312 



Varieties. 



[SEPT. 



formation. No steps had been taken, by the 

 director of the mines at Nischui-Toura, so 

 late as February last, to promote this dis- 

 covery ; but it is believed that the govern- 

 ment will not long allow it to be neglected. 



Petroleum Oil in Switzerland. In search- 

 ing for pit-coal in the c&nton of Geneva, 

 abundant springs of a bituminous oil, called 

 oil of petroleum, have been discovered. The 

 elevated ridge of the communes of Dardagny 

 and Chalex, although isolated on three sides 

 by the Rhone, the Allondon, and the stream 

 of the Rouleve, appears to be a continuation 

 of the strata which extend on the other side 

 of the Rhone, and from its bed. The strata 

 of which it is composed seem to rise from 

 the river in an acute angle from the east to 

 the west, and from the north to the south, 

 and are broken near Dardagny by the course 

 of the Allondon. It is towards this place that 

 the strata impregnated with bitumen appear 

 at the surface, wherever the water has re- 

 moved the vegetable mould and clay. The 

 bituminous bed actually worked is about 

 twenty feet thick. 



Quadruple Rainbow. Two rainbows are 

 frequently seen together rarely three, and 

 never lour. On the sea-coast, however, a 

 sort of quadruple rainbow may be seen ; but 

 .then the bows are concentric in pairs. A phe- 

 nomenon of this sort was observed by Mr. 

 Schulz, at 6 p. m., July 3J, 1824, on the 

 island of Rugen. In a south-east direction, 

 and very near him, he saw a double rainbow, 

 of which the colours were extremely vivid. 

 These two were surrounded by two others, 

 of which the extremities cut the two others 

 very near the earth; so that, at the two 

 .points of the horizon, there was a double in- 

 tersection. The sea being opposite, and in a 

 north-west direction, the explanation of this 

 phcenomenon was not difficult. It was evi- 

 dent that the two first bows were formed by 

 the sun itself, and the two others by the 

 image of the sun reflected in the sea. 



Aerolithes. A circumstance, which ap- 

 pears not to have been. generally known in 

 Europe, appears in No. 10 of the " Zeits- 

 chrift fur Mineralogie," viz. a shower of 

 aerolithes fell, in 1824, at Sterlitahrak, 200 

 versts from Rembourg : the masses were of 

 a regular octaedral form. 



Organic Remains. Near Hiederhohen, 

 OB the Werra, below Eschwegein-Hesser, a 

 skull of a rhinoceros has been found in a 

 gypsum-quarry; and a league from thence, 

 at Grebendorf, on the right bank of the 

 Werra, in alluvial clay, a mammoth-tooth, 

 weighing twenty pounds, has been discovered. 

 At Stolberg, in the Hartz, at the entrance of 

 the valley of Rottteberode, bones of the pri- 

 mitive buffalo have been met with in the 

 calcareous mountain of the Krieselsberg. 



Mensuration. In the second chapter of 

 the fifth book of Columella de Re Rustica, 

 a rule is given for determining thesuperficies 

 of an equilateral triangle, which, in alge- 

 braic terms is this Let a be on one side of 

 the equilateral triangle, then its superficies 

 is = 2 (H-T\j) ; or in decimals, a 2 0-433. 



The exact formula is 2 ^~ ; or in decimals, 



a 2 0-4330. It is curious that the irrational 

 \ \/ 3 should have a rational expression, com- 

 ing so near it, yet so simple ; and it is cer- 

 tainly singular that Columella should have 

 been in possession of this formula. 



Telescopes.- Professor Am ici, of Modena, 

 to whose practical as well as theoretical skill 

 the scientific world is indebted for some op- 

 tical instruments which have never been sur- 

 passed, concludes that, for an achromatic te- 

 lescope and a Newtonian, of the same local 

 length, to produce the same effect, the dia- 

 meter of the mirror of the latter must be to 

 that of the object-glass of the former as 

 4 : 3. The ratio assigned by the late emi- 

 nent Sir W. Herschel was that of 7 : JO. The 

 professor has likewise given an infallible 

 criterion by which to distinguish the spurious 

 disc which even the best telescopes assign to 

 a fixed star, from the real discs of a satellite 

 or small planet. It consists in separating the 

 image into two with the divided eye-glass 

 micrometer of his construction ; when, if the 

 disc be real, it will remain perfectly round ; 

 if spurious, it will be elongated in a direction 

 perpendicular to the section of the lens the 

 other diameter remaining the same. This, 

 however, supposes the power employed to be 

 sufficiently high to render the phenomenon 

 visible. The same effect will arise from 

 closing half the aperture of the telescope. 



Ancient Glass Bottles. Among the cu- 

 rious and interesting objects lately discovered 

 in the excavations at Pompeii are five glass 

 bottles, in some of which were olives in an 

 extraordinary state of preservation. These 

 olives were soft and pasty, but entire, and 

 had the same form with those called Spanish 

 olives ; they had a strong varied odour, and 

 a bitter taste, leaving a biting astringent sen- 

 sation upon the tongue. A part of these 

 olives have been analyzed, and the rest have 

 been deposited in the Neapolitan Museum in 

 the same bottles in which they were found. 



Enviable Employment. There is a gene- 

 rally received notion, on the authority, we 

 believe, of the visions of Quevedo, that ladies 

 ,who from necessity have passed a life of 

 single blessedness, shall hereafter be em- 

 ployed in leading apes through the Asphodel 

 fields allotted them. Von Sweclenborg dis- 

 poses of these maidens in a different way. 

 By him they are placed in his second heaven, 

 there to nurse for ever the babes of grace 

 who die before they can walk and talk. 

 What is to become of the sucklings ? 



Improved Coach Spring's. In the man- 

 ner in which coach springs are generally 

 constructed, a swinging motion is allowed 

 to the body of the vehicle, by which, when 

 the roof is much laden, great danger of over- 

 turning is incurred. A Lancashire coach- 

 master, of the name of Lace}-, has recently 

 contrived and adapted to carriages a sort of 

 spring, by which this danger is perhaps en- 

 tirely obviated. His invention consists in 

 attaching the body of a carriage to shackle- 



