The Sun.
London, England, 1870-04-15 00:00:00

WIRE TRAMWAYS,

There is exhibiting on the Brighton Downs at the pre-
sent time a wire tramway five miles in length, in perfect
working order. It illustrates the immense advantages of
this singularly cheap and effective method whereby, as a
feeder to railways or maritime transit, goods, minerals,
and agricultural produce may be conveyed. The system
was introduced to public notice about fourteen months
ago by Mr. Hodgson, the civil engineer, who is sole in-
ventor and patentee. Since then it has been adopted in
tns country, and to a greater extent in France,
with a success which has far exceeded the ex-
p:ctations of the promoters. While wire tram-
ways can never really supersede railways and
c mals, they will aid both by developing resources which
would otherwise remain sealed. A party of gentlemen
under the guidance of Mr. Beale, the agent of the
pitentee, inspected the works at Brighton on Wednesday.
From a summit of the Downs they saw what appeared to
be double telegraph wires laid up hill, through dale, and
in a devious, but speaking roughly, a circular course. The
posts were of iron instead of wood, and constructed of
light bars instead of solid timber. The seeming wires
were as thick as a walking-stick, and from them at
intervals hung iron boxes, so fixed and so constructed that
when the wire which was in reality an iron rope, began
to move the boxes moved with it, one set
passing away, the other coming forward. The whole
system of wire tramways with all its ingenuity and obvious
merits stood revealed. In a hollow puffed the engine
which gave life to the whole, and near it the drum around
which the rope ran its endless course. Each box was
capable of holding a hundred weight and a half, and the full
ones are made to go on to the terminus, bringing back by
their movement the empties. By a clever contrivance
the posts, some of which are seventy feet high, are cleared
without a hitch, and by an elaboration of pulleys, large
and small, angles and curves are passed without stoppage.
The line, though five miles long, thus employs a rope
of double that length. The difficult ground on
the Downs was selected to shew the facility of
the system to some gentlemen who were negotiating for
sixty miles of tramway in Ceylon. The difficulties en-
countered are peculiar. The line is bent in two pieces at
right angles, and there are curves and serious undulations
of the most trying character. In the length of five miles
there are 112 posts. The rope is of charcoal iron, and two
inches in circumference. The iron boxes run their course
of five miles in about an hour. It is a 16-horse power
engine which sets the whole in motion. The line is capa-
ble of delivering two hundred and forty tons per day
of ten hours. The endless wire rope, which is the
characteristic of the system, is supported on a series of
pulleys carried by substantial posts, which are ordinarily
300 ft. apart. Where necessary, longer space, say of
1,000 ft., may be taken. At one end of the line the rope
passes round a drum, driven by whatever power is used,
at the rate of from four to eight miles an hour. The
boxes carrying the load are hung on the rope at the load-
ing end, by means of a special attachment which enables
it to pass the pulleys and posts with perfect ease ; the
boxes carry from one to ten hundredweight each ; the
delivery is at the rate of 100 boxes per hour. The loading
and discharging arrangements, like the proportions of the
lines themselves can be varied to any extent, to suit the
requirements of any particular trade or district. The
carrying power ranges from 10 to 1,000 tons per day. A
special arrangement of rails at the end of thane is made,
which for the moment detaches the cargo-box from the
influence of the rope, shifts it in any. direction required,
yet allows of a resumption of its position on the rope at
will, so that the succession being continuous, the rope
never stops. Sharp or sudden curves, as at Brighton,
are easily passed, and inclines of one in six or seven
are admissible. It will be perceived that, although
in a long line steam power would be necessary,
water or horses in a limited application of the system
would suffice. Among the manifold advantages attending
the syttem are these :—ln cross and hilly districts there
would by little increase of expense, where the cost of any-
thing in nature of a road would be increased tenfold. In
point of fact no power is lost on the undulating ground,
as the descending helps the ascending loads. The only
ground occupied is for the planting of the posts and the
termini. The system seems particularly adapted
to short transport from mines to railways, the
landing or shipping of goods in harbours and road-
steads, and the carriage of agricultural produce on farms.
In lines terminating on the seaboard there would be great
facility for taking goods to or from the vessels without the
medium of the lighter. There are lines at present at
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, France (six), and Pesth, and others
are in course of construction in Peru, New Zealand,
Brazil, Italy, Sweden, and Barking Creek. As compared
with other modes of transit the cost is remarkably small.
In the colonies and foreign countries the system promises
to be of most extensive application. The tramway
will be at work during the Review on Monday.—Daily
News.

Since the 4th of November, 1809, the Bank of
England rate of discount has been 3 per cent.
The United States Government have sent an
officer to Yokohama, Japan, to make a full inquiry re-
specting the collision between the Bombay and the Oneida
off that port.
A NEiV SPECIES OF PIG.—A farmer wrote as
follows to a distinguished scientific agriculturist to whom
he felt under obligations for introducing a variety of swine ;
"Respected sir, I went yesterday to the cattle show.
I found several pigs of your species. There was a great
variety of hogs, and I was astonished at not seeing' you
there."

