332 



Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



The produce of a fifth cutting did not differ from that of the 

 fourth. The salts which accompanied the potash were not ex- 

 amined. The plant deprived of its leaves by the first and second 

 cutting, had time to produce a few others before the root came to 

 maturity. 



According to the above experiments it is evident that there 

 would be no advantage in collecting the potash of potatoes once a 

 year, but perhaps there might be if two crops were obtained in 

 that time. For this purpose the first potatoes must be planted 

 early ; and after the first cutting, which should precede the flower- 

 ing, the earth should be turned up, and a second plantation made, 

 which should have time to yield its crop in a convenient state be- 

 fore the end of the season. It would be useless to endeavour to 

 obtain an abundant crop of leaves on a stem which has already 

 been cut. 



This note on the produce of potatoes is terminated by an ob- 

 servation that animal manures improve the vegetation, principally 

 as it affects the leaves, whilst gypsum, mixed with the soil, makes 

 the plant more productive in tubercles. — Ann. de Chimie. xxviii. 

 165. 



7. Magnetism. — If three lines of stations be assumed in a gun- 

 brig, having no other iron in her than what is commonly em- 

 ployed in the construction of a vessel of this kind, one series of 

 stations being in a vertical plane passing through the principal 

 axis of the ship, and the others in similar planes on the larboard 

 and starboard sides of the ship, at the distance of eight feet from 

 the middle section, it will be found, that when the ship's head 

 bears east, the mean intensities of the three sections will be a 

 minimum, on the poop and forecastle, in the starboard section of 

 the upper deck, and the larboard section of the lower. But in 

 the larboard and middle sections of the upper deck, and the middle 

 section of the lower, the intensities will be the least when her 



