222 



Varieties. 



[FEB. 



China, which rank among the most singular 

 natural phenomena on record. The wells 

 are perforations about five or six inches in 

 diameter, extending to the depth of as much, 

 in one case, as 3,000 feet, ordinarily from 

 15 to 1,800 in the solid rock ; from which, 

 in the one case, water is drawn by means of 

 a hollow bamboo and the labour of oxen, 

 which yields from one fifth to one fourth of 

 its weight of salt, and, in the other, an in- 

 flammable gas is discharged in very large 

 quantities, which serves to boil the pans in 

 which the salt is prepared, as well as to 

 supply the means of illumination. The 

 method by which these wells, or cylinders 

 are made in the rock, is by attaching 

 a steel head, weighing about three or four 

 hundred pounds, by a cord, to a beam, 

 Which has a motion on a horizontal axis, 

 when, by depressing the opposite end of the 

 beam, and suddenly dismissing it, the steel 

 head, which moves up and down in a stone 

 cylinder, pounds the rock beneath, and the 

 perforation so made being properly mois- 

 tened, the pulverised rock, in the shape of 

 mud, lodges above the steel head, and is, 

 when necessary, drawn out, and rejected. 

 At least three years are required to make 

 one of these wells, though sometimes, when 

 the rock is good, the workmen can perfo- 

 rate two feet in 24 hours. 



The Light of the Sun compared with 

 that of the Stars In the Philosophical 

 Transactions for 1767? a suggestion is 

 thrown out by Mr. Mitchell, that a com- 

 parison between the light received from the 

 sun and any of the fixed stars might furnish 

 data for estimating their relative distances ; 

 but no such direct comparison had been 

 attempted. Dr. Wollaston was led to infer 

 from some observations which he made in 

 the year 1799, that the direct light of the 

 sun is about one million times more intense 

 than that of the full moon ; and, therefore, 

 very many million times greater than that 

 of all the fixed stars taken collectively. In 

 order to compare the light of the sun with 

 that of a star, he took, as an intermediate 

 object of comparison, the light of a candle 

 reflected from a small bulb, about a quarter 

 of an inch in diameter, filled with quick- 

 silver, and seen by one eye through a lent 

 of two inches focus at the same time that 

 the star and the sun's image, placed at a 

 proper distance, was viewed by the other 

 eye through a telescope. The mean of 

 various trials seemed to show that the light 

 of Sirius is equal to that of the sun seen in 

 a glass bulb one-tenth of an inch in diame- 

 ter, at the distance of 210 feet, or that they 

 are in the proportion of one to ten thousand 

 millions : but as nearly one-half of the light 

 is lost by reflection, the real proportion be- 

 tween the light from Sirius and the sun is 

 not greater than that of one to twenty 

 thousand millions. If the annual parallax 

 of Sirius be half a second corresponding to 

 a distance of 525,481 times that of the sun 

 from the earth, its diameter would be 3'7 



times that of the sun, and its light 13-8 

 times as great. .The distance at which the 

 sun would require to be viewed so that its 

 brightness might be only equal to that of 

 Sirius, would be 141,421 times its present 

 distance ; and if still in the ecliptic, its 

 annual parallax in longitude would be 

 nearly '3'" ; but if situated at the same 

 angular distance from the ecliptic as Sirius, 

 it would have an annual parallax in latitude 

 of l-"8. 



German Names. The great men of the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth century who 

 throw such a splendour over the literature 

 of Holland, are seldom connected in our 

 thoughts with the country to which they 

 belong. They write -the learned language 

 of Europe, not that of their native land. 

 In fact, the old and absurd habit of Helen- 

 izing or Latinizing their surnames, fre- 

 quently leads to great confusion in their 

 patronimics. The name of Aurelius, the 

 preceptor of Erasmus, was no better than 

 Hermanszoon. Canisius was Mynheer de 

 Hondt Fullonius is Willem Gaaeffe and 

 the magnificent Johannes PalaBonydorus, 

 without his mask, is simply Jan Oudewater. 

 But what shall we say to the vanity of Eras- 

 mus Desiderius Erasmus, with his Latin 

 and Greek names, each meaning the same 

 thing. His mother knew him only as 

 Gherardt Gherardts ; while the gentle Phi- 

 lippus Melancthon, or, as he occasionally sub- 

 scribed himself, Ippofilo di Terra Nera, would 

 scarcely be recognized under his synony- 

 mous and national appellation of Schwards- 

 herdt. Then there was Jan Van Gorp, 

 who wrote a book to prove that Adam and 

 Eve spoke Dutch alone, but was ashamed 

 to employ the language of Paradise to in- 

 troduce himself to the learned world, and 

 took thereupon the title of Toropius Bec- 

 auns. 



New Fossils A new species of Ptero- 

 dactyle, for which the name of Pterodac- 

 tylus Macronyx is proposed, has been 

 discovered in the lias, at Lyme Regis in 

 Dorsetshire. The head of this new species 

 is wanting, but the rest of the skeleton, 

 though dislocated, is nearly entire, and the 

 length of the claws so much exceeds that of 

 the claws of the Pterodactylus-Longirostris 

 and brevirostris, of which the only two known 

 specimens are minutely described by 

 Cuvier, as to show that it belongs to 

 another species. Dr. Buckland, by whom 

 the above account has been communicated 

 to the Geological Society, also concludes, 

 from an extensive series of specimens, that 

 the fossils, locally called Bezoar stones, that 

 abound at Lyme, in the same beds of lias 

 with the bones of Icthyosaurus, are the 

 fasces of that animal. In variety of size and 

 form they resemble elongated pebbles, or 

 kidney potatoes, varying generally from 

 two to four inches in length, and from one 

 to two inches in diameter ; some few being 

 larger, others much smaller. Their colour 

 is dark gray, their substance like indurated 