CELEBRATION OF A NEW YEAR'S DAY IN CON-
STANTINOPLE.—Saturday, the 2nd instant, was the Ist of D
Moharem, the Mussu]man New Year's ay-1287. A
levee was held at the palace on Sunday, which was
observed as a general holiday at all the public offices.
During the coming week the Sultan will make his cus-
stomary yearly visit to the Porte, to hear read the annual
return of the Council of State, when his Majesty is
expected to deliver an allocution. Monday, the 10th of
the month, is the anniversary of the death of Hassan and
Hussein, on which the chief religious ceremony of the
year takes place among the Persians.—Levant Herald.
DIED OF JOY.—In January, 1807, an institution
was opened at Belvedere-on-Thames as an asylum for
such old sailors as must otherwise go to the workhouse.
Those who are fortunate enough to get elected are pro-
vided for for the remainder of their lives, and, as may be
supposed, the prize is eagerly sought for. A few days ago
one of the elections came off, at which there were twenty
vacancies, and the candidates were 273 in number. Wm.
Moses Blanchard, who had been four years lying in hope
of being elected, was one of the fortunate ones who was
to have been received into the house, but on his daughter
reporting his good luck to him, he was so overjoyed that
he died. Walter Ryan also, on being informed that he
was elected to receive the out-pension, got so excited that
he died suddenly.
FROZEN TO DEATH ON THE PRAIRIEs.--The
Blue Earth City (Minnesota) Post, of the 26th of March,
gives the details of the freesing to death in the town of
Seely, Blue Earth County, of the wife and three children
of A. L. Bates. Mr. Bates lived on the prairie, some
distance from any other habitation. During the preva-
lence of a fierce storm the house took fire and was
burned to the ground, and before assistance could
be obtained to relieve the family they perished with
cold. Mr. Bates returned with assistance, but not before
his wife had breathed her last. The same paper gives an
account of the freezing to death during the same storm
of two brothers, named Colman, living at Lake Bell,
Martin County, Minnesota, of a German, named Dun-
hardt, and a Norwegian, name unknown, at Spencer,
Clay County, Iowa; of three other men, names unknown,
at Cherokee, lowa, and another at Herron Lake, Jackson
County, lowa.
TRAINING OF A POETICAL lump IN SOLITUDE.—
In tliis humble situation Beattie spent the years between
1753 and 1758. In the almost total want of society, he
devoted himself alternately to useful study and to poetical
recreation. It was at this period of his life his supreme
delight to saunter in the fields the livelong night, con-
templating the sky and marking the approach of day. At
a small distance from the place of his residence a deep
and extensive glen, finely clothed with wood, runs up
into the mountains. Thither he frequently repaired;
and there several of his earliest pieces were written.
From that wild and romantic spot he drew, as from the
life, some of the finest descriptions and most beautiful
pictures of nature that occur in his poetical compo-
sitions. It is related that, on one occasion, having
lain down early in the morning on the bank of his favou-
rite rivulet, adjoining to his mother's house, he had fallen
asleep; on awaking it was not without astonishment that
he found he had been walking in his sleep, and that he
was then at a considerable distance (about a mile and a
half) from the place where he had lain down. On his way
back to that spot he passed some labourers, and inquiring
of them if they had seen him walking along, they told him
that they had, with his head hanging down, as if looking
for something he had lost. Such an incident, though by
no means unexampled, shews to what a degree Beattie
was now the creature of impulse and imagination. He
was, indeed, exactly the fanciful being whom he has
described in " The Minstrel."—Scottish Biographical Dic-
tionary.
THE SUPPLY OF SULPHUR.—SiciIy has hitherto
supplied the world with most of the sulphur it consumes,
extracting it from the sides of Mount Etna ; but a rival
is arising in California. The Sulphur Works on Clear
Lake produce all the Pacific Coast can consume—about
four tons daily. Clear Lake occupies the crater of an
extinct volcano, having a sulphur bed about eight miles
from the southern end on the eastern shore, the
bank resembling ashes, with numerous alkaline and
sulphur springs and vent-holes, whence fumes issue,
surrounded by crystals of pure sulphur. The
earth, containing about fifty per cent. of sulphur, is placed
in an inch retort, which is heated to a high temperature,
so that the sulphur is driven off in fumes into a receiver,
where it settles in a liquid form, and runs out into pine
boxes two feet long and a foot square. It is as pure as
the Sicilian brimstone, but the latter comes in sticks,
which are more convenient for handling when small pieces
are wanted. The adjacent country bears marks of vol-
canic action, the lake, the geysers, and St. Helena forming
a triangle each about twenty-five miles frOrn the other two.
The vent-hole fumes are now carried into a large chamber., where they condense into a flaky snow-like condition, and
eight new quicksilver and sulphur mines have been opened
up. As the three in operation employ over 300 men, it is
calculated that the eight new ones will increase the num-
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jegiaviaeuanbreimnhsatonneeedmv_asaluceontsouintheed district.0
fornia at a cost of four cents per pound. Now 2,000,0001b5.
of
native m sulphuranuic,
facture nitric, .
and muriatic acids are used, all of

THE ACCOUCHMENT "OF PRINCESS CHRISTIAN.
It is expected that the acoucheinent of her Royal High-
ness Princess Christian will take place in May.
The Northern Daily Express notices the arrival of
Mr. George Hudson (the whilome Railway King) at Sun-
derland. He was accompanied by Mr. Hugh Taylor and
Mr. Foster, of York, and received by the Mayor of
Sunderland and several other gentlemen at.
the Statkctu.
baud has been arranged in honourofila yi