74 Scientific Intelligence, [July 



7. Lastly, it is absolutely necessary that in all preparations to be 

 used internally, rectified, or at least, German sulphuric acid should 

 be employed.* 



IV. — American Patents. 



Nearly one-third of the journal of the Franklin Institute is occu- 

 pied monthly, with a list of American patents and remarks upon them 

 by the editor. The number of patents taken out in June 1834, 

 amounted to fifty-six, for July forty-eight, and for August fifty- six. 

 This multiplicity of claims to discovery, no doubt, originates from 

 the small expense incurred in obtaining a patent. 



Accordingly we find that two or three patents infringe on each 

 other ; the slightest deviation from a previous specification being suffi- 

 cient to produce a new patent. In August, a patent was taken out 

 for ajly-drtver, or instrument for driving away flies, which re- 

 sembled two previously patented machines of the same nature. 



A patent for a saw-knife, specifies that you are to " take a 

 common knife and cut teeth in the back of it, and you have the 

 patent saw knife." 



A steam bug destroyer, patented in July, is exactly similar to 

 three others which had previously obtained patents, and " what is 

 somewhat curious, all of them are similar to such as had been pre- 

 viously described in the English journals." 



In the account of a new patent for medicated liquid magnesia, 

 we learn, that Mr. John Cullen of Philadelphia, obtained a patent 

 16 years ago for liquid magnesia, which was formed by forcing car- 

 bonic acid into water, containing magnesia suspended in it, until the 

 latter was " dissolved. This is similar to the preparation lately 

 recommended by Dr. Murray of Belfast. 



V. — New Method of Drying Plants. 

 Dr. Hunefeld recommends a new method of drying plants, by 

 covering tliem first with the powder of lycopodium, and then placing 

 them in a vessel containing chloride of calcium. By this method 

 the colour and flexibility are preserved. On the 29th of July, 1831, 

 the thermometer being at 53^°, Dr. Goppert of Breslaw, placed in 

 a 24 ounce glass two leaves of the hyacinth, and a specimen of the 

 Fumaria officinalis, with two ounces of muriate of lime, in such a 

 manner that the plants were not in contact with the salt. On the 

 following day the leaves began to dry, and on the 3d of August, 

 although not dead, the hyacinth leaves were capable of being reduced 

 to a fine powder. Even fleshy plants as the Sedum rupestre are 

 so much dried in seven days, that they may be pulverized. The 

 use of the lycopodium powder is to prevent the sap from escaping. — 

 {Brande's Pharm. Zeit. 5. 1835, 71). 



VI. — Flora of the Arkansas. 

 Mb. Nuttall in the fifth volume of the Transactions of the Ameri- 

 can Philosophical Society, has published a list of the plants of this 



* Erdmann and Schweigger's Journal fur Praktische Chimie, iv. Tob. 



