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Since reading Maury's views upon the causes and nature of cyclones and monsoons, I see my Lafayette trip, of last August, the evidences of those phenomena while hovering over Grand Praire, and it gives me an expiation of the "persistent nimubs cloud straum" in that tranquil atmosphere,which appeared so enigmatical to me at the time. Over the Grand Prairie of Indiana a cloud formed of a calm Summer's day would posses all the elements of persistence that compose the equatorial cloud belt. It may moreover be, or become the source of a great and violent thunderstorm and hurricane. I think it was that which caused the great storm that involved our attempted descent after the St. Louis balloon trip on the first and second of July last. I am sure that that storm did not start west of our point of departure; and it was just such a hot, calm day as would produce a local cloud, and the incipient nucleus of a great thunderstorm. The very hot and calm day of the Lafayette balloon trip also produced a storm of considerable magnitude, which I noticed in my railroad transit from Crawfordsville, Ind., to Pittsburg, after I landed with the Jupiter. These storms are led along, like Habakuk was by the hair of his head (if you will allow me the comparison), by the current which grasps them at their tops, and always blows from west to east in the upper air. The atmosphere is so subtle and mobile that it requires a long and close study of its elements and characteristics before we can appreciate its capacities, powers, and offices fully. That a cubic foot of this invisible fluid should weigh 1 1/4 ounce, nearly, is of itself a wonder. Displace a bulk of it equal to a balloon of 200 feet diameter, and we gain a buoyant force and uplifting power of 157 tuns. Now, to make a balloon of that size would be no difficult task, or even one of 400 feet diameter, which would have a lifting and carrying power of 1,256 tuns. A balloon of such dimensions would have a superfice of 502,656 square feet, and if made of sheet copper, weighing one pound per square foot, would have a lifting and carrying power of over two millions of pounds, capable of transporting at a mile per minute speed, allowing for weight of gas, ballast, provisions, &c., ten thousand human passengers. With these resources before us, promising of so much human comforts, and facilities for traversing the lands and the seas in such a manner as to make the journeys enjoyments of the rarest kind - of bringing us into a field of contemplation that gives us a more exalted idea of the God-designed destiny of man, because he has made us rational and progressive creatures - so constituted that we are ever looking forward and upward, with an inherent desire to move onward, and always under the impression that we are fulfilling the behests of an Allruling Providence, wherein we are to be guided by the laws of nature, and wherefrom we can only be justified in the forward march of civilization and refinement. The facile and cheap methods of evolving hydrogen gas-the rapidly improving genius of mechanical constructions-the startling and developing elemental resources of the atmosphere in its circulation and currents, as being systematized to human comprehension by the deep and persevering mind of Maury-all point to a not very remote future when the realization of aerial travel will become as thorough and settled as is that of railroad and steamboat travel now, and independent of the iron-clattering, nerve-jarring, and dust-saturating agonies of the one, and the nauseating grease-smelling and wave-tumbling of the other. The Scientific American of this week hits your "lightning rod" with as much efficiency as the rod does the lightning in a thunder gust. I have prepared for our little Daily the argument I put into THE TRIBUNE last August, a year ago, about rods, with additional remarks, specially for The Scientific American, which I want him to confute. The Scientific American is good authority in general, but it is sometimes not fully correct in its promulgations. Lancaster, Pa., Nov., 1859. JOHN WISE THINGS IN NEW-YORK. New York, April 18, 1860 In the city of New-York extremes of all kinds meet. It is the drollest place, the most serious place, the most religious place, the vilest place, the most ingenious place, the most stupid place, the kindest place, the most brutal place, in short, the intensest place in every thing pertaining to American modes and manners, on the whole continent of the western world. While I thought long ago of writing you a letter about things in New York, I have all the while been puzzled at what point to begin. Such a fussing, whizzing, driving, trotting, jostling, crowding, buzzing and jumbling together, and through-each-other of things in general, surpasses the understanding of any staid citizen from any place as quiet and sober as the old "Inland City." Well, N. York is the dearest place to live in in the Union ; and again, it is the cheapest place to live in of any city in the Union if you choose to make it so. Well, now I have a starting point, and this may be of some use to your readers, who, like myself, are not possessed of an overloaded amount of this world's goods. I stop at a hotel "on the European plan." There are a number of these of good repute. There is Lovejoy's, Sweeney's French's Girard House, & c. I