182 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



The animal matter, when heated, gave carbonate of ammonia, 

 empyreumatic oil, and charcoal. It appears to form a true com- 

 bination with potash or lime, or their subsalts, and seems, in part, 

 to neutralize the alkali, whilst, at the same time the alkali confers 

 great solubility on the substance. M. Vauquelin expresses his 

 fear that the supposed vegeto- alkaline bodies, which have been 

 procured from many plants of the solanum species, and received 

 names as new substances, are only combinations of organic matter 

 with alkalies, or their subsalts. — Mem. duMus, xii. 204, 



III. Natural History. 



1. Meteoric Appearance on Ben" Lomond ; Ascent of Vapour. — The 

 following appearance is ^escribed by Mr. W. T. Ains worth, who, 

 with Mr. Savage, observed it on Sunday, May 8, from the summit 

 of Ben- Lomond. At three o'clock in the morning a cold damp 

 wind blew from the south-west, the sky there being covered with 

 dark dense clouds, whilst, towards the east, a small extent of deep 

 azure sky was seen, where, however, clouds were fast forming. In 

 a short time it began to rain, and continued to do so incessantly 

 for two hours, when, in an interval of fine weather, the travellers 

 again resumed the ascent of the mountain. The clouds then broke, 

 and the sun shone forth ; and about this time, says Mr. Ainsworth, 

 " having our faces turned towards the west, we observed streams 

 of vapour rise from the earth in two or three places (at about a 

 mile distance from us, and 400 or 500 yards apart from one ano- 

 ther,) and ascend in a perfectly straight direction towards a heavy 

 dark nimbus, passing over at the time. Using my hat as a 

 level, I lay down on the ground, and found it to be rather lower 

 than the situation I occupied near the summit of the mountain. 

 Their bases were, I should suppose, not above three or four feet in 

 diameter, which did not increase nor diminish till their junction 

 with the cloud, when they assumed a more conical shape, the base 

 of which was in the cloud. They resembled immense columns, or 

 pillars ; they had no motion forwards or backwards, and, as far as 

 our eye could ascertain, they had no revolving motion upon their 

 own axis. The attraction existing between the pillar and the 

 cloud was so great, that, at the supervention of a strong breeze, 

 though the centre of the pillar yielded, it never deviated from its 

 columnar form, and the top remained precisely over the point 

 from which it arose, forming, as it were, for the time, a segment 

 of a circle. A short time after perceiving this remarkable phe- 

 nomenon, we had occasion to remark the same process taking 

 place on the lake itself. The columns, though at a great distance 

 'from us, we could plainly perceive were vapour, and not water, 

 "but they did not take on themselves so uniform an appearance. 

 During this interesting scene, I hung two small balls hewn out of 



