CHEMISTRY. 283 



ence it exerts over healthy granulations, and the facility with which the 

 dressing's may be renewed, render it greatly superior to ointments in all 

 other wounds and sores. In some European hospitals it has been substituted 

 for the strong acids, and other caustic applications, with the happiest effects. 

 It has been reported that wounds, submitted to this mode of dressing, have 

 a florid color, and continue so clean that washing and the recourse to the 

 spatula, to remove the cake of cerate and pus, which renders the present 

 mode of dressing wounds so tedious and painful, can be dispensed with. 

 Folds of linen, smeared with glycerine, are removed with the greatest faci- 

 lity, while they moderate suppuration, and repress redundant granulations. 

 The dressings are soft, and agreeable to the patient, and admit of being made 

 astringent, by the addition of tannin, in case of tendency to hemorrhage. 



EXPERIMENTS OX WRITING INKS. 



Some ingenious experiments to test the durability of writing inks have 

 recently been made by Dr. Chilton, of Xew York City. He exposed a manu- 

 script written, with four different inks of the principal makers, of this and 

 other countries, to the constant action of the weather upon the roof of his 

 laboratory. After an exposure of over five months, the paper shows the 

 different kind of writing in various shades of color. The English sample, 

 Blackwood's, well known and popular from the neat and convenient way 

 that it is prepared for this market, was quite indistinct. 



The American samples, Davids's, Harrison's, and Maynard's, are better. 

 The first appears to retain its original shade very nearly ; the two last are 

 paler. This test shows conclusively the durability of ink ; and while, for 

 many purposes, school and the like, an ink that will stand undefaced a year 

 or so, is all that is necessary, yet there is hardly a, bottle of ink sold, some of 

 which may not be used in the signature or execution of papers that may be 

 important to be legible fifty or one hundred years hence. 



For state and county offices, probate records, &c., it is of vital importance 

 that the records should be legible centuries hence. "We believe that some of 

 the early manuscripts of New England are brighter than some town and 

 church records of this century. 



In Europe, at the present time, great care is taken by the different govern- 

 ments in the preparation of permanent ink some of them even compounding 

 then 1 own, according to the most approved and expensive formulas. 



Manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries now in the state paper 

 office of Great Britain, are apparently as bright as when first written ; while 

 those of the last two hundred years are more or less illegible, and some of 

 them entirely obliterated. 



MATTMENE'S PROCESS FOR EXTRACTING SUGAR FROM VEGETABLE 



SUBSTANCES. 



M. Maumene, of Paris, hi a paper descriptive of a new process for extract- 

 ing sugar from vegetable substances, recently published by the French 

 Academy, says : That all the processes at present made use of are bad : for 



