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been noticed as altogether unsuited for this purpose.

It having frequently been asserted, that the best form for a discharging-pipe was that of the vena contracta; Mr. Merryweather constructed a branch-pipe terminating in an adjutage or nose-pipe precisely of that form.

Mr. Tilley submitted a very pretty branch-pipe, furnished with a nosel about six inches long, in which a more easy curve was employed, conformably to the hypothesis of Newton.

Both of these appeared to have an advantage over the common conical branch; but a second nose-pipe made by Mr. Merryweather, which was a sort of medium between his first and that of Mr. Tilley, appeared to have a most decided advantage. With this branch-pipe a very beautiful jet was obtained, the stream of water being delivered in a compact body at a much greater elevation than with any others that were tried. Fig. 2.

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ther's improved branch and nose-pipe, on a scale of two inches to a foot. It consists of a slightly tapering copper tube a; the female-screw b is for attaching it to the hose, a male-screw at the other end receiving the nose-pipe c, the form of which will be at once understood from the sketch. The length of the whole is but 21 inches, and the weight only 4lbs. It will be observed, that in this branch-pipe the stream of water is cortinued nearly of the full size of the hose, till within less than three inches of the discharging orifice, when the velocity of the water becomes accelerated, and the jet formed under the most favourable circumstances.

The importance and great advantage, in all cases of fire, of throwing a jet of water point-blank upon the burning materials, was strongly insisted upon and strikingly exemplified full forty years ago by Mr. Van Marum, some of whose experiments are detailed one of your But the correctness of early volumes.* this view, and the immense advantage resulting from its practical adoption, have recently been most extensively and successfully demonstrated, particularly in Edinburgh and in London, by the firemen under Mr. Braidwood.

For the effectual accomplishment of this most desirable object, the improved short branch-pipe of Mr. Merryweather is peculiarly favourable, as either in standing, kneeling, or lying down, the fireman has the power of throwing a jet of water all around him with a facility before unknown, and into places where no other branch-pipe could be directed.,

For external operations, where great heights have to be reached, the nose-pipe c can be screwed upon a longer brauch without any prejudice to the effect, but for close combat the short branch is unrivalled.

Notwithstanding the comparatively recent date of the experiments, which fully established the superiority of this branch, i has already come into very extensive use. Besides being adopted by the London Fire-Establishmen', it has also been employed by the non-conforming fireoffices; the fire-engines of many of the nobility and gentry, as well as those belonging to the Admiralty, the Temple, the Miut, and many other public offices,

Vol. iii. p. 184.

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have been supplied with new branchpipes of this pattern, with uniform advantage, and it seems likely to obtain, as in fact it really merits, universal adoption. I am, Sir,

Very respectfully yours,
WM. BADDELEY.

London, April 14, 1836.

THE BRITISH MUSEUM,

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Sir, I am glad to perceive from the letter of S. S., inserted in your last Number, that he proposes to furnish you with a list of the " permanent and public literary institutions of the kingdom. I hope the catalogue will turn out more lengthy than I anticipated, but to say the truth, in spite of the gallant bearing of S. S., and the chivalrous promptitude with which he has accepted my challenge, I have still my doubts whether in the course of his inquiries he will not find the troop, which he has undertaken to marshal to the public, such a thorough

ragged regiment," that he will decline to "march through Coventry with them" after all.

But whatever may become of the "public and permanent " institutions of other parts of England, I cannot but anticipate a general crash of the numerous private and self-supported establishments of a literary nature about London and its neighbourhood, in case the alteration in the management of the British Museum, recommended by your correspondent, F. S. A. (in page 535 of your last volume), should be carried into effect. I am well aware, indeed, that the measure which he advocates-the "erection of a detached fire-proof reading-room for evening visitors"-is a favourite one with many, even of the members of the House of Commons' Committee now sitting on the affairs of the Museum; and I certainly cannot deny that the convenience of it to frequenters of the Museum would be immense; but has it ever been considered what would be its effect on the other. London libraries now existing? How many persons, for instance, would be found inclined to pay a not-inconsiderable sum for the privilege of admission. to the London, the Royal, the Russell, or other similar institutions, when within five minutes' walk of some of them, might be found a gigantic rival,-compared to them an "Ossa to a wart,”—the

