360 Analysis of Books. 



have sufficiently explained his brief notes, the reader shall receive the 

 result in his own words : on the same day he decomposed soda with 

 somewhat different phenomena/ 



Dr. Paris has given a fac-simile of the minute in Davy's hand- 

 writing of his successful experiment of October the 19th. It is 

 highly interesting and characteristic, but should have been accom- 

 panied by the substance of it in print, for it is not every one who will 

 be able to decipher it. It runs thus: 



' Oct. 19. When pofash was introduced into a tube having a platina 

 wire attached to it, and fixed into the tube so as to be a 

 conductor, i. e. y so as to contain just water enough, though 

 solid, and inserted over mercury, when the platina was made 

 negative, no gas was formed, and the mercury became oxy- 

 dated, and a small quantity of the alkaligen was produced 

 round the platina wire, as was evident from its quick inflam- 

 mation by the action of water. When the mercury was made the negative, 

 gas was developed in great quantities from the positive wire, and none 

 from the negative mercury, and this gas proved to be pure OXYGENE. 

 CAPITAL EXPERIMENT, proving the decomposition of POTASH.' 



Those who knew Davy will best conceive the enthusiasm with 

 which this hasty record of his success w r as dashed off, and will re- 

 cognise st/pixa in his ' capital experiment !' 



(To be continued.) 



I. Planta Asiaticce Rariores ; or Descriptions and Figures of a 

 select number of unpublished East India Plants. By N. Wallich, 

 M.D. Vol. I. folio. London, 1830. Treuttell and Co. 



II. A numerical List of dried Specimens of Plants in the East 

 India Company's Museum, collected under the superintendence 

 of N. Wallich, of the Company's Botanic Garden at Calcutta. 

 Folio, pages 193, Nos. 1 3285; still publishing. (For 

 private distribution only.) 



IF we were to select one country in preference to another, as 

 illustrative of the gigantic strides that have been taken by 

 modern science, India and its vegetation should be our theme 

 India, which in its vast extent comprehends the climate of the 

 equator and of the Pole, stretching from the classical mountains of 

 Emodus on the north, to the ancient Tuprobane, and the sultry 

 islands of the Indian Archipelago on the south ; and from the rose 

 gardens of Amedabad, and the holy fountains and luxurious palaces 

 of Cachrnere on the west, to the frontiers of the celestial empire and 

 tlie burning shores of Arracan,.Pegu, and Martaban on the east; 

 embracing regions of eternal snow among the craggy summits of the 

 Himalaya and Nilgherry ; parched plains, where the sun glares with 

 his fiercest rays in Hindostan ; and including all those gradations 

 and diversity of climate which are the usual characteristics of an 

 entire quarter of the globe, rather than of a country subject to the 

 control of a single power, and distinguished by a single name ; a 

 vegetation which seems, at first sight, to be in direct contradiction to 



