Scientific Notes [pp. 379-380]

LITERATURE, SCIE,NCE, AzVD ART.
my masters,' says the Bard of Avon.'Ere my muse was in her teens,
in the first heir of my invention, I wrote:
The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light.'
There is a momentary lull, but again the murmur swells, fresh claimants springing up like the warriors from Cadmean teeth."
Those of our readers who perused the paper on Eliot's Indian
Bible, in a recent number of the JOURNAL, will be interested in the
following extract from an old manuscript written nearly two hundred
years ago, soon after the time of Richard Nicolls, who was governor
of New York from 1664 to 1668. A party of Mohawks brought a
number of Natick Indians prisoners to Albany from near Sudbury,
Mass., in 1678. Captain Salisbury, commander at the post, reporting
the circumstance to his superiors, says: "I doe presume they are Praying Indians, because there is one amongst them that brought ye Indian
Bible here in Governor Nicholls' time."
,$itutinfit'4-lt~e5.
THE thermometers of meteorological observatories can only give exact
indications when placed in the open air at a certain distance from
any dwelling. When the observer desires to keep a correct statement of
the changes and fluctuations, he is compelled to leave his office and expose himself to the extremes of heat and cold and the inconvenience of
the night air. M. IIerv 6 Mangon says: "I have endeavored to render the
reading of ordinary thermometers more easy by affording the means of
doing so, by night or day, without requiring observers to leave the
shelter of their offices. The glasses of our thermometers for taking observations are too fine, and their divisions too minute, to permit of their
being read at the distance of forty or fifty yards, even by the aid of
powerful glasses. This difficulty, however, I have surmounted in a
very simple way. By placing the thermometer almost upon the principal focus of a large-sized, common, optical lens, it can be easily read,
a great way off, by the aid of a small glass, or even with the naked eye.
The observations can thus be made from the inside of the observatory
by properly arranging the thermometer and the lens. There still remakied the question of lighting the instrument for night-observations,
without requiring the observer to proceed out-of doors, which, 1 am
happy to say, I have likewise succeeded in solving. To attain this object, I use a thermometer, the glass of which is a real Geissler tube.
By sending the current of a very small induction bobbin, at the proper
time, from the inside of the observatory to the thermometer, the glass
is illuminated internally, and permits the observer to distinguish, with
perfect clearness, the summit of the mercury column, the divisions, and
figures engraved upon the glass. By using a very weak current, such as
that of a bichromate pile, the zinc of which is only immersed a few
millimetres, the heating undergone during the period of an observation
is quite imperceptible."
Whoever has paid attention to any liquid, boiling in a glass vase, has
doubtless remarked that the bells of steam issue from a small number
of points, sometimes, indeed, from a single one. It is not on account of the
temperature of these points being higher than that of the other places,
that this difference arises; in most cases, a slight spot or small projection may be observed, around which the steam-bells are formed.
M. Thomlinson, basing himself upon this observation, regards a liquid
at the boil as a solution having an excess of its own vapor, and he
thought that its vaporization might be accelerated, exactly as crystallization in a solution having an excess of saline matter is precipitated, by
introducing into it a solid nucleus. Among the substances that may be
used for this end, coke and vegetable carbon or charcoal are the most
active, the experiments made by M. Thomlinson being calculated to encourage manufacturers to put one or two bushels of either into each
steam-boiler. Thus, in simply heating water in an earthen vase, nine
hundred and ninety-five grains are evaporated in twenty minutes, but,
after adding a few pieces of coke, the quantity evaporated in the same
time amounts to eleven hundred and thirty grains. An experiment made with charcoal was still more striking in its results. In
this case, the quantity of water vaporized was increased more than a
quarter by the introduction of a few pieces of vegetable charcoal into
the liquid. These experiments were made under ordinary atmospheric
pressure, and it is probable they would give still better results if they
were placed under more considerable pressure. An indirect advantage
may also arise from the use of this system, which is certainly not without its importance, viz., that coke or charcoal deposited in boilers will
efficaciously prevent the deposit of incrustations in the bottom, and likewise the loss of heat that this deposit occasions. Those facts, to which
M. Thomlinson draws attention, are susceptible of numerous practical
applications.
