Morning journal and courier., 1885-09-02
EDITORIAL NOTES.

Meriden is making good progress toward raising twenty thousand dollars to build 8 city hospital. It needs one.
 A magnetic telephone and telegraph is said was invented at Fort Worth, Texas, which does away with the need of batteries It has been tried over thirty eight miles of wire, and the instrument can be made for twenty five cents, of two ounces of wire and half pound of steel. The transmitter is 8 horse shoe magnet, either pole being covered with fine wire coiled carefully. The armature is 8 disk of steel, against which the voice. is thrown and transmitted through the wire to the magnet. The size of the magnet is pro- portioned to the distance for which it is to be used.
 The woes of Pension Commissioner Black are not few. According to the Picayune of New Orleans he has turned out two highly respected Democrats and one irreproachable Republican as members of the board of ex- amining surgeons, and undertaken to appoint in their places one man now under indict- ment and two others so young to fame as to be unknown by the public. The recommen- dations of the newly made appointees were said to have been supported by Congressman elect Martin of the first Louisiana district, but that gentleman now comes to the front with denial that he ever indorsed any of them. Moreover, he declares that the origi- nal of a telegraphic recommendation of the men supposed to have been sent by him to Commissioner Black is a forgery.
 The latest official list of officers of the Ger man navy shows an enormous increase as compared with the state of things ten years ago. The number of officers in active service is now more than thrice as large as in 1878, when the plan for the formation of the navy was settled. The number of war vessels is one hundred and two, with five hundred and seventy guns. They include seven ironclad frigates and five ironclad corvettes, and the whole are manned and defended by seven teen thousand sailors, engineers and marines. Sixteen of the German war ships, with one hundred and forty-one guns and three thou sand. men, are now in waters beyond Europe, while twenty-three ships and twenty-four torpedo boats are in service in German l waters.
 Edward Burgess, of Boston, the designer of the yacht Puritan, never attempted to
 build large boat before, but had been very
 successful in designing fast small boats. He
 was invited by the Boston men who offered
 to build an American yacht to present de-
 signs; he presented but one, which with some modification was accepted. He says
 the model is the product of 8 gradual devel' | opment" of his ideas upon the subject. Bur 1 gess is a modest young man of agreeable manners and expert at free-hand drawing. The canvas for the yacht is made by the Russell mill at Plymouth and woven on a new principle, the warp and wool being of l threads of the same size so as to insure an even stretching of the duck. No pains have been spared to produce the best sail possible.
 A new sugar is now obtained from the seeds oe the Laurus persea, a tree growing in the tropics. This sugar has on previous oc- casions been noticed by chemists, but was supposed by them to be mannite. It is ex-