n / x /•/•: e x rn Jv.v/.i/. .1/ /•; /•; rixa. 27 



three young liinls found in the willows and cottonwoods thinly skirting the South Fork 

 of the Smoky Hill river. 



lhili'n hnrcnlis kr'ulrri IIoopcs. Krider's Hawk. Killed a female ; think I saw another 

 bird, but am not positive, as they so closely resemble at a distance the light phase of 

 Archibuteo ferrugineus. 



"BIRDS RARE IN THE STATE." 



Myiadestes townsendi (And.) Caban. Townsend's Solitaire. Saw ten; shot four of the 

 birds. 



/' ndroeca auduboni (Towns.) Baird. Audubon's Warbler. Shot several; quite com- 

 mon. 



Corvus eryptoleucvs Couch. White-Necked Haven. Saw a flock <>f six and one of 

 seven birds; shot three. 



1 have specimens of the above birds in my collection. 



I rejoice to know that we are at last to have a standard classification and nomenclature, 

 a- it will in the future do away with the present confusion in arrangements and of names. 

 I shall, in accordance with same, issue a new edition of my Catalogue of the Birds of 

 Kansas. 



A CLASS-KOOM EXPERIMENT ON EBULLITION. 



BY EDWARD L. NICHOLS, PH. D., OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY. 



The change of volume of water between 0° and the boiling-point has been very care- 

 fully studied. It is most conveniently expressed by means of the well-known curve, in 

 which the abcissse are temperatures, and ordinates represent the volumes. Beyond the 

 boiling-point, however, the curve varies with the conditions of the experiment. If boil- 

 ing takes place without superheating, the change of volume of the liquid and vapor is 

 represented by a vertical line; but if the water be superheated before ebullition occurs, 

 the curve takes a form not yet fully determined.* 



( >f the behavior of a superheated liquid we know but little aside from the fact shown 

 in I ►ufour's | and in Donny'sJ well-known experiments, that the temperature maybe 

 raised many degrees above the normal boiling-point without ebullition. Those experi- 

 menters have shown, what indeed we should expect from the nature of the process of ebul- 

 lition// that in order to prevent boiling it is necessary to have expelled all gases from the 

 body of the liquid. In Dufour's experiment this condition is attained by suspending a 

 globule of previously boiled water in a mixture of olive oil and the oil of cloves, the 

 proportions being such as to give a density to the mixture just equal to that of water. 

 In this way water has been heated to 178° without boiling; and when, ebullition does 

 take place the tension of the vapor is sufficient to produce a considerable explosion, some- 

 times blowing the hot oil from the bath with violence. Donny's method of excluding 

 the air consists in boiling the water in one end of a long and doubly-bent tube; after 

 which, without stopping the ebullition, the other end is sealed in the blast-lamp. In 

 such a tube water may be heated to about 130°, at which temperature explosive boiling 

 takes place, and the tube is generally shattered. 



For the purpose of illustrating this interesting phenomenon to his classes, the writer 

 has made use of the following very simple device. In a small "U" tube with unequal 



i i ttii— point see James Thomson— Proceedings of British Association, i^ti ; also, Maxwell's 



Theory of Heat. 



■fBibliotheque Universelle — Archives, 1861, vol. XII. 



{Annales de Chjiune, 3d series, vol. X.VI, 1871. 



\ E. I.. Nichols — Proceedings "t' the American Association, 1881 ; also, Maxwell's Theory of Heat. 



