ment.

to farmers, at reasonable rates, every kind of steam agricultural impleThe prospectus suggests that many farmers would gladly use steam in ploughing and otherwise working their soil, but cannot afford to invest several thousand dollars in the needful machinery. To these this company proposes to be helpful. It is asserted that applications are already received for renting machinery to the value of quarter of a million of dollars. A Mr. Smith, of Woolston, England, who has especially exerted himself during the last few years to promote "steam culture," has recently published a resumé of his personal experience in this matter. He states, that the cost of preparing land for roots was, with steam, $2.88; with horses, $10.03; for barley two years, $2.16 with steam against $5.05 by horse power; four years for wheat, $50.20 by steam against the same for horse power, and foots up a total for a number of other articles, which shows a gain of 200 per cent. in favor of steam. The writer says also that besides the economy of the plan, he had much better crops.

Novelty in Architectural Construction. A novelty in architectural construction has been brought out during the past year in the construction of a building designed for a school of art at Nottingham, England. The dome of the tower is to be covered, and some panels in the front filled in with Minton's encaustic tiles, patterned in bright colors. The London Athenæum commenting on this peculiarity says, "We cannot understand why, considering the exigencies of our town life and atmosphere, the whole exterior of a building could not be covered with ceramics, comprising bands in bold relief richly moulded and colored, decorated heads for windows, and friezes of figures, either relieved, or, preferably, drawn on the flat, in an architectonic character and soberly toned in color, either on a white or a bright-hued ground. Glazed surfaces are obviously the only ones fit for exterior decoration in modern towns. Let any one look at the waste of labor on the carvings of St. Paul's, what a stained and smeared great structure it is, or at the Houses of Parliament, and see how the sooty streams trail over the costly waste of mouldings and figures, and not only hide but eat them away; then let him consider what the latter building will be a century hence, judging by what he sees of the piebald state of the former. Do we not make glazed earthenware for half the planet, and can we not cover our own houses with it? "

Recent Progress of Chemical Science. - During the past year, through the aid of the process of spectral analysis, another new body, Indium, has been added to the list of the elements. Bessemer's process of manufacturing iron and steel may now be considered as having

passed out from the domain of theory, into the province of actual and practical fact. The contributions made to our knowledge by Professor Graham respecting the molecular constitution and properties of gases, should also be included among the important novelties of the year in inorganic chemistry. The recent advances in organic chemistry are thus detailed by a writer in the London Pharmaceutical Journal, Dr. MacAdam. He says, "Not only does the manufacturing chemistry of the day transform starch and sugar into alcohol by fermentation, as in brewing operations; sawdust into oxalic acid by the action of soda and nitre; starch or sawdust into grape-sugar by the aid of sulphuric acid; wood and coal into paraffin and paraffin oils by the process of destructive distillation; coal into aniline and the coal-tar colors; and guano into a magnificent color, rivalling that from the cochineal insect; but the organic chemistry of the day has proceeded to produce artifi'cially many alcohols and ethers, including jargonelle pear essence and pine-apple essence; and to construct many alkaloids resembling quinine, strychnine and morphine in their composition and chemical properties, encouraging the hope that we may soon be in possession of the means of preparing by artificial processes these powerful medicines, and possibly others equally efficacious. And more than that, and principally through the researches of Berthelot, dead mineral matter has been worked up by stages into organic compounds. Thus Berthelot, taking carbon and sulphur, combines these into bisulphide of carbon, a mobile, ethereal liquid; and therefore, by the mutual reaction of copper, hydrosulphuric acid, and the bisulphide of carbon, he obtains olefiant gas. The latter is absorbed by sulphuric acid (oil of vitrol) to the extent of 120 volumes of the gas in one of the acid, and thereafter by dilution with water and distillation, the acid mixture yields alcohol of the same composition and properties as that obtained from ordinary grain. Strecker takes the olefiant gas in solution in sulphuric acid, and by adding water, neutralizing with ammonia, evaporating and heating, obtains crystals of taurine, one of the constituents of bile. Wöhler combines the simple elements, nitrogen and oxygen, by electric discharges, into nitric acid, and then by the successive mutual reaction of this nitric acid with tin, hydrochloric acid, and black lead, and lime (or oxide of lead), he obtains a complicated organic substance, called the hydrocyanate of ammonia. The latter may also be prepared by passing a mixture of the gases ammonia and carbonic oxide through a red-hot tube. The hydrocyanate of ammonia may then be employed in yielding cyanogen, hydrocyanic acid (prussic acid), oxalic acid, and urea; also formic acid, paracyanogen, cyanúric acid, sulphocyanogen, and mellon.

"When cast-iron (which contains carbon) is dissolved in dilute sulphuric or hydrochloric acid, there is evolved a volatile oil resembling turpentine, and there is left in the vessel a small quantity of graphite, and a brown mould resembling vegetable mould. Ordinary carbonate of soda (washing soda) can have carbon extracted from it, and if the latter is acted upon by dilute nitric acid, and the solution evaporated, an artificial tannin is obtained, which has the property of precipitating gelatine or glue from its solution, like ordinary tannin obtained from gall nuts or oak bark. Berthelot has taken carbonic oxide and caustic potash, and compelled them to produce formic acid (yielded naturally by red ants); and with a single link of the chain awanting, he has manufactured glycerine, which is the base of fatty substances, and combining it with the fatty acids, he has prepared artificially the oils and fats generally obtained from the plant and the animal, and many more new oils and fats not known in nature. Berthelot has acted upon glycerine by putrefying animal matter, and obtained artificially grape sugar; and has converted oil of turpentine into ordinary camphor and Borneo camphor; whilst, in conjunction with De Luca, he has prepared artificially one of the chief constituents of oil of mustard (sulphocyanide of allyl).

