Explosive Cotton

- A specimen ofcotton so prepared as to be more inflammable than gunpowder, and e.xploding wiili a capsule, has been presented to the Basle Society of Natural History, by Professor Schonboin. According to a Swiss pnper - "Asmall quantity, equaí to the sLxteentli of an ounce, placed n a gun, curried the ball with such forcé that it periorated two planks at a distance of 58 paces; and at another time, with the same charge and at the same distance, drove a ball into a wall to the depth three and three-quarler inehes. ín some other experimente a drachrn of cotton sent a ball of three-quarters of an ounce in weight lo a distance of 200 paces, whero it penetrated a deal plank to the depih of two inches. A portion of this cotten, when placed on an nnvil and slruck with a hammer, caused a loud detonation without, however, the cotton talung fire. The cotton is of a very superior quality, and, what is most extraordinary, its inílammubla property ia not destroyed by its being thrown into water and alterwards dried."(tA correspondent of the N. Y. Tribune writes from London : "A word more. Since I have been in tViis country, no-one thing has annoyed me more, or filled me with more morlificalion, than the fact that I have had to admit every day, that however badly people were treated here, however much a pampered nobelity trampled upon the untitled poor, however ovorworked in coal-minesand cottun-factories wcre the poor operatives - that from a!l this wickedt:ess, there was to be found anovermatch in my native "Republic," in the system of Chnttel Slavery. Any allusion to this has filled me with shamo, and almost compelled me to silence. - For, although two wrongs can never make one right, and the nation or the individual who could screen its own sins under cover of another's, is in a very despicable state of mind ; still, he who would exposé the iniquities of a foreign country can do it at best with but a fecble hand, when tenfold greater exist in his own."TIio French Anti-Slavery Society has latcly addrcssed a petition to the Chamber of Deputies, prayingfor the abolition of slavery in Algeria. Ip. presenting this petition the society says : According to a document published by the Minister of War, there exists in Algeria, in the towns and localities subject to the sway of the civil govornment, about 1,300 negro slaves. Those contained in the towns and ín parts of the country subject to military rule, may he' ntimbered at about 8,000 or 9,000. - Tola! - nearly 10,000. This number is nmch reducod by the departure or the poverty of several of the higher families, remaining stationary in every part of the territory.