e age, since, by certain American
inventions, an ordinary train may be elevated 100 feet in five
minutes, by the engine alone.

[Illustration: The Vertical Propeller.]

We have alluded to this subject in a former number, and now present
one of the several plans which have been introduced within the present
year, although we are not fully authorised to give the name of the
inventor of this particular plan. We have preferred to represent the
paddles and crank unconnected with an apparent vessel or section
thereof, but must require the reader to suppose that the line A B is
the level of the railing of the boat, and that the crank-shaft E
projects from the side, while the crank-pivot governs the motion of
the walking bar D E, and with it the paddles, which are supposed to be
just now dipping in the surface of the water. It will be understood
that the motion of the walking bar being circular, and that of the
heads of the paddles being vertical and nearly rectilinear, the motion
of the blades of the paddles must be elliptical, inclining to the
horizontal; and that the position of the paddles is kept so nearly
vertical that they will meet with less resistance in entering or
leaving the water than those of a common paddle wheel, while the
atmospheric resistance to be encountered thereby is much less. There
appears no reasonable doubt that this plan might be made to succeed
well on a larger scale, though it is very doubtful whether any of the
steamboat proprietors can be persuaded to adopt it until it has been
more thoroughly tested by experiment.

=A Great Astronomical Discovery.=

A late number of an astronomical journal published at Altona, near
Hamburg, contains a long article by Dr. Maedler, director of the
Dorpat Observatory, Russia, well known to the astronomical world, in
which he announces the extraordinary discovery of the _grand central
star or sun_, about which the universe of stars is revolving, our own
sun and system among the rest.

This discovery, the result of many years of incessant toil and
research, has been deduced by a train of reasoning and an examination
of facts scarcely to be surpassed in the annals of science.

He announces his discovery in the following language: 'I therefore
pronounce the Pleiades to be the central group of that mass of fixed
stars limited by the stratum composing the Milky Way and Alcyene as
the individual star of this group, which, among all others, combines
the greates