the quarantine commissioners, to continue as at present, and to be the custodians of the fund created by this law for quarantine purposes.

Such are, in brief, the chief features of this important Bill. We deem it not only one of the most important, but one of the most commendable measures that has been before the legislature for many years. The most striking feature of the bill, and probably that which will encounter some opposition, is the erection of warehouses and wet docks on Old Orchard Shoals. Such an undertaking necessarily involves a large outlay. But when merchants consider the constant outlay to which they are subjected year after year, by the detention of their vessels for months at a time, according to the system hitherto practiced, we are constrained to believe that the structures contemplated in this Bill of the Hon. Mr. MURPHY would be remunerative to the merchants of New York, even if built by a joint stock company. According to a survey made a few years ago under the auspices of the commissioners for the removal of Quarantine, four acres of foundation can be prepared on Old Orchard Shoals for $133,000, or about onethird of the amount which can probably be realised by the sale of lands and property now belonging to or being appropriated for quarantine purposes. Besides, the merchants of New York hardly need be reminded that the great West India docks and warehouses of the Thames were erected by a joint stock company at an expense of a million and a half pounds sterling, and were yet remunerative. Quarantine warehouses and wet docks for the use of merchants on Old Orchard Shoals, for all needful quarantine purposes, can doubtless be erected for less than one-third the cost of the works on the Thames, and from funds mostly to be provided by the sale of property already appropriated by the State.

FRENCH CONVICTS.

The position of convicts in France at present occupies the attention of the government. According to the last official accounts, there are 7,690 convicts under sentence to hard labor. Of these, 1,964 are sentenced to hard labor for life; 3,070 to from five to ten years; 2,259 to from eleven to twenty years; 282 to from twenty-one to thirty years; 41 to from thirtyone to forty years; and 9 to from fifty-one years and upwards. Four thousand seven hundred and fifty were convicted of robbery, 1,027 of murder, 452 of attacks on women, 233 of incendiarism, 168 of assassination, 162 of cutting and maiming, 150 of forgery, 140 of coining, 24 of fraudulent bankruptcy, and 26 of parricide. The half of these convicts are formed of men from twenty to forty years of age. There are 123 young men of from sixteen to twenty years of age, and 270 old men above sixty. The agricultural districts supply more than half of the convicts. We find 4,595 born in the country, 2,452 born in towns, and 645 foreigners. Of the convicts 3,992 can neither read nor write; 91 alone have received superior primary instruction. Agricultural laborers and gardeners form about a sixth of the convicts. There are 1,078 navvies, 467 masons, 345 weavers, 245 domestic servants, 175 tailors, and 184 blacksmiths and locksmiths.

THE ATLANTIC CABLE AND ITS PROPOSED WESTERN TERMINUS IN NEWFOUNDLAND.

THE great question of an Atlantic electric cable appears to be again revived, and the difficulties of connecting the old and new world by its means appear once more in a fair way of being grappled with. In our January number the report of Mr. HosKYN, R. N., supplied some highly important information as to there being more than one easy road to the bed of the ocean, along with the opinion of this officer on the facility with which either might be followed, and the bugbear of the precipitous change of depth was exploded. In the opinion of the editor of the London Nautical Magazine, it was shown by him that about the parallel of Galway there is more even ground, speaking generally, than further south. And therefore that such a locality was more favorable for an electric cable.

While Mr. HoSKYN was at work on the West of Ireland, adding important soundings to his chart, Captain ORLEBAR, R. N., was busy on the eastern coast of Newfoundland, doing the same there, and has selected a favorable site of a western terminus for an electric cable at a place called New Perlican, in Trinity Bay. The Nautical Magazine, with the permission of Admiral WASHINGTON, the Hydrographer to the Admiralty, gives the result of Captain ORLEBAR's examination of the bays of Trinity and Conception, and also a reduced copy of his surveys of New Perlican, the position of all these places being shown on the small general outline of Newfoundland accompanying them.

That the failure of the first cable would be followed by another attempt, the importance of the object in view plainly foretold. Nor if this in prospect should fail, do we despair even of another. But we trust that many of the mistakes made in the detail of the last will disappear in thisand that a favorable time will be found for carrying out this very important undertaking.

We publish, therefore, at this time the report of Captain ORLEBAR, with the remarks of Mr. LEEMING; and, as a preliminary introduction, preface them with the following brief view of the meeting which took place in London on the subject of the cable, on the 12th of December:

On December 12th an extraordinary general meeting of the proprietors in this company was held at the London Tavern, for the purpose of receiving a statement from the directors, and considering a proposition for the issue of £500,000 new capital, in preferential shares of £5 each, bearing eight per cent interest, guaranteed, in case of success, by the British Government; also, to consider the further proposition, that "any further profitswhich, to a large extent, are, upon careful calculation, confidently anticipated, shall be appropriated in the first instance to paying a dividend of four per cent on the old capital, and beyond that amount to an equal division between the old and new shareholders, and the formation of a reserve fund." The Right Hon. JAMES STUART WORTLEY took the chair.