have a room on the first floor for which I pay fifty cents per day. It contains a good clean bed, a dressing bureau, a washstand, with a complete set of washing tools ; the room is handsomely carpeted - inside and outside shutters, with two chairs slightly afflicted with lumbago. The feeding at my house is not of the best of this kind of houses, so I hunted one of the best in the city. Knowing that all Lancaster-raised stock like to feed well, I learned that at Crook's, No. 80, Chatham-st, there were five Lancasterians bedding and boarding, and as they were all printers, and as it is generally conceded that printers are a wide-a-wake sort of craftsmen, I took it for granted that Crooks' must be a good, as well as an economical place to feed at. For breakfast I take wheat cakes and tea. The cakes are of the first order, and the tear really smells and tastes like genuine China tea ; this, with plenty of sweet butter sugar and milk for the tea, costs the reasonable sum of nine cents. For dinner I take roast-beef, with a baked or boiled apple dumpling, with good wine-flavoured sauce, costing the round sum of twelve cents (a York shilling.) For supper I take tea and bread and butter, with a fish-ball, which costs nine cents. So you see it costs me the sum of eighty cents a day to live in the grandest and squalidest city in the Union. This evening as I was coming from my supper at 6ΒΌ o'clock, p. m., and walking down Chatham street, I thought the flood-gates of humanity had been loosed. Such a throng of men, women and children - solid columns of them, and mass propelling mass up Chatham-st., myriads of them, really astounded me. I never saw the like before. The adjournment of a hard-cider log-cabin Tippeeanoe convention of times gone by in Lancaster, was no circumstance to the moving throng. I stood and gazed on this busy throng, and from their costume and physique, I saw they belonged to the toiling millions. But whence come they? was still a query with me. At length my eye caught sight of a friendly old countenance which was fixed upon the scene like my own, and in friendly inquiry I said, my dear friend, from whence comes this mighty throng of humanity? "Coming from work," said my friend. Now, be it known from where I stood to the Battery end of the city, was not one-tenth of the whole length of the town, and this only a single main thoroughfare, and yet at one glance there were to be seen not less than six thousand of these working people, with not less than six thousand more pressing on behind ; all between Chambers street and the south end of the City Hall Park, a distance of about four Lancaster squares; and from this you nay have an idea of animated nature in the City of Gotham, when the people are "coming from work." Your Lancaster types work in the Daily Transcript office, and they get eleven and twelve dollars per week, but they have to work all in the night. There is a new daily paper to be started here in a few weeks. I understand that it is to be a model paper. Not one that advertises model artist exhibitions, and teeming with the kind of literature that smacks daily of the Heenans, Morrisseys, Tom Hyers, and reeking with details that shock the sensibilities of ordinary strong nerves, but one of truth, soberness, and good current news. It will, under this rule, have to find its patronage out of New York, if I may judge of the taste and desires of this community by what I daily see and hear. If the Devil can tend to all the business matter of this city that comes legitimately within his province, his capacity for executing work must be greater than a Devil of Milton's model would seem to possess. While New York possesses some of the best works of art, it also contains in equal degree the vereist counterfeits of things. To all unsophisticated people who ever intend to come here, I would say, beware. Before you know what you are about, you will be cheated out of your eyes. The counterfeit of every thing is always so good looking, that if you are not a keen judge, you will be bit. Yesterday I went to Barnum's Museum. There I saw a monster black sea-lion. His coat was black as charcoal, and when he blustered out of his water den he would roar for all the world like an African lion. He is of the seal species. A small one of a bay color in another water box, about as big as a calf, was very docile, and he would reach out his flapper to shake hands when his keeper bid him do so. Then there was exhibited every twenty minutes upon a platform his Lusus Nature of "WHAT IS IT." A human monkey sort of a creature, which the show bills affirms was caught in Central Africa, but which, I am credibly informed, is nothing but an idiotic negro boy picked up from the Five Points. Nevertheless it is a strong resemblance of a man-monkey. Barnum was pointed out to me. He is a thoughtful, intellectual looking man. He looks like a United States Senator ought to look, and would be readily picked out for one in an intellectual crowd. If I ever get out of this Babylon and home again, I will tell you more about this place than I could write, or wish to write, for a family newspaper. OBSERVER. LOCAL INTELLIGENCE ---------- ARE LIGHTNING RODS PROTECTIVE: We take pleasure in calling the attention of our readers to the following communication from our esteemed fellow-citizen, Prof. JOHN WISE, and hope any of them who can do so would respond