Professor Henry Morton, of Philadelphia, has been elected to the newly- create.Professorship of mechanics, in the University of Pennsylvania. 'The recently discovered gold mines in the Hoosaympa district have been opened, and huge parties of miners are among them from White Pine. Several mechanics in Colt's arm<Yry, at Hartford, have contractcd to go to Russia to make gu^for that Government. They will get more pay there and expect to live cheaper than here. An extensive ledge of feldspar has beer. discovered at Georgetown, Me. Asitisvaluable for the manufacture of porcelain measures are to be taken to have it thrown into the market. The business of canning sweet corn has begun n Maine. Millions of cans ill t up in the State, though the yield of corn for the purpose is much below the average in amount per acre. It is said that a little carbolic acid dissolved in the water used to moisten a hetstone, or a grindstone, will greatly increase the friction and promote the action of the stone upon the steel instrument. A Berlin dispatch states that the Federal Telegraph Administration of the North German States will hereafter forward all messages for America by way of Valentia, owing to the “ restrictions” of the Frencli Atlantic Cable Company. A law has been passed in tile Netherlands canceling the old patent law of lS17,and,consequently,abolishing patents for inventions there. Though all existing patents remain in force, no new ones have been granted since the 1st day of August, 1869. Les “lIondes learns with pleasure that the directors of the Transatlantic French Steam Navigation Company have entered into a contract for supplying to their vessels, magneto-electric machines and other requisite apparatus for exhibiting on board, during the night-time, electric lights as signals. A man digging a well in Ohio was overcome by the gas and dropped insensible. A brave Welsh woman saw what had occurred, and taking a handkerchief saturated with camphor, went into the well and spread it over the man's face, fastened a rope round his body, and then returning to the surface pulled him out and nursed himuntil he recovered. She did all the work unaided and alone. A Pomological Congress of the United States is to meet at Philadelphia, and there will be given at the same time at the Horticultural Hall, a national exhibition of the fruits of America. All the states of the Union, says the Press, will be represented by the best specimens their orchards and gardens and woods can send. It Is expected that a display of ten thousand dishes of rare and choice fruit, apples, pears, grapes, and berries, will be made. The preparatory surveys of the canal from the North Sea to the Baltic, are at present terminated. The work is not to be intrusted to a private company, as was at first contemplated, but is to he executed at the cost of the State. The cost is estimated at thirty millions ofthalers. Branch canals are to be united to the main line in order to increase its commercial value. The elate at which operations will commence is not yetfixed, butitis not expected that it will be available for large vessels before six or eight years. The new earth dams of the Kohanzie water works, at Danbury, Conn., are carefully constructed. Pure water will be secured by an arrangement for taking the supply from the surface of the pond. This is a tower, built of stone outside and of brick inside. The water wid pass into this at the surface, and then into the supply pipe. It has been demonstrated that the impurity existing in the Kohanzie water during the summer months is confined to the bottom of the pond, and water obtained from the surface is free from it, ew are able to give a satisfactory account of what becomes of their old shoes after having committed.them to the dust heap. Cosmos has been looking into the question, and has found out that many of thrm are cut up into small pieces and put for II couple of days into chloride of sulphur. The leather has become hard and brittle about the end of that period, and is withdrawn from the action of the chloride of sulphur, washed with .water, dried, and ground to powder. The powder is mixed with ghellac or some good glue, and is pressed into molds and formed into combs, buttons, knifehafts, and other useful articles. Mechanical Engravings, Such as embellish the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, are generally superior to those of any similar publication, either in this country or in Europe. They are executed by our own artists,who have had long experience in this branch of art, and who work exclusively for us. There is one pertinent fact in connection with the preparation and publication of an illustration in our columns, that needs to be better understood by inventors and manu facturers who often pursue a short-sighted policy in bringing their improve ments to public notice. They go to a large expense in printing and circu ating handbills, which few care either to read or preserve. row, we undertake to say, that the cost of a first-class engraving, done by our own artists and printed in one issue of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, will amount to less than one-half the sum that would have to be expended on a poorer illustration, printed in the same number of circulars,and on a sheet of paper in size equal to one page of our journal. A printed handbill has no permanent value. Thousands of volumes of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN are bound and preserved for future reference—beside, weevery issue of our paper is read by no fewer than one hundred thousand persons. Parties who desire to have their inventions illustrated can address the undersigned,who are also prepared to send artists to make sketches of manufacturing establishments, with a view to their publication in the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN For particulars addressMUNN&CO., 37 Park How,New York.