The Chairman said he had never had the honor of meeting the shareholders so hopefully as on the present occasion. That hopeful state was derived principally from the great revival of interest on that subject, and the increased disposition of the public as well as among the shareholders to en

courage the directors in their endeavors to complete that great and important work. All their privileges remained intact and perfect in their possession. From inquiries they had made the directors had ascertained that the place they had chosen in Newfoundland for the landing of the cable was the best that could be found, and no other company could obtain a better landing place. They had also greatly improved in the science of telegraphy. The danger to be apprehended to the cable was not from deep water, but from the shallow water. The company had now discovered a very smooth bed for laying the cable down, and had selected it for that purpose. The right honorable gentleman then read extracts of a letter from Sir WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN, who stated that he had every confidence in the success of the enterprise, provided the insulation was complete. He then stated that the gutta percha, as manufactured by GLASS, ELLIOTT & Co., was so impervious to water, that, under a pressure of 20,000 tons to the square inch, there was a perforation of only 0.40. The directors asked the government to survey the coast of Ireland for some miles from Valencia Bay, and they, with great consideration, granted their request. The report from that survey was that they had discovered a better and easier practicable route--a bed all that would be desired for laying a cable, in which a dip of 6 feet in 100 was the lowest, and a dip of 19 feet in 100 the greatest incline, and there were no sudden precipitous descents. The Chairman, after referring to the addition of Mr. WILLIAM BROWN, of Liverpool; Mr. CROPPER, of the Magnetic Telegraph Company; Mr. BIDDER, and the Chairman of the International Electric Telegraph Company, and others, to the directorship, concluded by referring to various other circumstances of encouragement, and moved the first resolution, authorising the directors to issue shares of £5 each, £1 payable as deposit.

Mr. C. M. SAMPSON seconded the motion, which was agreed to.

After the usual vote of thanks to the Chairman, the meeting separated. Such was the manner in which the project was received. We now append the reports and join in good wishes for the success of the enterprise:

SOUNDING OF TRINITY AND CONCEPTION BAYS, NEWFOUNDLAND.

Charlotte Town, Prince Edward Island,)
November 24th, 1862.

SIR: Herewith you will receive the charts containing the soundings taken in Trinity and Conception bays, and also eastward of St. John to the meridian of 50° W. A dotted red line indicates the route I consider best adapted for the Atlantic telegraph cable, and for which I beg to submit the following reasons:

1. You will observe that it is only the most northern line of offshore soundings that gives muddy bottom, and that this leads right into the mouth of Trinity Bay. The soundings further south are more irregular, less deep, and give stones, rock, and sand. At the entrance of Conception Bay the soundings have the same character, giving fifty fathoms less depth than Trinity Bay.

2. Also in Trinity Bay a channel with muddy bottom five miles wide and more than 130 fathoms deep can be carried from the offing more than forty-five miles up the bay to New Perlican, where it approaches within a mile of the south shore.

3. The nature of the bottom was everywhere noted, and specimens of it have been prepared for the microscope by Mr. T. J. LEEMING. The exam

ination of these specimens, and of the rocks on the shore of Trinity and Conception bays, which are of the silurian system, leads me to suppose that there is nothing on the shores, or at the bottom, likely to impair the working of the telegraph cable. On this subject I enclose a memorandum by Mr. T. J. LEEMING, naturalist.

4. Trinity Bay is twenty miles wide at the entrance, and is well lighted by Cape Bonavista and Catalina Green Island lights on the north side, and Baccalieu Island light on the south. Icebergs generally ground on the shoal banks off Catalina and Cape Bonavista, and even those that enter the bays are most frequently driven over to the north side.

5. In Fitters Cove, New Perlican, which is too exposed for vessels to anchor, the bottom is sand, with scattered rounded stones, and at its head there is a beach of fine sand, on which the telegraph cable, if protected by a sheath of iron near the land-wash, might be safely landed. It would have to traverse for half a mile a rocky slope, having a depth of thirty fathoms, decreasing to eleven fathoms; but it appears tolerably even, and is too far within the bay to be visited by icebergs, or disturbed by the ocean swell.

6. On the northern side of this bay the soundings are more irregular, and the bottom rocky, whilst there is more ocean swell and more danger from icebergs.

7. For these reasons I think the western terminus of the ocean telegraph cable should be at New Perlican, and on that account I have prepared and transmitted herewith a plan of New Perlican on the scale of four inches to the sea mile. I have, &c.,

JOHN ORLEBAR,

Captain in charge of the Newfoundland Survey.