price of admission to which would be just nothing at all? At present, the mass of visitors to these excellent and most useful institutions congregate together in the evening, the great majority having been occupied in business during the day, and merely devoting a few hours to literature for their own private information or amusement. The dayreaders at the Museum, on the other hand, are in general those who are either pursuing literature as a profession, or following out some particular course of study to which they give more than ordinary attention. Some mere devourers of novels and magazines have indeed found their way into that reading-room; and few as these are, there are more than enough; but compared to the main body of readers, they are "in them but not of them," and must, one would think, be almost ashamed to look the servants, who bring them the volumes, in the face. That reading-room is, as the regulations observe, a place devoted to study." Of course, if open in the evening it would remain so no longer. That impossibility, which is now found to exist, of excluding all but those who derive a real benefit from admission, would then (excuse the bull, if it is one,) be increased tenfold. And it is, I think, a question well worthy of more mature consideration than it hitherto appears to have obtained, whe ther, under these circumstances, any advantage would be derived to the publie sufficient to counterbalance the greate additional expenses that would necessarily be incurred, and the destruction or depreciation of the value of the literary institutions of the metropolis, which would be the almost inevitable consequence ? The benefit, as I said before, would certainly be great; but thus accompanied with evils, would it be great enough?

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There is an improvement in the Museum which might be effected at less expense, which I am aware of no serious objection to, and which would afford gratification to a greater number of persons to all the visitors of the Museum, in fact, and all the inhabitants of London may visit it if they please. This would be to exhibit the medals. The collection is excessively valuable-perhaps, since the late robbery at the Royal Library of Paristhe most valuable in Europe. There is no reason, I believe, for not exhibiting these, except that, as they are kept at

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present, those who inspect them can handle them, and, of course, some caution is necessary as to the persons who are allowed to inspect them under such circumstances. But might not a way be easily devised of exposing them entirely to public view, without putting them in any, danger whatever? Suppose a board a foot square, perforated at each inch with a hole large enough to admit a coin, hung up or otherwise fixed within it ;this, placed perpendicularly and enclosed in a glass-case, would offer to inspection both sides of a hundred and forty-four coins: in this manner a good sized room might be made to contain a hundred thousand pieces, and would offer as handsome an appearance as a mineralogical gallery. Only the more rare and curious parts of the collection might be thus exhibited, or a change in the pieces might be made at stated intervals, if it were not thought worth while to go to this expense for the whole.

I could offer some other suggestions which have occurred to me (and, I believe, some occur to every body), for the improvement of the Museum; but, interesting as the subject always is, or as I at least have always found it, I am afraid, Mr. Editor, of exhausting your room and patience. I cannot lay down the pen, however, without adverting to the singular notice of "the British Museum" which appeared in the last part of the Penny Cyclopædia. You will, perhaps, be surprised to hear that this article only appeared in the last part of that work, after the declaration of the editors, that

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no opinion was to be formed of the extent of the work in general from the space occupied by the letter A, because that letter always required more room than any other in the alphabet,"-but so it is that they have now expended about thirty double-columned pages more on the letter B than they did on A, and yet have not "6 progressed" three columns beyond this article in Bri. Singular I have called this article, and singular indeed it is not from the extent of its information, though there is a reasonable quantity of that, and the notice bears internal evidence of being from the pen of Sir Henry Ellis, the Chief Librarian, who has used it before in the service of the Diffusion Society,-but from the gigantic enormity of its omissions. We are informed at some length of the his

tory not only of the present Montague House, but of the one before it, which was burnt to the ground precisely sixtyseven years before the Museum was" born or thought of." We are informed with much minuteness of a whole bead-roll of "Donation MSS.," including "Ducarel's Abstracts of the Archiepiscopal Registers at Lambeth," and "a long series of calendars of the Originalia Rolls;" we are informed of the "two hundred and ninety-six stycas of Ethelred, Eänred, and Redulf, kings of Northumberland, and of Vigmund and Eanbald, archbishops of York, found at Hexham in 1832." We are informed of all this and much more of a similar character; but we are not favoured with any account of the number of officers of the Museum-we are not told what are the names and salaries of the principal of these,—we are not apprised of the number of visitors to the different departments (an interesting piece of information to be found in the Parliamentary Returns), we are not furnished with an account of the general annual expenses of the whole establish ment as annually laid before Parliament, -we are not presented with the enumeration of the number of books in the library; in lieu of which we may content ourselves with a vague assurance that the collection is on a range with the greatest libraries of continental Europe." This list of omissions is already so long, that our readers must have been tempted to exclaim with Lord Byron's mob-orator, that the article must contain "no nothing." What will they think when we add, that with the exception of one vague reference to the "new buildings," this account of the British Museum contains no notice of the gigantic erections now, and for some time past, in progress there; one single wing of which cost 120,000l., and dwarfs the whole old establishment for extent and magnificence? To crown the whole, from beginning to end of the twelve columns, there is no mention whatever of the Parliamentary Committee which has been sitting on the affairs of the Museum, has elicited so much information, and excited so much interest respecting it, and is probably destined to effect so complete a revolution in the entire system of its affairs! Compared to this, the acting of Hamlet, with the part of the prince omitted by particular desire," comes badly off indeed." We

