The Sultan steamer brought to Southampton on Saturday 250,0001. in
specie from the Black Sea. Upwards of half a million's worth of the coin exported to the Caspian provinces for corn in the past two years, has, it is said, returned to Eng- land within the past month.
A wire rope is now in course of construction at the works of Messrs. Newell and Co., Gateshead, which will be of the extraordinary length of 6,720 yards, and weigh 27 tons.
Mr. James Nasmyth, of Bridgewater Foundry, Patricroft, near Manchester, has tested, as it were, and proved the fact, of the identity of diamond and coke, by the discovery that the minute laminated crystals or crystlets of coke are capable of cutting glass with the true diamond clearness of cut, or without merely scratching. No other setting too is necessary to prove this fact, than the crumb- ling consistency of the coke itself in mass; so that a fragment of coke, switched at random across a pane of glass in the sunshine, is sufficient to exhibit not only
the depth of the clear cut, but the prismatic colours in all their purity and beauty. Ground to impalpable powder, Mr. Nasmyth, as intimated in the Mining Journal,
has found that coke constitutes what we may call the true "diamond paste " for
sharpening razors,—probably, indeed, if we may venture to say so, the only secret of the diamond pastes so largely advertised, if they merit even so worthy a sup-
position. The adamantine properties of black oxide of manganese, and its peculiar affinities, induced an ingenious chemist to suggest its strong analogy to carbon: is it possible that it too, when in fragments, much more firmly crystal- line as it is in mass than coke, may cut glass with practical facility?—Builder.
In Arthur Young's Travels in France, from 1787 to 1789, there is a passage in- dicating a very early knowledge, in a crude form, of the principle and practice of
the electric telegraph. , " In electricity, he (M. Lomornd) has made a remark- able discovery: you write two or three words on a paper; he takes it with him in a room, and turns a machine enclosed in a cylindrical case, at the top of which is an electrometer, a small fine pith ball; a wire connects with a similar cylinder and electrometer in a distant apartment; and his wife, by remarking the corre- sponding motions of the ball, writes downthe words they indicate; from which it appears that he has formed an alphabet of motions. As the length of wires makes no difference in the effect, a correspondence might be carried on at any distance; within or without a besieged town for instance; or for a purpose much more worthy and a thousand times more harmless, between two towns prohibited or prevented from any better connexion."
In the forenoon of Monday week, about eleven o'clock, the attention of the pas- sengers in the railway train to Metliley was attracted by an extraordinary circum- stance which occurred in a mown field. Towards the centre of this piece of ground a gush of water burst out, to the height of about twelve inches; imme- diately afterwards it was followed by fire and vapour, to the height of about three feet.
A violent storm of thunder and hail in Lincolnshire did much damage .on Saturday. The hailstones were of extraordinary size, and beat down the cropsin many places; roads and fields were flooded; at one place the pressure of the accumulated water forced down an embankment, and a wide extent of land was laid under water; and at Lincoln the lower streets were inundated.
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