the technical terms of the science, in which many improvements have been attempted; the whole illustrated by figures drawn under the eye of the authors. And, 4. Practical directions for collecting, preserving, &c. the objects of this department of natural history. Mr George Douglas has ready for the press, the Eleventh and Twelfth Books of Euclid, demonstrated in a concise, clear, and perspicuous manner; to which are added, the Principles of Spherical Trigonometry, distinctly demonstrated in all the cases, and the figures raised in perspective. Miss Williams, the ci devant champion of liberty, is about to commence a periodical work in France, under the sanction of the Bourbon court, and the special patronage of the Duke of Wellington, whom she flatters in courtly strains in her first number. M. de Guignes, late French resident in China, has published at Paris his Chinese, French, and Latin Dictionary. Chinese writing, says he, is composed of six elementary traces or strokes, which, added to two hundred and eight primitive characters, form two hundred and fourteen keys, under which all the characters are classed. The dictionaries published by the Chinese themselves are composed according to this system, that is, all the characters are placed according to the order of the keys, commencing with the key of one single trace, and finishing with that of seventeen traces, which is the last. Father. Basil had also arranged his Chinese and Latin Dictionary in this manner; but subsequently changed his plan, and ranged all the words according to the distribution of the Chinese sounds, and according to the order of the letters of our alphabet. The number of characters, including the duplicates, amounts in the table of Father Basil's Dictionary to 9959. M. de Guignes has made them amount to nearly 14000. All the characters which he has added are from the Chinese Dictionary entitled Tching-tsetong. The publication of the work was ordered by the Emperor Napoleon at the end of 1809, and terminated in 1813, under the auspices of his Minister of the Interior. By the law against the Liberty of the Press in France, as published Oct. 21, 1814, every writing of more than twenty sheets of printing, may be published without examination or previous censure, and whatever be the number of sheets, with respect to-1. Writings in dead tongues and foreign languages. 2. Mandates, pastoral letters, catechisms, and books of prayer. 3. Memoirs in law and processes. 4. Memoirs of literary and scientific societies, established or acknowledged by the king. 5. The opinions of members of the two chambers. With respect to writings of twenty sheets and under, if two censors at the least are of opinion that the writing is a defamatory libel, or that it may disturb the public tranquillity, or that it is contrary to the constitutional charter, or that it offends against morality, the director-general may stop the printing; but there is to be formed, at the commencement of each session of the two chambers, a committee formed of three peers, three deputies of the departments, and three commissioners of the king; and if this committee judge that the motives of suspension are insufficient, it shall be removed. No person to be a printer or bookseller without a licence from the king, and without taking the oath; and the licence may be taken from any printer or bookseller who shall have been convicted, by a legal judgment, of violating the laws and regulations. The omission by the printer of his name, and place of abode, to be punished by a fine of three thousand francs. The insertion of a false name, and false place of abode, to be punished with a fine of six thousand francs, without prejudice to way, by erasure of the original text, for their homilies and compositions. MEMOIRS OF THE PROGRESS OF MA- LORD Dundonald, who is as re markable for his eccentricity as for his genius, has at different times introduced the following discoveries and improvements to the world: 1. A superior ink, that does not run into lumps, and never changes its colour; twenty per cent. cheaper than common ink. 2. A permanent black dye, that never turns brown or rusty. to the imprisonment decreed by the penal code. Three other ordinances of subsequent dates contain various appointments and regulations. By the 1st, the general direction of the bookselling trade is placed under the superintendance of the Chancellor of France. By the 2d, nineteen ordinary censors, and twenty-two honorary censors are appointed, the former allowed a salary of 1200 francs each, and to have a further remuneration annually, in proportion to the labour they may have performed. By a 3d, none can exercise the trades of printer or bookseller without a licence.The licences heretofore granted are confirmed; the conditions on which licences will in future be issued, will be determined by a new regulation. Printers are to keep a regular register of all the works printed by them, for the inspection of the proper officers, and are to deposit one copy in the Royal Library, a second with the chancellor, a third with the minister of the interior, a fourth with the director-general of the book trade, and to deliver a fifth to the censor appointed to examine the work !!! And 7. To procure gum from the stagsuch is the deliverance of Europe!