The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-14 00:00:00

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both at home and abroad.
The statistics of the manufacture o? clans aL
watches are made by Mr. Wood to yield some very
noteworthy particulars. His account of the succes-
sive steps towards the determination of the longitude
and the gradual perfection of the chronometer is
clear and accurate, though of necessity brief and in
a popular form. We have here, in particular, a
chapter in the history of scientific inven!ion -which
must. always retain an intere4 for British readers,
From the first offer I,y Philip Hr. in 1598 of oaf;
hundred thousand crowns for the discovery, throu,..;ll
the tentative efforts of Hooke :LA Holmes, Hrtrri-
son and kiraliam, to the ultimate precision -which
the problem has attained in the hands of Arnold,
E.,rtishaw, Froisham, ainl later scientific artis',s,
there is scarcely a name, if we exc•-pt Ituyghens,
upon th,t roll of honour to take aught from the
exclusive tired of merit which attaches to British
enterprise and skill. Here, to:), while dispensing
honour where honour is due, Mr. Wood seems to us
no less careful of the claims of historical justice.

4d..
STAMPED sd.

Eginhart, an eye-witness, of the timepiece sent by
Abdalla, King of Persia, in. A.D. 810, or by the
Caliph liaroun al-Raschid in 807, to the EmperA-
Charlemagne.

The sand-glass, in which sand took the place of
water, was a modification of the clepsydra. Thes,_.
time-keepers ;‘vere called cicpsanania. They were in
use before the time of Jerome, A.D. 331-490. The
candle-clocks of Alfred are well-kuown. Martinelli
of Spoleto, in a curious work, 1663, speaks of clocks
going by earth, air, fire, and water. In the. ire-
clock the motion w;is produced upon the principle
of a modern smoke-jack, the wheels being moved by
means of a lamp, which also gave light to the dial,
the hours being given outby the explosion of crackers
set at proper intervals. In the air clock the hours
were measured by the descent of a weight expelling
the air through an orifice in a tube, giving motion
to wheel-work. In 1669 the Grand Duke Cosmo
was astonished to see, at the Royal Society's rooms
in London, a clock the movements of which were
derived from the vicinity of a loadstone. This was
the earliest precursor of the modern electrical clock.
tt seems impossible to fix the date when clocks with
wheels and weights were first invented. Boethius is
said to have made one in the year 510 A.D.- Pope
Paul I. is reported to have sent a wheel-clock to
King Pepin in 756, We are told that the Arabians
first made clocks to strike in 801. Rabanus Maurus
is said tohave sent a clock with a bell to a friend
about the year 810. The honour of iaventinga
wheel-clock is Riso given to PacificuS, Archdeacon
of Vienna, who died in the middle of the ninth cen-
tury. Gerbert of Fleury, afterwards Pope Sylves-
ter 11., has credit for a similar invention about the
. year 1,000. It is not clear whether the allusion of
Dante is to a mechanical clock or to a sun-dial, or
whether the orologium insigne, given to Sherborne
Abbey by William the Sacrist, in the 12th century, was
of either nature. St. Paul's Cathedral, as evidenced
by the conzpotusbracerii for A.D. 1286, and its orolo-
giarius or clock-keeper, and an agreement for alter-
ing and completing the wheel-work of the cloak is
extant in Dorman French, dated Nov. 22, 1344, be-
tween the bean and Chapter and Walter the " Or-
goner" of Southwark. The great Clock-house at
Westminster was set up by Edward I. in 1288-9, out
of a fine of seven thousand marks for corruption and
malpractice levied upon Sir Ralph de Hengham,
Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Another clock-
tower was erected there by Edward 111. in 1365-6.
As ,we get upon more historical ground, Mr. Wood's
notices multiply with a profusion and a minuteness
which defy selection. There is hardly a timepiece
of any note, either for mechanical ingenuity or
artistic excellence, that he has failed to enumerate
and to describe. The great clock at Strasburg, a
woodcut of which forms the frontispiece, with its
imitation at Ratisbon, the experiments of Charles
V., the marvels of Italian, French, and Dutch taste,
those of Nuremberg, Venice, and Prague, the dis-
covery of the pendulum; the attempts at perpetual
motion, the idea of a longitude-clock, notices of the
most famous makers, the symbolical functions held
by the clock in the imagery of poets, divines,. and
moralists—these are but a few samples taken at ran-
dom from the mass of curious lore which the writer
has to offer for the entertainment of his readers.
Then comes the history of watches, or portable time
pieces. The origin of the watch, though not readily
to be assigned to any particular date, is certainly
not of the same antiquity as that of the fixed or sta-
tionary clock. The first step towards it was obvi-
ously the invention of a coiled spring, as the mo-
tive power, instead of a weight and pendulum. And
this appears to have been made during the last quar-
ter of the 15th century. Nitremberg has generally
had the credit of the earliest " pocket clocks"—
Nuremberg eggs, as they were called from their
oval shape. The same honour has been claimed by
Blois, upon less pla'ssible grounds. Even China is
sail to have introduced the invention into Germany,
whence it passed into France, and so into England.
Peter of Nuremberg, who died in 1510, as
early as 1490 made small watches of steel, which
pointed out and struck the bourn, and might be
worn on the person. By the year 1500 the manu-
facture was so far improved as to describe seconds
of time, at which period such watches were used for
astronomical purposes by
I George Purbach, a ma-
thematician of Vienna. n 1544 the guild of Mas-
ter Clockmakers in Paris secured from Francis I.
the exclusive privilege of making clocks and watches,
both large and small. Our own Clockmakers'
Company was incorporated by charter of Charles I.
1631.