Admiral WASHINGTON, Hydrographer, Admiralty.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS DURING THE SOUNDING OF TRINITY AND CONCEPTION BAYS, NEWFOUNDLAND, BY MR. T. J. LEEMING, NATURALIST, ETC.

Orders having been received on the 20th June to sound Trinity and Conception Bays, the steamer M. Stevenson proceeded at once to the scene of operations, and commenced sounding on the 3d of July, running the first line from Baccalieu Island to Catalina Harbor. The coast from St. John to St. Francis is very bold and rocky, especially near St. John, where the rocks are of great elevation and steeply scarped, so that, with the exception of a few sheltered bays and coves, landing is impracticable, the rocks, for the most part of the Grauwacke system, appearing of a coarse conglomerate, varying in texture from that of a sandstone to a concrete gravel.

At Flat Rock Point at Torbay the different textures appear in alternating beds with an inclination of about 10° towards the North. At Cape St. Francis the rocks are slaty, with quartz and a small quantity of copper pyrites. The shores of Trinity Bay, as far as the survey extends, are also very abrupt. The Sugar Loaf, on the South side, consists of conglomerate, with quartz veins rising sheer from the water's edge to the height of 415 feet. Bonaventure Head, on the opposite side of the bay, in like manner rises to 467 feet. Some of the other elevations taken (barometrically) as follows:-Breakheart Point, 326 feet; Hants Harbor Hill, 123 feet; Mount Misery, at New Perlican, 324 feet; Horse Chops, 263 feet. Towards Catalina and Cape Bonavista the shore is much lower, Cape Bonavista at the lighthouse being about 150 feet.

The geological character of the rocks, as far as opportunity for examination offered, was as follows:-At Bonavista, alternating layers of sandstone and concrete gravel at an inclination of 40° to N.N.W. At Catalina Harbor the rocks are slate, with a slight inclination varying from 3° to 15° towards the sea; on the N.E. side of the harbor is abundance of cubical iron pyrites, called locally "Catalina Spar." The other side of the bay is mostly of conglomerate, and towards New Perlican slates appear. The soundings, as indicated by the chart, gave mud for the middle of the bay, while the south side is more rocky and gravelly. The mud appears to be of uniform character throughout; when dry, scarcely distinguishable, but when first taken up, that towards Trinity Harbor, and thence about half way across, is rather of a higher color, while generally it is black or dark green. When washed in nitric acid and submitted to the microscope, the same appearance is every where presented, a considerable variety of siliceous organisms, among which will be found coscino discus cocconema, gallionella, cocconeius, navicula spicule, &c. Several washed portions have been in glass, which together will be found to contain all the species that have as yet been noticed in these soundings.

The mud of Conception Bay is identical in character, but not nearly so plentiful. Near Salmon Cove a cast of the lead brought up several scales having the appearance, as to metallic lustre and color, of gold; but, owing to the strong wind blowing at the time, the particles were scattered. One small scale was secured under glass and is sent along with the sounding. The shores of Conception Bay are not nearly so wild as those of Trinity.

With the exception of the extreme North of the bay about Split Point, which is of considerable elevation, the face of the rock and the natural fissures being inclined about 15° from the perpendicular, the vegetation extends nearly to the water; the greatest elevation being about Portugal Cove and towards the head of the bay. The Lookout at Portugal Cove rises to the height of 530 feet. Among the other elevations taken were Island Cove Head, 106 feet; Western Bay Head, 185 feet; Blowmedown, 182 feet; Spectacle Hill, at Cupid Cove, 308 feet; Brigus Lookout, 357 feet. At Spectacle Hill the rocks are clay slate, variegated with ferruginous layers, having a dip of about 36° towards N.W.; the direction of the natural cleavage running N.E.

At Blowmedown the slate is very fissile, and a vein of coarsely grained quartz, about eighteen inches thick, traverses the station in a N.E. and S.W. direction. Bell Island is an elevated deposit, alternating strata of flag and slaty rock, of a nearly uniform elevation, save where worn into valleys of denudation; cliffs worn nearly, and in some places beyond the perpendicular by the action of the sea; beaches of slaty and conglomerate shingle at Lance Cove and Grand Beach. It has the character of being the most fertile land in Newfoundland: Kelly Island is nearly identical in character.

The summer was unusually late this year. On the morning of the 17th June was a perfect snowstorm from the N.E., lasting from six a.m. till noon. The ice was last seen in Conception Bay on the 21st of August. A large berg was afterwards seen off St. John, October 2d; its position at 10. 30. m. a.m. was about 47° 27' N. and 52° 15′ W. There had been a fall of snow the day before.