Another research of Professor Bell was that in which he undertook to localise the assassin's bullet in the body of the lamented President Garfield. In 1879 Professor Hughes brought out his beautiful induction balance, and the following year Professor Bell, who had already worked in the same field, consulted him by telegraph as to the best mode of applying the balance to determining the place of the bullet, which had hitherto escaped the probes of the President's physicians. Professor Hughes advised him by telegraph, and with this and other assistance an apparatus was devised which indicated the locality of the ball. A full account of his experiments was given in a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in August, 1882. Professor Bell continues to reside in the United States, of which he is a naturalised citizen. He is married to a daughter of Mr. Gardiner G. Hubbard, who in 1860, when she was four years of age, lost her hearing by an illness, but has learned to converse by the Horace-Mann system of watching the lips. Both he and his father-in-law (who had a pecuniary interest in his patents) have made princely fortunes by the introduction of the telephone. CHAPTER IX. THOMAS ALVA EDISON. Thomas Alva Edison, the most famous inventor of his time and country, was born at Milan, Erie County, Ohio, in the United States, on February 11, 1847. His pedigree has been traced for two centuries to a family of prosperous millers in Holland, some of whom emigrated to America in 1730. Thomas, his great-grandfather, was an officer of a bank in Manhattan Island during the Revolution, and his signature is extant on the old notes of the American currency. Longevity seems a characteristic of the strain, for Thomas lived to the patriarchal term of 102, his son to 103, and Samuel, the father of the inventor, is, we understand, a brisk and hale old man of eighty-six. Born at Digby, in the county of Annapolis, Nova Scotia, on August 16, 1804, Samuel was apprenticed to a tailor, but in his manhood he forsook the needle to engage in the lumber trade, and afterwards in grain. He resided for a time in Canada, where, at Vienna, he was married to Miss Nancy Elliott, a popular teacher in the high school. She was of Scotch descent, and born in Chenango County, New York, on January 10, 1810. After his marriage he removed, in 1837, to Detroit, Michigan, and the following year settled in Milan. In his younger days Samuel Edison was a man of fine appearance. He stood 6 feet 2 inches in his stockings, and even at the age of sixty-four he was known to outjump 260 soldiers of a regiment quartered at Fort Gratiot, in Michigan. His wife was a fine-looking woman, intelligent, well-educated, and a social favourite. The inventor probably draws his physical endurance from his father, and his intellect from his mother.