RRIER, the French astronomer, has published
a strong appeal in favor of throwing the electric telegraph open to the
public in France, as it has been in the United States. At present it is
guarded by the government as a close monopoly. His paper contains a good
deal of interesting matter in regard to this greatest of modern
inventions.----MEINHOLD, the author of the "Amber Witch," has lately
been fined and imprisoned for slandering a brother clergyman. This is
the second instance in which he has been convicted of this
offense.----M. GUIZOT has addressed a long letter to each of the five
classes of the Institute of France, to declare that he can not accept
the candidateship offered him for a seat in the Superior Council of
Public Instruction.----Sir EDWARD BULWER LYTTON is to be a candidate for
the House of Commons, with Colonel Sibthorpe, for Lincoln. He has a new
play forthcoming for the Princess's Theater.----Miss STRICKLAND has in
preparation a series of volumes on the Queens of Scotland, as a
companion to her interesting and successful work on the Queens of
England.----Sir FRANCIS KNOWLES has recently taken out a patent for
producing iron in an improved form. In blast-furnaces, as at present
constructed, the ore, the flux, and combustibles, are mixed together;
and the liberated gases of the fuel injure the quality of the iron, and
cause great waste, in the shape of slag. By the new process the ore is
to be kept separate from the sulphureous fuel in a compartment contrived
for the purpose, in the centre of the furnace, where it will be in
contact with peat only; and in this way the waste will be avoided, and a
quality of metal will be produced fully equal to the best Swedish. The
invention is likely to be one of considerable importance.----Professor
JOHNSTON, the distinguished English agriculturist, who visited this
country last year, and lectured in several of the principal cities, at a
late farmers' meeting in Berwickshire, gave a general account of the
state of agriculture in America, as it fell under his personal
observation. He represented it in the Northern States as about what it
was in Scotland eighty or ninety years ago. The land in all New England
he said had been exhausted by bad farming, and even in the Western
States the tendency of things was to the same result. He thought it
would not be long before America would be utterly unable to export wheat
to England in any large quantity.

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