Scientific Jntelligence — Arts, 185 



flesh ; the skin of all the limbs assumes a peculiar character, — it ia 

 rough to the touch, very dry, and, did it not hang in places in loose 

 folds, would be more of the nature of parchment than anything else 

 with which I can compare it ; the eyes are much sunk into the head, 

 and have a dull painful look ; the shoulder-bones are thrown up so 

 high that the column of the neck seems to have sunk, as it were, 

 into the chest ; the face and head, from the wasting of the flesh, 

 and the prominence of the bones, have a skull-like appearance ; the 

 hair is very thin upon the head ; there is over the countenance a 

 sort of pallor, quite distinct from that which utter decline of 

 physical power generally gives in those many diseases in which life 

 still continues after the almost entire consumption of the muscular 

 parts of the body. In the case of the starved young, and we saw 

 many hundreds, there are two or three most peculiar characteristic 

 marks which distinguish them from the victims of other mortal ills ; 

 the hair on a starved child's head becomes very thin, often leaves 

 the head in patches, and what there is of it stands up from the 

 head ; over the whole brow, in many instances, over the temple in 

 almost all, a thick downy sort of hair grows, sometimes so thickly 

 as to be quite palpable to the touch ; between the fingers there are 

 sores, very often there is anasarcous swelling of the ancles. In the 

 majority of famine cases there is either dysentery or chronic 

 diarrhoea." 



Such is to-day, drawn in no exaggerated colours, the condition of 

 Oonnaught. The devastation had been long preparing, and it is 

 complete. — Times, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 1850. 



ARTS. 



13. Detonating Sugar. — -In the meeting of the Royal Academy 

 of Turin, for 31st Jannary 1849, Professor Ascanio Sobrero an- 

 nounced his discovery of a detonating sugar, obtained from that 

 material, by means similar to the mode of preparing Gun-cotton. 



Take pounded loaf-sugar and pour on it a mixture of two volumes 

 of sulphuric acid (at Barune 66), and one volume of nitric acid (at 43.) 

 Immediately the sugar is converted into a tenaceous viscid substance, 

 which is only partially dissoluble in the acids employed. On adding a 

 large quantity of water (about twenty times that of the acids employed) 

 the sugar is converted into a material with the following properties. 

 It is very white ; diffusible in the acid mixture, and absolutely in- 

 soluble in water, but very soluble in alcohol and sulphuric ether. 

 When subject to a moderate heat, it melts, and is decomposed with- 

 out detonation : but if suddenly heated to redness, it explodes like 

 gun-powder, producing gaseous emanations, in which it is not difficult 

 to recognise the Nitrous vapour and that of Cyanogen. By the blow 

 of a hammer it also explodes, but feebly. 



The composition of this fulminating bugar it will not be difficult 

 to determine — more easily than that ol gun-cotton — from its more 



