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But, speaking in prose, a smart American writer, in touching on the utilities of the telegraph, says, there is no fear about being away from home now, on the part of the most fussy and fidgety metropolitan. The telegraph can tell him, in an instant, that all the children are well, or that the cash account is a little over this evening. By placing, he further observes, the ear to the telegraph posts, when there is a sidewind, a low but constant musical sound is heard-the playing of the wind upon the wires. He observed it at the margin of Cayuga, where a single wire only is used, and on the railway between Auburn and Ithica, passing through Aurora. "Now," he adds, with gravity, "where four or six wires are used, by placing them perpendicularly instead of, as now, horizontally, why could not a grand Æolian telegraphic harp be made, the winds composing their own music, as the lightning now furnishes its own electrography ?"

TELEGRAPHIC ORGANS.

MR. HYDE CLARKE, in a letter to the Mechanics' Magazine, asks, in looking at Professor Wheatstone's Sound Telegraph, in which, instead of two needles, he makes use of two bells, might not the system be applied for musical purposes as well as for signals? Evidently, if a sufficient number of wires were used, a set of chimes might be as easily rung as two bellsindeed, the chimes in York Minster, if there are any,

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might be rung from London as well as York. Where bells are placed in a high tower, as some of the carillons or chimes in Flanders, they might, by telegraph or electric wires, be played with much more convenience from the bottom of the tower.

“By a proper application of wires, two organs or two Apollonicons, might be played at any distance apart by one performer; thus realizing by the electric telegraph what I believe Professor Wheatstone contemplates in the acoustic telegraph, conveying musical sounds and compositions. It is quite practicable to realize with musical instruments what has been already done with clocks, and we may have electrical organs in our churches as well as electrical clocks in our houses, and worked almost as cheaply. These are trifles; but what is an idle thought with one man sometimes puts in activity the practical application of another."

CONVERSATION TELEGRAPHS.

THE attention of scientific men has been directed to the carrying out of an acoustic telegraph, on a large scale, so as to enable parties to converse at great distances apart. The practicability of working seven miles is said to have been reached, (we think theoretically only); so that, by the adoption of a sufficient number of stations, messages might be communicated by word of mouth, to a great distance.

ELECTROPHONIC TELEGRAPH.

PROFESSOR JACOBI, of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, has communicated to that body an invention, composed of ten keys, ten different accords, and ten conducting wires, by which the letters of the alphabet may be expressed by sounds.

FRIGHT AMONG THE FLOUR SPECULATORS.

THE news by the Cambria, telegraphed to Washington, in June, 1847, as regards the reduction in the price of flour, caused no little consternation among the speculators, but a vast deal of pleasure among the consumers of bread generally, who are non-producers of the article. One person of the first class had just sent off an order by mail to Winchester, for a supply of flour at a given price; when the wires brought on the reduction, he stood for a moment aghast, and then dashed off with the exclamation-"Who's got swift horses?-who's got swift horses? Five hundred dollars lost, by Jove!"

THE TELEGRAPH AS A THIEF-CATCHER, AND ANTI-JACK-SHEPPARD.

PICKPOCKETS and housebreakers have already had a touch of the quality, and have experienced the effects of the magic manipulations of the telegraph, in

arresting them after many of their feats. One of them known by the sobriquet of "Stunning Taylor," was lately captured at the Shoreditch station for picking the pocket of a young lady, en route from Romford.

A swindler, who had been lodging at an inn, near Newcastle, committed a robbery. He broke open a drawer and cash-box, carried off upwards of 2007., and started by rail southward. As soon as the robbery was discovered, information was sent by telegraph; and at Normanton station he was arrested while walking on the platform, with the booty in his pocket.

There is a proposal afloat for applying the telegraph as an alarum against housebreakers. For this purpose, the electric circuits are broken or completed by the opening of doors, windows, shutters, boxes, drawers, cupboards, closets, &c.; also by the withdrawal of fastenings, and by footsteps on staircases or on the thresholds of doors, windows, and other inlets; or by any person getting over the boundary wall of an orchard, &c.

The insulated electric circuits are arranged so that any one or more of the doors, windows, boxes, drawers, closets, &c., in a house can be instantly placed under the safeguard of the alarum, without the others being so placed; or by the turning of one handle, situate in the bedroom of the master of the house, the whole house and everything in it may be instantly placed under the safeguard of the alarum.

A NIGGER'S IDEA OF THE TELEGRAPH.

Ar the railway depôt in Lowell, not long since, "Look a hea, Jake," said Sambo, his eyes dilating, and his rows of shining teeth protruding like a regiment of pearls, "Look a hea, Jake; what you call dem ar ?" "What ar?" rejoined Jake. "Dem ar I is pint in to?" "Demar is postes," said Jake. "What!" said Sambo, scratching his head; "dem are postes wid de glass ?" "Yes, de same identical," returned Jake. "Ah, but you sees dem ar horzontal wires." "Well," observed Jake, "de posts supports de wires." "Gosh! I takes you, nigger," ejaculated Sambo, clapping his sides, and both setting up a loud yah yah. "But what's de wires for ?" said Sambo, after a pause. "De wires," replied Jake, completely staggered for a moment, and at a nonplus for a reply to the philosophic curiosity of brother Sambo; but suddenly lighting up with more than nigger fire, he said, "De wires is for to keep de postes up!"

TREACHERY OF AN ENGLISH AGENT.

THE first case of treachery in the transaction of business, and of conspiracy to defraud in connexion with the newly-opened length of wire between London and the North, occurred at Newcastle, in December last. The case was brought before the magistrates; the offence charged being that a certain sharebroker, and two others, clerks in the service of the Electric Tele

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