HEAL LH OF LONDON.

(From the Registrar-General's Report.)

In the-week that ended on Saturday March 9 the
births registered in London and 12 other large towns
of the United Kingdom were 4,420 ; the deaths re-
gistered 3,156. The annual rate of mortality was 27
per 1,000 persons living.
_ . _

In London thebirthsof 1,109 boys and 1,044 girls,
in all 2,153 children, were registered in the week.
In the corresponding weeks of 10 years 1857-66 the
average number, corrected for increase of popula-
tion, is 2,166.

The deaths registered in London during the week
were 1,425. It was the 10th week of the year ; and
the average number of deaths for the week is, with,
a correction for increase of population, 1,580. The
deaths in the present return are less by 155 than the
estimated number.

The deaths registered during the week from.
zymotic diseases were 275, the corrected average
number being 326. Forty-three deaths occurred
from typhus ; 2in Chelsea, 2 in Hackney, 3 in St.
Luke, 4 in Bethnal-green, 3 in Stepney, 3 in
Poplar, 4 in Lambeth, and 22 in the other districts.
Deaths in the London Fever Hospital are referred
to the districts from which the patients had been
brought. Sixteen deaths from measles were regis-
tered, 7 of which occurred in the Lambeth Work-
house for children at Norwood. Thirty-two deaths
from small-pox, 27 from scarlatina, and 13 from
diarrhoea were recorded.

Dr. Frankland has analysed specimens of the
water of each London compaLy during the month
of February. In 100,000 parts he found in the
various waters foreign substances, ranging from 2 9
to 40 parts of solid matter, while the hardness
ranged from 16 in the Lambeth to 23 in the Kent
waters. Dr. Frankland has also determined the
amount of organic carbon, and of combined nitrogen
in the respective waters, and has estimated the se-
veral amounts or its equivalents from which the
changed organic matters were taken originally.
In reference to the question reported in the news-
papers, whether it was the intention of her Majesty's
Government to introduce any measure tending to
obviate the loss consequent on the theory of infec-
tion, the Secretary of State, Mr. Walpole, answered
in the negative. Should any such measure ever be
introduced, it must be extended as to obviate such
losses both of life and property as have been sus-
tained by the people of East London. The principle
of compensation applied to the accidents of railway
companies may probably admit of useful extension
to fatal accidents of another kind.

The annual rate of mortality last week was 24 per
1,000 in London, 27 in Edinburgh, 31 in Dublin,
21 in Bristol, 23 in Birmingham, 33 in Liver-
pool, 30 in Manchester, 31 in Salford, 29 in Shef-
field, 29 in Leeds, 18 in Hull, 3r) in Newcastle-upon-
Tyne, and 32 in Glasgow. The rate iu Vienna was
30 per 1,000 during the week ending the 2d inst.,
when the mean temperature was 2.5 deg. Fahrenheit
lower than in the same week in London, where the
rate was 22.