A woman in Paris was lately found in a garret, by her neighbors, almost asphyxiated from the effects of a charcoal fire, which had been
smouldering during the night in her room. Every possible effort was
made to restore her to her senses, but only with partial success, her
blood circulating so slugglishly for two days that her life was despaired
of. Dr. Limousin, as a last resource, was sent for; he made her inhale,
on the first day, three gallons of pure oxygen gas; on the second day,
she inhaled six gallons; and, on the third day, she was completely restored, her blood circulating freely, and every trace of carbonic intoxication having disappeared.
NArt Ibtes.
N the forlorn absence of public galleries and collections, which con fers upon New York a disreputable eminence among cities of either
hemisphere, there remains nothing better for the amateur than a stroll
into the stores of the dealers. In the way of paintings, photographs,.
chromo-lithographs, and engravings-to say nothing of statuettesthere is always something in these establishments worth a look; and
we notice with pleasure that many visitors are to be found in quiet enjoyment of them. Last week, we carried our readers into a well-known
shop in Broadway. Let us now invite them to Goupil's in the Fifth
Avenue, where Mr. Knoedler has on hand several works of high class,
that are new and merit attention.
The newest and most brilliant, though by no means the best, is a
picture in oil by Vibert, a Parisian, who has made his mark. It is of
the right kind for this market, wherein-apart from the lure of a great
artist's name, which commands a certain sale-there are wealthy purchasers in abundance, whose taste leans to all that is showy. And a
very pleasant subject this is-a group of passengers, in a Spanish innyard, awaiting the departure of a diligence. There are four principal
figures. A bride and bridegroom, for such they seem to be, are the
most conspicuous —young and extremely handsome both, and decked
in all the finery of Andalusian peasant costume. Nothing more gay and
jaunty could titillate the eye. They lean, in careless attitude, upon an
old stone watering-trough, the man looking with admiration at the fair
face of his partner, and she meanwhile listening to a jest or a compliment apparently addressed to her by a by-stander. This latter, who is
only in degree less gorgeously attired than the pair, stands with his
back to the spectator, and completes the central group. A little nearerto the foreground, apart, and in striking contrast with all this bravery
of apparel, sits a priest, in black, grim and taciturn. His eyes are fixed
upon an open volume in his hand, though his frown might indicate an
aversion to the vanities displayed before him, albeit the trunk at his
feet, partly covered by his gown, and the long paper hat-box across his
knee, suggest that neither does he go on his travels without some
thought for his raiment. The accessories are somewhat slurred; but
the leading portions are skilfully treated, and combine to make up a
very attractive work.
With admiration of a different and higher grade, you may turn, in
the next place, to a freshly-imported Bouguereau, and one that will aid
in maintaining his just reputation. It is an upright canvas of large
size; the subject, a three-quarters'-length Roman woman, in her bright
local garb, holding on her arm a sleeping infant, whose face and hands
only are nude. The mother —or nurse, it may be, for the babe is wI ondrous fair —bends over it with a fond smile, her own head being thus
thrown into profile. It is Bouguereau all over, in the definite tints-the
red, the yellow, the white, broadly contrasted, but blent harmoniously
-in the careful drawing, in the tenderness of touch, where such is requisite, in the prevailing sentiment that takes immediate hold of one's
sympathies. But the subtle power and finer qualities of this artist are
perhaps even more pointedly manifest in another picture from his easel,
that has been bfor some time past an ornament of Mr. Knoedler's showroom. We allude to the'Norman Fisher-girl." Devoid of any attempt at finish, and unpleasantly cold in tone, this sketch in oil of the
demure and pensive young Dieppoise, walking along the sea-shore with
her shlrimping-net over her shoulder, is really a masterpiece of effect
produced by able use of the simplest materials. " With what do you
mix your colors? " said an envious tyro to a celebrated painter. " With
brains, sir," was the answer. So might it truly be said of Bouguereau,
that pure sentiment is mixed up in all that comes from his hand.
Turn to another canvas, small in size, but clever and satisfactory.
Of its contributor, Schreyer, it might almost be asserted that he has
done with his brush, in a measure, what the dual writers ErckmannChatrian have done with their pens —he has stripped the battle-field of
much false glory, and depicted it in all its ghastliness. Not so, how —
ever, in this instance. In the front rank of animal-painters, Schreyer
neither rivals herein the military glitter of Horace Vernet, nor reminds
you of those equine caricatures, seriously designed by poor Alfred de
Dreux, who drew horses all his life, and never drew one correctly. This
charming composition is nothing more than a group of Arabs, with their
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