40

DR. FOX'S TURN-CAP FOR VENTILATION.

know not
not, but it may be the fashion of
the officers of the Museum to join in
chorus to the song of

"Oh no we never mention it, its name
heard-

is never

Our lips are all forbid to breathe that else familiar word."

But although this part of the Cyclopædia did happen to be published on the 1st of April, we think the editors might, for the credit of their publication, have avoided such a piece of Tomfoolery as this, In the other articles so solicitous are they to bring the information up to the very latest period that we find mention made of a storm at Bridlington, which took place no longer ago than the 17th of last February, so that it cannot be merely the recency of the inquiry which has prevented their taking notice of it. Perhaps they deem the storm at the Museum too unimportant to be put on record. We shall see. In the mean time, while the writer in the Cyclopædia will hardly allow his readers to believe that the Museum is not a "faultless monster," a writer in the Athenæum is labouring hard to convince the public, by an alternate use of the magnifying and diminishing glass-the former applied to all foreign institutions, and the latter to our own-that we and our Museum are the laughing-stock of surrounding nations. The truth lies somewhere, without much doubt, between these two extremes, but there is no need of ascertaining it to a nicety. The duty of Parliament will be discharged if it comes to a vote that the Museum" has increased, is increasing, and shall be increased tenfold."-Yours, &c.

P. P. C. R.

DR. FOX'S TURN-CAP FOR VENTILATION. Dr. Fox planned this turn-cap in consequence of his having frequent opportu nities of observing the very inefficient action of those in ordinary use, arising in a great degree from the weight of the parts which the wind has to move.

It will be found that where the prin ciple of it is adopted, the part to be moved by the wind will not be more than fifty pounds weight, whilst on the old plan the weight of the moving parts would be two or three hundred pounds. Dr. Fox's turn-cap is not liable to be injured by very strong winds, although the moving part is so extremely light, and this lightness causes it to be influenced by a

very gentle breeze, and hence it secures the most perfect ventilation.

Specimens of this improvement, on a pretty large scale, may be seen on the County Courts at Nottingham; and one, in a very conspicuous situation, in Sheffield: there are also many on a smaller scale in the neighbourhood of Derby.

A model of this machine was sent to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c., some years ago, by the inventor, but the Committee declared themselves unable to discover the improvement. The same model which was presented to the above Committee was lent to Mr. Harrison, of Derby, from which the turn-caps now recommended to the notice of the public have been constructed; and Mr. Harrison is so thoroughly satisfied of their great superiority, that he has discarded the old principle altogether.

It is hoped this notice will turn the attention of engineers to the subject, so that the construction and principles of the machine may be thoroughly investigated.*

C.

66 THE RAILWAY PHENOMENON." Sir, I think it rather strange that the article headed "Railway Phenomenon," copied from the Bolton Chronicle, p. 224, vol. xxiv., should so long have passed without a comment from some one of your numerous correspondents: to me it appears highly improbable such a thing could occur; the sensation of the person at the moment of taking hold of the stone is correctly enough described; neither does the saying the stone had then attained its maximum velocity imply its want of truth, that being merely an error in judgment, as it is well known to all your readers that its maximum velocity must have been at the very instant it left the hand that impelled it; but the questionable, on asking, very naturally, veracity of the writer appears, at least, how could any one get into the situation from which the stone must have been thrown? Circumstances, i. e. the ve locity of the train, and the absence of any sudden curve in the road, deny the possibility of such an occurrence having taken place. Yours, &c.

TREBOR VALENTINE.

In order that this may be done, it is necessary that the apparatus should be first described. Perhaps our correspondent will oblige us with a drawing and description.- ED. M. M 12 gete coiner boog ol

MERCURIAL BAPETY-PIPE, SELF-ACTING DAMPER, AND PRESSURE-GAUGE FOR HIGHnoiteutusy to PRESSURE BOILERS of muszuli ad lo avecito ads to guoa ad of autors 79van zem ali ti noll 1990 97 60 d0" -birod tra els tadi adingad of bol Ila 916 aqil 700 "brow

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