-horned lichen, equal to gum senegal, As a commentary, the Tribunal of for calico printing. Paris have condemned to five years imprisonment, and a fine of five thousand francs, Auguise, Ferra, Froulle, and Marre Roguin, the two former as editors, and the two latter as printers, of a libel entitled, "Extrait du Moniteur." Volney and the other literati in Paris are busily employed in collecting whatever remains of the records destroyed by the fire of Alexandria in the time of Julius Cæsar; also such as escaped the conflagration by order of the Caliph Omar, and, if possible, some of those Greek authors whose works were devoted to oblivion by Pope Gregory. To these may be added, the prodigious number of volumes defaced by the monks, to make 3. A method of purifying common vinegar, and making cheap vinegar of a superior quality. 4. A new method of preparing verdigrease. 5. To obtain saltpetre from putrid substances. 6. A method of improving coarse cloth. 8. A method of curing herrings equal to the Dutch. 9. A method of depriving salted provisions of their salt, by boiling in steam. 10. The use of rock salt, instead of sea salt, in the making of plate glass, and saving one third of the quantity of pearl-ash. 11. The pyro-ligneous acid purified from all its essential oil and other matters. 12. A cheap method of feeding poultry, which gives them the flavour of game. 13. An expeditious method of preparing and hardening fresh wood, for the immediate use of ships and other purposes. -Yet, -Yet, O tempora! O mores! this nobleman has long been suffering under all the privations of galling penu ry. gas, Mr Accum stated to the House of Lords, on the subject of the Gas Light Bill, that from reiterated experiments he found that a hundred weight of Newcastle coals produces from two hundred and fifty to three hundred cubic feet of gas; and with regard to the light that is obtained from the combustion of this quantity of nineteen cubic feet of the gas is equal to a pound of tallow candles. A hundred pounds of coal produce also from four to five pounds of tar upon an average; and a chaldron of coals produces sixty pounds of pitch, and thirty-two pounds of essential oil. The quantity of asphaltum from one chaldron of coals is from twenty-eight to thirty-two pounds, and of ammoniacal liquor one hundred and eighty pounds. It is determined by observation, that the mean annual quantity of rain is greatest at the equator, and decreases gradually as we approach the poles. Thus at Granada Cape François 19° 46 Calcutta Rome 12° N. lat. 126 inches. 120 22 23 81 England - 33 00 59 16 16 The precipitate of gold has been extolled by some surgeons in France as a specific for Syphilis. In the most desperate cases, half a grain, exhibited twice a day, has, say they, completely eradicated the disease in four days. It does not disorder the stomach, and, instead of disturbing the general health, seems to improve it. At Paris, on the 23d of October, a M. Malleville made two experiments in the Seine with a diving bell, upon a new principle, having no communication with the external atmosphere. He remained under water the first time about thirty-two mi- On the Inexhaustibility of the British From Thomson's Journal for December. A A chaldron weighs 1.4 tons, so that 2.8 millions of tons of coal are annuaily raised in these counties out of this formation. Now a ton of coal is very near one cubic yard; so that the yearly loss from mining amounts to 2.8 millions, or (adding a third for waste) to 3.7 millions of yards. Ac cording to this statement, the Newcastle coals may be mined to the present extent for 1500 years before they be exhausted. But from this number we must deduct the amount of the years during which they have been already wrought. We need not be afraid, then, of any sudden injury to Great Britain from the exhaustion of the coal-mines. It is necessary to keep in mind likewise, that I have taken the greatest thickness of the coal beds. Now, as this thickness is far from uniform, a considerable deduction (I should conceive one-third of the whole) must be made in order to obtain the medium thickness; so that we may state, in round numbers, that this formation, at the present rate of waste, will supply coal for 1000 years; but its price will be continually on the increase, on account of the continually