"These researches in organic chemistry may appear, at this, the moment of their birth, to have little influence on the arts and manufactures and on mankind in general. But are they not researches into the deep mysteries of nature ? and who can predict the influence which they may yet have on the prosperity of the human race?"

Change of Color in Stars. It is more than suspected by some of the European astronomers that an example of a star successively changing its color may now exist in the stellar body known as ninetyfive Herculis. Mr. Higgins, in his observation on Spectra of Stars, has had occasion to notice the phenomena, and he describes the change as observable, even after intervals so brief as three or four nights.

The so-called Spiritual Phenomena. - A recognition of the reality of many of the phenomena - physical or physiological — which are popularily classified under the term "Spiritual" appears to be gradually gaining ground among the scientific men of the United States and Europe. Among the names of note who are reported during the past year as having extended such a recognition, we find that of Prof. De Morgan, who is confessedly one of the most distinguished of living British physicists and mathematicians. The position which this gentleman and others assume is probably well expressed in the follow

ing extracts of a letter recently published in the London Athenæum. This observer says:

"I divide, for brevity sake, all the phenomena into physical and metaphysical, a division which, if not strictly philosophical, will be sufficiently understood by those who have been present at any so-called sitting. My testimony, then, is this: -I have seen and felt physical facts wholly and utterly inexplicable, as I believe, by any known and generally received physical laws. I unhesitatingly reject the theory which considers such facts to be produced by means familiar to the best professors of legerdemain. I have witnessed also many very surprising and extraordinary metaphysical manifestations. But I cannot say that any of those have been such as wholly to exclude the possibility of their being deceptive, and indeed, to use the honest word required by the circumstances, fraudulent. This is my testimony reduced to its briefest possible expression.

"If it be asked what impression, on the whole, has been left on my mind by all that I have witnessed in this matter, I answer, one of perplexed doubt, shaping itself into only one conviction that deserves the name of an opinion, namely, that quite sufficient cause has been shown to demand further patient and careful inquiry from those who have the opportunity and the qualifications needed for prosecuting it; that the facts alleged, and the number and character of the persons testifying to them, are such that real seekers for truth cannot satisfy themselves by merely pooh-poohing them.”

Interesting Report on Fisheries. An interesting instance of a governmental inquiry, under scientific auspices, into a branch of natural industry, has been presented to us during the past year, in a report to the British Parliament, of a commission appointed to consider and investigate the subject of the herring fishery, particularly as it is connected with British interests. This commission consisted of Col. Maxwell, Dr. Lyon Playfair, and Mr. T. Huxley; and the following is a resumé of the more important features of the report in question. The conclusion is arrived at, that the herring does not, as some naturalists have affirmed, migrate to the seas within the Arctic circle, but, probably, on disappearing from the shores of the British Islands, passes into deep water near them. The herring is found under four different conditions: 1st, Fry or Sill; 2d, Maties, or Fat Herring; 3d, Full Herring; 4th, Shotten, or Spent Herring. It is extremely difficult to obtain satisfactory evidence as to the length of time which the herring requires to pass from the embryonic to the adult or full condition. The commissioners, after considering all the evidence obtain

able, are of the opinion, that the herring attains to full size and maturity in about eighteen months. It is also probable that this fish arrives at its spawning condition in one year, and that the eggs are hatched in, at most, two to three weeks after deposition, and that in six or seven weeks more the young have attained three inches in length. The maties, or fat herring, feed, develop their reproductive organs, and become full herrings in about three or four months. The herrings then aggregate in prodigious numbers for about a fortnight in localities favorable for the reception of their ova. Here they lie in tiers, covering square miles of sea bottom, and so close to the ground that the fishermen have to practise a peculiar mode of fishing in order to take them, while every net and line used in the fishing is thickly covered with the adhesive spawn which they are busily engaged in shedding. So intent are the fish on this great necessity of their existence that they are not easily driven from their spawning ground; but when once their object has been attained, and they have become spent fish, the shoal rapidly disappears, withdrawing in all probability into deep water at no great distance from the coast. There is no positive evidence as to the ultimate fate of the spent herrings; but there is much to be said in favor of the current belief, that after a sojourn of more or less duration in deep water, they return as maties to the shallows and lochs, there to run through the same changes as before. The commissioners were unable to gain any information respecting the time which one and the same herring may pass through the cycle. The enemies of this fish are, however, too numerous and active to render it at all likely that the existence of any one fish is prolonged beyond two or three reproductive epochs. Great difference of opinion has been held respecting the spawning season of the herrings. The commissioners' conclusion is, that the herring spawns twice annually, in the spring and in the autumn. It is not, however, at all likely that the same fish spawn twice in the year; on the contrary, the spring and the autumn shoals are most likely perfectly distinct; and if the herring, as is probable, comes to maturity in a year, the shoals of each spawning season would be the fry of the twelvemonth before.

The food of the herring consists of crustacea, varying in size from microscopic dimensions to those of a shrimp, and of small fish, particularly sand-eels.

The commissioners ascribe the remarkable variableness in the annual visits of shoals of herrings to the British coasts to the varying quantity of food of the fish, and to the number and force of the destructive agencies at work. Any circumstance which increases or