Albany with innumerable team-loads of grain almost as quickly after the arrival of the steamer at Boston as the news of that arrival couid ordinarily have reached thetn." Much has been said and written about marine telegraphs to pass through the water. A Jersey newspaper, in 1844, proposed that a line should be established from Southampton to Jersey, by wires conducted at some 1 depth through the sea. In the next following year an American newspaper, bolder still, proposed an ocean telegraph from England to America; and went through some calculations relating to the subject. It was partly with a view of testing the practicability of such scheitfes that the Admiralty ordered a submarine telegraph to be laid across Portsmouth harbour from Gosport to Portsmouth. This has perfectly succeeded ; and there are already plans being developed in England and in France, and submitted to the governments of the respective countries, for telegraphs across the English Channel from Dover to Calais, across the Irish Channel from Holyhead to Dublin, across the Mediterranean from Marseilles to Algiers, and, to crown all, across the Atlantic, from Great Britain to America! The electric telegraph has been made available for the determination ol longitudes; As long ago »s 1839 Professor Morse suggested some experiments to this effect ; and in June, 1844, the difference of longitude between Washington and Baltimore Was determined by electric means, under his direction. Two persons were stationed at those two towns with clocks carefully adjusted to the respective spots, and a telegraphic signal gave the means of comparing the two clocks at a given instant. , On New Year's Day, 1845, at a few seconds after the year had commenced,' a message travelled from Paddington to Slough apparently "in. less than no time;" for it actually reached its destination in 1844! The difference of longitude makes the point of midnight at Slough a little after that at Paddington ; so that a given instant, which v/as after midnight at one station, was before midnight at the other. In the AthctueuM for September 18, 1847, it was announced that the relative longitudes of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, had lately been determined by means of the electric telegraph, by Messrs. Keith, Walker, and Loomis*. Two important facts, - before known theoretically, were here "practically shown, that "a clock in New York can be compared with another at a distance of two hundred miles quite as accurately as two clocks can be compared in adjoining rooms ;" and that " the time required for the electric fluid to travel from New York to Washington and back again, a distance of 450 miles, is so small a fraction of a second, that it is inappreciable to the most practised observer." In a parliamentary paper, issued in July 1847, a correspondence respecting the great clock for the new Houses of Parliament, between the Astronomer Royal, Mr. Dent, Mr. Vulliamy, and others, is given. From this correspondence it appears that the Astronomer Royal proposes to check and' test the Parliament clock by the astronomical clock at Greenwich Observatory, through the medium of the Electric Telegraph. Once in every hour, accurate to less than a second of time, the Parliament clock would indicate its time to the Greenwich clock ; and- besides this, all the other clocks throughout the immense building are proposed to be placed in electric connexion with the great clock, and to receive correction from it Once in evefy minute 2 '*