ursuing his investigations into the phenomena of
electricity and magnetism through greater part of the dead season, and
will be prepared erelong to make the results public. And Professor
Stokes's researches and experiments on light, which have been laid
before the British Association and the Royal Society, are regarded by
competent judges as the most remarkable and fruitful that have been
made for many years. Another means of advance will perhaps be found in
the new process for 'illuminating' glass, by which lenses of all
sizes, from spectacles to telescopes, may be made so much brighter and
more transparent, as to increase their power and utility to an
extraordinary degree. We are shortly to have further particulars
concerning this improvement, which, if it be such as described, and
applicable to microscopes, will perhaps enable Ehrenberg to verify the
opinions he has lately formed concerning the atmosphere--namely, that
it is not less full of organic and inorganic life than the ocean, or
any other part of creation.

Mr Westwood has read a paper before the Zoological Society, 'On the
Destructive Species of certain Insects known in Africa,' in which he
shows the probability of their having been the insects of the fourth
plague recorded in the Pentateuch. Some of them are the _Oestridae_;
and one kind known in Africa as _Tsetse_, is so fierce and venomous,
that a few of them are sufficient to sting a horse to death: they are
the same as the _Zimb_, of which Bruce gives such a striking account.
Their presence appears to be mainly determined by the nature of the
soil, for they are seldom found away from the black earth peculiar to
the Valley of the Nile. Among the carvings on the ancient tombs, this
insect is supposed to be represented. With regard to another species
of insect, Dr Macgowan states, that the insect-wax of China, of which
400,000 pounds are produced annually, is not, as has long been
believed, a 'saliva or excrement,' but 'that the insect undergoes what
may be styled a ceraceous degeneration, its whole body being permeated
by the peculiar produce in the same manner as the _Coccus cacti_ is by
carmine.'

The Agricultural Society have announced that they will give 'L.1000
and a gold medal for the discovery of a manure equal in fertilising
properties to the Peruvian guano, and of which an unlimited supply can
be furnished to the English farmer at a rate not exceeding L.5 per
ton.' Also, 'fifty sovereigns for t