increasing expence of mining. M Marcel de Serres, who has written a history of the Fall of Stones from the clouds, printed in the late numbers of the Philosophical Magazine, concludes with the following observations, exactly according with those in our last number: "The causes of these phenomena, in appearance so remote, have nevertheless some approximation thus rain is nothing but the precipitation of the water which is continually rising into the air; and aerolites probably only depend on the precipitation of an infinity of substances which are incessantly evaporating, and the reaction of which upon each other may form new combinations. This hypothesis will not appear gratuitous, if we pay attention to the immense quantity of compound substances which organic bodies, stagnant waters, and all bodies while under decomposition, exhale without ceasing, and which are lost in the air without our knowing any thing as to what they become. It is therefore fair to inquire what are the methods resorted to by nature to counterbalance this perpetual evaporation, and to purify the atmosphere from all those volatilized substances? In fact, it is probable that nature employs other methods of purifying the air, though probably the organic bodies are the most powerful to which she resorts. Such are the principal proofs, or rather the most constant facts, which render probable the hypothesis of aerolites being formed in our atmosphere." Coloured snow, and a coloured hoar frost, took place at Arezzo, March 1813. "Pliny and Livy have mentioned showers of burnt bricks, and much ridicule has been thrown upon them for it. During the evening, the ground being almost entirely covered with snow, there fell some snow or rather hail, not very compact, of a reddish-yellow colour, which the people improperly called red. Lightning was visible during the night: the north wind blew with considerable force at intervals, and a dull uniform noise was heard in the atmosphere, similar to to what is produced at a great distance from the sea by a tempest. The sky seemed to threaten snow, and some persons thought it was variegated with reddish-yellow clouds. It resulted, from various observations: -1. That this snow or bail derived its colour from a very fine earthy substance, interposed with uniformity between the small crystals of the hail, without however being inclosed in their nucleus.-2. That this substance is composed almost entirely of alumine, very little corbonated lime, and a still less quantity of iron, manganese, and silex; finally, of a very feeble animal or vegetable principle, cap able able of being carbonized by the action of sulphuric acid and of putrefying water." COMMERCIAL Intelligence. THE following are the most interesting articles in the new tariff presented by the committee to the chamber of deputies, and founded on the principle, that goods imported by French ships should be subjected to less duty than those imported in foreign bottoms: Coffee from the French colonies, imported by French vessels, per metrical quintal,.............60 francs. Foreign ditto,.......................................75 Raw sugar, of the French colonies, imported in French ships,.............40 Foreign ditto.................60 Clayed sugar, of the French colonies, imported Foreign ditto,. in French ships,.............70 .........95 encouragement to home manufactures. The duty of 120 francs per quintal, proposed by the projet of the law, appeared to the committee to be insufficient. Portuguese Decree. By order of the royal council of commerce, the following edict, bearing upon our commerce to all nations is made known :— "Most Excellent and most Reverend Sir-The hostility between the belligerent powers having been happily concluded by divine grace, un der the most fortunate circumstances to the allied forces armed against France, and being enabled by the restoration of tranquillity to renew our ancient relations, which had been terminated by the calamities of war, his Royal Highness has been pleased to order that the ports of these kingdoms should in future be open to cargoes from France, and from every other power, which was under its authority, dominion, or influence, and which may not be considered the enemy of Portugal, as heretofore: it being determined that such cargoes shall be received as those of friendly states, and that such facilities shall be afforded to the conductors and agents as have been hitherto granted to nations in profound peace with this government. And, reciprocally, the Portuguese vessels are permitted without breach of law, to convey their ships into the harbours of the said nations. I communicate the above to your Excellency, that you may acquaint the government therewith, and that you may cause it to be published in all the ports of these kingdoms. |