On one occasion Mr. Crosse kept a pair of soles under the electric action for three months; and at the end of that time they were sent to a friend, whose domestics knew nothing of the experiment. Before the cook dressed them, her master asked her whether she thought they were fresh, as he had some doubts. She replied that she was sure they were fresh; indeed, she said she could swear that they were alive yesterday! When served at table they appeared like ordinary fish; but when the family attempted to eat them, they were found to be perfectly tasteless--the electric action had taken away all the essential oil, leaving the fish unfit for food. However, the process is exceedingly useful for keeping fish, meat, &c. fresh and _good_ for ten days or a fortnight. I have never heard a satisfactory explanation of the cause of the antiseptic power communicated to water by the passage of the electric current. Whether ozone has not something to do with it, may be a question. The same effect is produced whichever two dissimilar metals are used. The Electric Telegraph. ANTICIPATIONS OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. The great secret of ubiquity, or at least of instantaneous transmission, has ever exercised the ingenuity of mankind in various romantic myths; and the discovery of certain properties of the loadstone gave a new direction to these fancies. The earliest anticipation of the Electric Telegraph of this purely fabulous character forms the subject of one of the _Prolusiones Academicæ_ of the learned Italian Jesuit Strada, first published at Rome in the year 1617. Of this poem a free translation appeared in 1750. Strada’s fancy was this: “There is,” he supposes, “a species of loadstone which possesses such virtue, that if two needles be touched with it, and then balanced on separate pivots, and the one be turned in a particular direction, the other will sympathetically move parallel to it. He then directs each of these needles to be poised and mounted parallel on a dial having the letters of the alphabet arranged round it. Accordingly, if one person has one of the dials, and another the other, by a little pre-arrangement as to details a correspondence can be maintained between them at any distance by simply pointing the needles to the letters of the required words. Strada, in his poetical reverie, dreamt that some such sympathy might one day be found to hold up the Magnesian Stone.” Strada’s conceit seems to have made a profound impression on the master-minds of the day. His poem is quoted in many works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and Bishop Wilkins, in his book on Cryptology, is strangely afraid lest his readers should mistake Strada’s fancy for fact. Wilkins writes: “This invention is altogether imaginary, having no foundation in any real experiment. You may see it frequently confuted in those that treat concerning magnetical virtues.”