1827.] 



Varieties. 



539 



about two minutes before the screws were 

 extracted. The force required to draw 

 similar screws out of deal and the softer 

 Wood was about half the above. Hence, 

 as a rule to estimate the full force (f) of 

 adhesion in hard wood, /=200,00b aclt, 

 and in soft wood, /=! 00,000 adt ; a being 

 the diameter of the screw, d the depth of 

 the worm or thread, and t the thickness of 

 the wood into which it is forced, all in 

 inches f being the force in pounds to ex- 

 tract the same, 



White Monkey. A. perfectly white 

 monkey was caught in April at Ramree. 

 The hair on its body was white, curly, and 

 soft as silk. The animal was reckoned of 

 a very rare description ; so much so, as to 

 excite great wonder and admiration among 

 the natives, who represented that such a 

 creature had never but once, to their know- 

 ledge, been seen in those parts 5 and then 

 the king of Ava sent down a golden cage, 

 with a host of people to escort the animal 

 to the golden presence, and expended, be- 

 side, 20,000 rupees in sacrifices and public 

 rejoicings; auguring, from the arrival of 

 the extraordinary stranger, the most hap- 

 py presages of good fortune. In the pre- 

 sent instance, the creature was unfortu- 

 nately of too young and tender an age 

 when caught. A Burmese fioman, who 

 was nursing an infant of her own, request- 

 ed permission to suckle it, and very fairly 

 divided her maternal attention between the 

 two. The auimal lived in apparent good 

 health and spirits for six days ; buf, whe- 

 ther it was that its nursing disagreed with 

 it, or tlvit it was naturally very delicate, 

 it died on ihe seventh day. 



To bronze Statues, Medals, fyc. Take 

 of sal-ammoniac, two drachms; of salt of 

 sorrel, half a drachm. Dissolve them in 

 half a pint of white wine vinegar; clean 

 the metal to be bronzed from verdigrise ; 

 then moisten a brush, by dipping it gently 

 into the above solution ; rub it continually 

 on the same place, till the colour becomes 

 dry, and assumes the depth of shade re- 

 quired. In order that the dyeing may be 

 more rapid, this operation is to be per- 

 formed in the sunshine, or by the heat of 

 a stove. The oftener it is repeated on the 

 same place, the deeper proporiionably will 

 be the colour of the bronze. 



Measure of the Arc of a Mean Paral- 

 lel between tlie Pole and the Equator. 

 Under the auspices of Napoleon, it was 

 proposed in France, as a continuation of 

 the trigonometrical operations which the 

 mathemat icians of that country had so ably 

 executed, to cross several meridians by a 

 parallel, of which the curvature and the 

 extent should be determined with pre- 

 cision. MM. Broussaud and Nicollet, to 

 whom the completion of the undertaking 

 was entrusted, have recently given an 



account of their proceedings. The diffi- 

 culties they had to surmount were consi- 

 derable and unexpected. The first philo- 

 sophers who engaged in measuring a ter- 

 restrial arc were far from suspecting the 

 cause of the errors against which they had 

 to provide. In the geodesiacal operations 

 in Lapland, Maupertuis, Clairaut, and 

 Carmes disregarded the refraction. By 

 Bouquet and La Condamine, it was taken 

 into account during- their labours in Peru. 

 MM. Broussaud and Nicollet have learned 

 to distrust ail extraordinary refractions. 

 The measure of a mean parallel assigns to 

 the earth a depression of ^ to ^ less 

 than that which was deduced from mea- 

 sures of the arcs of the meridian : but, be- 

 fore they deduce any other results as to 

 the figure of the earth, these gentlemen 

 wait till the astronomers of Austria and 

 Italy furnish the details of the continua- 

 tion of the arc, as far as Fiume. 



Tunnel under the Mersey. -The expe- 

 diency, not to say necessity, of a commu- 

 nication between the counties of Lanca- 

 shire and Cheshire, in the neighbourhood 

 of Liverpool, has given rise to two of the 

 most splendid projects that ever were 

 formed even in this country : the one, a 

 suspension-bridge over the Mersey, at 

 Runcorn, several miles above Liverpool ; 

 the other, a tunnel underneath the same 

 river at Liverpool itself. The first will 

 require a centre arch with 1,000 feet 

 waterways ; and the latter must extend 

 one mile and a quarter under the bed of 

 the river, which, as it is supposed to flow 

 over a rock, will present no dangerous 

 obstacle to the success of the undertaking. 

 Mr. Brunei, to whom the execution of this 

 great work is to be entrusted, has calcu- 

 lated that the expense will not exceed 

 150 or 200,000 pounds sterling ; while the 

 receipts, estimated on a very limited scale, 

 will average from 12,OOOZ. to 15,000/. a 

 year. This gigantic enterprise, which 

 was proposed several years ago, it is now 

 understood will be commenced as soon as 

 the similar work under the Thames is so 

 far advanced as to prove, even to the most 

 incredulous, the probability of its suc- 

 cess. 



Geology. Numerous fossil bones have 

 recently been discovered in Ava. Want of 

 means to make an accurate comparison 

 with the fossil skeletons of the larger ani- 

 mals discovered in Europe and America, 

 renders it difficult to discover their appro- 

 priate classification ; but they are larger 

 than the bones of ordinary-sized elephants, 

 and their teeth present some marked dif- 

 ferences. Their discovery is of great geo- 

 logical interest. 



Preparation of Spruce. Early in the 

 spring, cut off the young branches of the 

 pine or fir, three our four inches in length. 

 3 Z 2 



