“M. de Monconis showed me his journal, which was so curious, and where he had collected so exactly all that was passing among the learned men of the Royal Society of London, that his industry has made me negligent in collecting afresh for myself the things found there. We shall see some day all that he has said in it, for if he believes me he will lay before the public that, as well as his other journal of Egypt and Jerusalem. He speaks of several new inventions, which would be very difficult to believe, if not tried. One is a self-registering instrument to mark atmospheric changes which happen every 24 hours, effected by a pendulum clock. A thermometer; a compass; a self-registering weather-cock; a means by which Mr. Willis causes a piece of iron by exposure to moderate heat to calcine, without the help of a corrosive, and dissolve on being plunged into water; of a deaf and dumb person at Oxford, who Mr. Willis has taught to read by showing the different inflexions of the voice necessary for articulation; a new manner of exploding ships in the water; a way by which several short beams can be made into a plain flat surface, by placing them one on the top of another without being supported, nailed, or grooved one into another; of a furnace or stove by Dr. Kuffler, in the style of Drebble’s, which I saw some time ago at La Hague, and which was so successful at Arnheim, with self-acting registers; another kind of furnace which, for five sous worth of wood, cooked a large quantity of bread; a way of distilling salt-water to make it drinkable, where for five sous you can distil water enough for 100 persons to drink; an instrument to design and draw every description of object by a person who has never learnt.” He adds:--“One of the most curious things I wished to see was a Hydraulic Machine, which the Marquis of Worcester has invented, and of which he has made an experiment. I went expressly to Vauxhall, the other side of the Thames, a little below Lambeth, which is the Palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in sight of London. This machine will raise to the height of 40 feet by the strength of one man, and in the space of one minute of time, four large buckets of water, and that by a pipe or tube of 8 inches. But what will be the most powerful help to the wants of the public is the work which is performed by another ingeniously constructed machine, which can be seen raised on a wooden tower on the top of Somerset House, which supplies that part of the town with water, but with some difficulty, and a smaller quantity than could be desired. It is somewhat like our Samaritane water-work on the Pont-Neuf; and on the raising pump they have added an impulsion which increases the force; but for what we obtain by the power of the Seine, they employ one or two horses which incessantly turn the machine, as the tide of their river changes its course twice a day, and the spring or wheels which are used for the ebbing tide would not do for the flow.”