Indeed, the thermopile in the hands of Lockyer has already made palpable the heat of the fixed stars. He placed the little detective in the focus of a telescope and turned it on Arcturus. "The result was this, that the heat received from Arcturus, when at an altitude of 55°, was found to be just equal to that received from a cube of boiling water, three inches across each side, at the distance of four hundred yards; and the heat from Vega is equal to that from the same cube at six hundred yards." (Lockyer's Star Gazing, p. 385.) Thus that inscrutable mode of force heat traverses the depths of space, reaches the earth, and turns the delicate balance of the thermopile. Another discovery was made with the spectroscope; thus, if a boat moves up a river, it will meet more waves than will strike it if going down stream. Light is the undulation of waves; hence if the spectroscope is set on a star that is approaching the earth, more waves will enter than if set on a receding star, which fact is known by displacement of lines in the spectroscope from normal positions. It is found that many fixed stars are approaching, while others are moving away from the solar system. We cannot note the researches of Edison, Lockyer, or Tyndall, nor of Crookes, who has seemingly reached the molecules whence the universe is composed. The modern observatory is a labyrinth of sensitive instruments; and when any disturbance takes place in nature, in heat, light, magnetism, or like modes of force, the apparatus note and record them. Men are by no means satisfied. Insatiable thirst to know more is developing into a fever of unrest; they are wandering beyond the limits of the known, every day a little farther. They survey space, and interrogate the infinite; measure the atom of hydrogen and weigh suns. Man takes no rest, and neither will he until he shall have found his own place in the chain of nature.--_Kansas Review_. * * * * * THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES. Prof. J. Perry lately delivered a lecture on this subject at the Society of Arts, London, which contains in an epitomized form the salient points of the hopes and fears of the more sanguine spirits of the electrical world. Prof. Perry is one of the two professors who have been dubbed the "Japanese Twins," and whose insatiate love of work induced one of our most celebrated men of science to say that they caused the center of experimental research to tend toward Tokyo instead of London. Professors Ayrton and Perry have for some time been again resident in England, but it is evident that they did not leave any of their energy in Japan, for those who know them intimately, know that they are pursuing numerous original investigations, and that so soon as one is finished, another is commenced. It would have been difficult then to have found an abler exponent of the future of electricity.