When the lamp is required a small handle is turned, and is instantly lighted; the reverse motion cuts off the current. “By touching a knob in the bedroom the whole house can be simultaneously lighted up” if desirable. No matches are necessary, as the lamps light themselves. By adding a small electro-motor to the furniture of the house, and turning a handle, the sewing-machine can be worked by electricity, or lathes turned; and any business operations, such as lifting by cranes, etc., can be easily carried on. The Swan electric lamps, which, with Mr. Edison’s, were exhibited in Paris, and will be found at Sydenham, give about twelve candle-power light. Edison’s lamps are made in two sizes, and vary accordingly. The Swan lamps give a very soft light, and are as easily manipulated as Edison’s. The Siemens system of lighting was also well seen in Paris, and the Faure storage system enables our trains to be lighted instantaneously by simply turning a handle. A full description of the _Faure_ battery was given in the _Times_ by Sir William Thomson, and in his address to the British Association at York in September last. He pointed out that in the accumulators of M. Faure,—which can be seen at 446, West Strand, London,—by means of a large battery it is quite easy to draw off electricity and to apply it as Edison proposed to do, in lighting our houses and do any little service. The electricity thus stored would be always ready for use, and would be supplied and paid for. It can be applied to any purpose, and locomotion by its means will ere long become more general. In Paris Dr. Siemens exhibited his electric tramway. This was an improvement upon the first Berlin tramway, for in it the horses frequently received shocks which they resented. In the later application the current comes from the generator by metal rods carried above the heads of the passengers alongside the line. Little rollers upon these are united with an electric machine in the tram-car. The current is sent along the wires, and reconverted into mechanical energy in the second machine, turns the wheels of the cars. In this way, as the car proceeds, the rollers overhead or alongside the track are kept moving by the car, and the connection is never broken. But this is a digression. The electric light as applied to lighthouses was also exhibited, and any reader desirous to obtain full information upon the subject of lights and lighthouses will find it in a very pleasantly-written work by Mr. Thomas Stevenson, in which the various systems of lighting by electricity and otherwise are fully recounted, the conclusion being in favour of electricity, which is employed and has been used for years in France and in some English beacons. If its penetrative power can be finally established,—for some authorities maintain that the electric is more easily absorbed by fog than other light,—there is no doubt about its being universally adopted.