ng an expedition
against the Indians.

* * * * *

FERDINAND GOTTHELF HAND, Professor of Greek Literature at the University
of Jena, died on the 14th March, at the age of sixty-five. He is best
known for his work on the _AEsthetik der Foukunst_. He had filled his
professorship since 1817.

* * * * *

M. JACOBI died on the nineteenth of February at Berlin. He was well
known to the scientific world by his electro-chemical researches.

* * * * *

HANS CHRISTIAN OERSTED, the great Danish naturalist, died at Copenhagen
on the seventeenth of March, aged seventy-four. He was the son of an
apothecary of Rudkjobing, in the province of Larzeland. Fourteen days
before his death he gave a scientific lecture at the University of
Copenhagen, where he was Professor of Natural Science. He was nearly of
the same age with Thorwaldsen and Oehlenschlager. His last work, _Der
Geist in der Natur_, was not long since the subject of remark in these
pages. His fame as the discoverer of electro-magnetism, (which discovery
he made, after laborious researches, on the fifth of June 1821,) and as
a profound and genial thinker, will be immortal.

At Rudkjobing he received his early education with his brother Anders
Sandoee Oersted, a distinguished senator of Denmark, and for some years
one of the ministers of state. Christian Oersted was sent to Copenhagen
to study medicine. After completing his course of pharmacy, he directed
his powers to the study of natural philosophy, and greatly distinguished
himself in that science, of which he subsequently became University
Professor. His grand discovery of electro-magnetism led to the
subsequent development of the electric telegraph. In 1807 he wrote his
work reviving the hypothesis of the identity of magnetism and
electricity, in which he arrived at the conclusion--that "in galvanism
the force is more latent than in electricity, and still more so in
magnetism than in galvanism; it is necessary, therefore, to try whether
electricity, in its latent state, will not affect the magnetic needle."
No experiment appears, however, to have been made to determine the
question until 1820, when Oersted placed a magnetic needle within the
influence of a wire connecting the extremities with a voltaic battery.
The voltaic current was now, for the first time, observed to produce a
deviation of the magnetic needle in different