different places being fastened to booms projecting from the several windows of the upper rooms; the next day the ball was screwed on, and on the 11th of October, an electrical conductor was fixed, which finished the edifice. A light was then exhibited, which has continued to warn the mariner ever since. An ably constructed cornice throws the spray from off the building, so that it is often seen at Plymouth with the appearance of a white sheet, throwing itself to double the height of the building, which from low water mark to the apex of the ball is one hundred feet. We have been thus minute, because this pharos is considered to be the best constructed of all our lighthouses. ELECTRICITY. Electricity was a property but imperfectly understood by the ancients; indeed, it has been said, they were entirely unacquainted with it. But we propose, shortly, to show the extent to which we are informed their sphere of knowledge extended. This much cannot be denied, that they were acquainted with the electrical properties of amber, of which fact we are informed by Pliny. Even before Pliny, however, as early as the days of Thalis, who lived near six hundred years anterior to the Roman historian, the Miletine philosophers ascribed the attractive power of the magnet and of amber to animation by a vital principle. Our word “electricity” appears to be derived from the name the Latins gave to amber, _electrum_. It is also evident that they were acquainted with the shock of the torpedo; although they were ignorant, as are the moderns, of the concealed cause of this effect. It has been asserted that the ancients knew how to collect the electrical fire in the atmosphere; and it is also said, that it was in an experiment of this nature that Tullus Hostilius lost his life. Etymologists have carried us still farther back, and assert that it was from the electrical property in the heavens that Jove obtained his surname of Jupiter _Eliaus_. This, however, may be only conjectural. The first discoveries made of sufficient importance to demand the appellation of “scientific” in the science of electricity, were effected by Dr. W. Gilbert, the result of which he gave the world, in the year 1660, in a book then published, entitled “De Magneto,” and Dr. Gilbert was followed in his pursuits by that celebrated scientific character, the honourable and illustrious Boyle, and other men eminent for that species of information. This science was successfully cultivated in the last century by many eminent philosophers, among whom we may mention Hawkesbee, Grey, Muschenbrook, Doctors Franklin and Priestly, Bishop Watson, Mr. Cavendish, and several other members of the Royal Society of England; whilst those worthy of the true philosophic character in France did not neglect its cultivation.