to the interrogatories upon which he desires information. [For The Evening Express.] MR. EDITOR: The lightning-rod question is eliciting a considerable amount of discussion at the present time - many observant persons adopting the opinion that rods are not only useless, but that they are actually instrumental in bringing destruction upon the places which they design to protect. For the purpose of bringing as much matter of fact as possible to the elucidation of the question - and thus bring to the certain knowledge of men the utility or inutility of lightning rods - I would ask your assistance in extending a request to the people of our densely populated county and to others, to furnish me with answers to the following interrogatories : Has your house, barn or outhouses ever been struck with lightning ? Was there a rod on any of them, and if there was, how was it erected ? What day of the year and hour of the day was it struck? What were the effects of the stroke? Did the building take fire or not? Were the clouds high or low at the time? Was it raining at the time of the stroke? If raining, was it in torrents or otherwise? Where your rod has been struck, how was the road served - was it melted, twisted, wrenched out of its fastenings, or otherwise? Did any of the property struck burn down? By answering me these questions, the observers will confer a favor on science, and a general good on the community at large. Within the borders of our own county a great amount of useful information on this important subject lies scattered abroad, and if the friends of progress and knowledge will send me answers to the above interrogatories, and any other information relative to the matter, I will collaborate it into a form for general distribution and general good. Address JOHN WISE, Lancaster, Pa. P.S. - Our city and county papers will aid the advancement of knowledge by requesting the above aid. The discussion which followed was exceedingly interesting. It was commenced by Mr. Wise, who was followed by Mr. Ditmars, Rev. H. Harbaugh, Prof. Wickersham, Mr. Cadwell, Prof. Porter, Mr. Eichelberger, Prof. Apple, and Dr. Nevin. ------------- My argument on the education of females, at the last Howard Evening, was this: Human beings are born with capacity for know;edge. That the capacity of the offspring is governed by the joint capacity of its progenitors. That the mother is the chief progenitor - the mould or matrix, mentally and physically, in which the offspring is moulded. That intuition is the immediate result of a finely organized nervous system. That education develops the power of the nervous system - the brain. That development is a natural law of progress. A priori - that the female should be highly cultivated - educated - in order to produce offspring of the highest capacity. Mathematical reasoning being the highest order of intelligence, and woman being pre-eminently qualified for its exercise, she should, of necessity, be educated therein, that while she is matriculating her offspring, the nervous power then being most intensified, the offspring will inherit capacity agreeable to the powers of the progenitors. Cicero says, "Cultivation is as necessary to the mind as food is to the body." Philosophy is ever coy, ever timid, ever amiable - these are all effects of acutely sensitive nervous systems, and woman possessing these sensibilities in her sexual inheritance, the Creator has formed her for the special office of lifting up humanity in the scale of intelligence, from the study of nature to nature's God. J. WISE. BALLOONING - A Canadian Opinion of Prof. Wise: The Editor of the Kingston (Canada) Daily News has received a copy of Mr. Wise's "History of Aeronautics," and speaks in the following flattering terms of the work and its author: "The famous American aeronaut, Prof. John Wise, is the author of a very comprehensive work on aerostation, a copy of which he has sent us, comprising a history of ballooning and authentic narratives of experiments made in modern times. His own experience is narrated in the work, and the book is rendered complete by copious instructions and formulae for the construction of balloons and all the paraphernalia of the aeronaut. The book is a very readable one, the historical part and his own narrations particularly so, and the work may be safely recommended as authoritative in all matters pertaining to the author's special profession. It may be mentioned here that Mr. Wise is engaged to make a balloon ascension in this city at an early period. Our people were on the tip-toe of excitement for weeks before the opening of the late Provincial Exhibition, at the ascensions with which the committee and management proposed to entertain our citizens and visitors. But the ascension, at least in one instance, was frustrated by unforeseen causes; and Kingston continues, as before, to be a city where a yet no balloon experiments have been made. Prof. Wise, it is no exaggeration to state, stands at the head of his profession. His scientific attainments and his many discoveries in connection with the art, together with an active experience extending over a period of almost a quarter of a century, entitle him to be regarded as an aeronaut whose ascensions would be sure to be everything desirable, and fully realize all expectations. When the Professor makes his appearance among us we doubt not that he will