At the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, the mean
height of the barometer in the week was 29.774 in.
The barometrical reading decreased from 30.59 in.
at the beginning of week to 29.20 in. by the end of
the week. The mean temperature of the air in the
week was 35.3 deg., which is 4 9 deg. below the
average of the same week in 50 years (as deter-
mined by Mr. Gliisher). . The highest day tem-
perature was 48.7 deg. on Tuesday. The lowest
ttigbt temperature was 27.6 deg. on Sunday. The
entire range of temperature in the week was, there-
fore, 21.1 deg. The mean of the highest tempera-
tures of the water of the Thames was 40.6 deg. ;
that of the lowest was 38.0 deg. The difference
between the mean dew-point temperature and air
temperature was 4.4 deg. The mean degree of
humidity of the air was 84, complete saturation be-
ing represented by 100. Rain fell to the amount of
0.52 in., of which 0.34 in. fell on Saturday. Ac-
cording to a return furnished by the engineer of the
Metropolitan Board of Works, the average daily
quantity of sewage pumped into the river ThameS
at the southern outfall works, Crossness, was
46,386,468 gallons, or 210,755 cubic metres, equi-
valent to about as many tons by weight.

The performance of these early specimens of the
watchmaker's art was, we may suppose, very im-
perfect. About the year 1650 metallic chains were
commonly substituted for the catgut cord previothily
in 'general use. • A great improvement was intro-
duced in the year 1658 by the invention of the spiral
or pendulum spring applied to the arbor of the
balance: The first idea of this spring is attributed
to the ingeriius mathematician, Dr. Hooke. It was
thoroughly carried out in 1665, under his directions,
by the celebrated watchmaker, Thomas Tompion.
A watch of that kind made for Charles 11. bears
that date, together with the names of both inventor
and constructor. A rival claim to the invention was
indeed set up by Huyghens, and also by a French-
man, Jean Hauteville, who was born at Orleans in
1647, and died in 1724. But the priority seems
fairly to rest with our own country, as does also the
addition of the minute hand ; for, until nearly the
clas_e of the seventeenth. century, watcheS had only
one hand—namely, that which pointed to the hours.
This improvement is said to have been made
by Daniel Quare, a Quaker, and a famous clock-
maker of that period. Many old watches were then
altered to receive the spiral springs, with the addi-
tional hand, and other improvements. The first
repeater was made by Quare in 1676. In 1680
Clement, a Londoner, invented the anchor-escape-
ment, and in 1695 Tompion gave the idea of the
cylinder escapement, which plan was not, however,
brought into use till the following century. To
Brequet is due the. touch, watch, or montre de touche,
for night use or for the blind. To Nicolas Faccio,
of Duiller, who was born at Geneva or Basle, Feb-
ruary 16, 1664, belongs the merit of having first
applied the art of piercing rubies' to receive the
pivots of the balance-wheel about the year 1700.
Faccio was a clever inventor and a good scholar,
who got himself into the pillory by dtbbling in the
quackeries and sham prophecies set on foot by a
tied iu 1724 by Tompion's
escapement was uaven
m we are also indebted
apprentice, Graham, to who
for the mercurial compensation pendulu and
m the
the most valuable im-
provements ever made in clocks. The lever is only '
t I
f
ttohea
Harri-
son gave to English watches a pre-eminence over
those of every other country, and led to many
spurious iiniti,tions abroad. One of the most singu-
lar freaks of the art was the lilliputian repeater, no
bigger than a silver twopenny piece, set in a ring,
application
watch.
rioi
The inventions
Graham's
presented to George 111. in 1761 by the celebrated
Arnold, of Devereux-court, Strand. A curious watch
was made for Louis XV. by Coupson, junior, of Paris,
in 1764, in which a simple spring was substituted
for the barrel, the mainspring, the chain, and
the fusee. It required no winding, but was
set in motion for 24 hours by the simple push of a
knob, like the striking spring of a repeater. About
that period the foppery of wearing two watches
came into vogue, and was speedily followed by the
ladies. To avoid expense, however, a dummy, or
fausse montre, of some showy material often took
the place of a real one. • In Paris all-sorts of whim-
sical toys were turned out by Julien le Roy, eutitkd
e'trennes ehronometriques ;, and he was even outdone
in, this line by J. B. Baillon, horologier de la reine,
who, by lalling in -with the- luxurious andWasteftil
fashions of the Court, died the ri'ellest' \VW chmaket
in Europe. Mr. Wood's pages contain an ample
catalogue of instances in which -the skill and taste