1829. 
and he has formed an establishment for the 
manufacture of dresses of wire gauze and 
asbestos, which will allow firemen to traverse 
with impunity the fiercest conflagration. 
The ancient armour has served as a model 
for their dresses, and it is officially stated 
that the success of them is incontrovertible. 
Chimneys.—Many researches haye been 
mage to ascertain if chimneys were used by 
the ancients. The houses discovered at 
Herculaneum and Pompeii have none; so 
that it is to be presumed, when these two 
cities were buried, chimneys were unknown 
in Italy, and that open portable burners 
were employed at that time. The palaces 
appear at that epoch to have been warmed 
by ovens placed underneath the ground 
floor. The enormous quantity of combus- 
tibles which this method of heating required, 
is not astonishing ; it was probably one of 
the principle elements of luxury. The 
epoch at which the origin of chimneys is to 
be placed, is not very well known; the 
writers of the fourteenth ceniury appear not 
to know them, or at least speak of them only 
as a novel invention, and an object of lux- 
ury. It may be presumed, that up to this 
period chimneys were not known, or at least 
were not generally used. It appears that 
the fire was ordinarily placed in a hollow 
effected in the middle of the floor, above 
which an opening was made in the roof. 
At the time of Seneca they began to make 
grooves in the walls to diffuse the heat 
through the upper stories ; it is probable, that 
from these was derived the idea of channels 
to carry off the smoke. The year 1347 is 
the most ancient, as well as the most certain 
epoch at which there is any mention of 
chimneys. An inscription found at Venice 
commemorates an earthquake which over- 
threw several chimneys. The first chimney- 
Sweepers came from Germany, France, 
Savoy, Piedmont, and other swrounding dis- 
tricts. For along time these were the only 
countries where the business of a chimney- 
Sweeper was carried on, whence it may be 
conjectured that chimneys were invented in 
Italy. 
Spring of Sulphuric Acid.—Sulphuric 
acid in large quantities is produced in a 
diluted and in a concentrated state in the 
town of Byron, Genessee county, 30 miles 
west of the river of that name, and ten miles 
south of the Erie Canal, in Nova Scotia. It 
has been known in that vicinity by the name 
of the sowr spring, about 17 years. Here is 
a hillock 230 feet long, and 100 broad, ele- 
vated about 5 feet above the surrounding 
plain. The hillock resembles the longitu- 
dinal section of an egg, with the convex side 
uppermost. Its greatest extent is north and 
south. It consists of a kind of ash-coloured 
analluvion, containing immense quantities 
of exceedingly minute grains of iron pyrites. 
It is mostly covered with a coat of charred 
vegetable matter, four or five inches thick, 
and black as common charcoal. The same 
charred coal extends some distance from the 
Varieties. 
429 
base of the hillock on-all sides. It appears 
as ifit had been recently burned over, though 
it is in a meadow where no fire had ever 
been, at least for several years. Its charred 
state is caused wholly by the action of the 
sulphuric acid. Several holes have been 
dug in the hill, which now contain turbid 
dilute sulphuric acid; also the depres- 
sions in meadow ground surrounding it. 
Should curiosity or interest induce the pro- 
prietor to dig a trench about it, or to make 
an artificial pond on one side, which might 
be occasionally drained and cleaned, a very 
interesting bath of diluie sulphuric acid 
might be constructed. The strength of the 
acid increases in a drought. When rain 
has fallen, it is proportionally diluted in 
most places. In some places it is strong, 
and appears to be perfecily concentrated, 
and nearly dry in its combination with the 
charred vegetable coat. In this state it is 
diffused throughout the whole piece of 
ground, which presents the charred appear- 
ance to the depth of 12 or 15 inches, and in 
some places three or four feet, but it is 
every where the strongest at the surface. 
Chronology.—F rom the last volume of M. 
de Hammer’s Ottoman History, we learn 
that posts by carricr pigeons were employed 
by the Turks in Hungary, in the year 1552. 
The first coffee-house was established at 
Constantinople in 1556, although in Egypt 
and Syria, and possibly in Arabia also, they 
had been long known. The first men- 
tion of them in Christian Europe, is at 
London, in 1636; but it was not till some 
forty years afterwards at Amsterdam that 
these establishments acquired any celebrity, 
and even a certain influence on political 
opinions; it may be remarked, that it was 
about the same time a great number of po- 
litical and literary papers commenced in 
Holland. 
Bricks.—The practice of making bricks 
is of no great antiquity among the English. 
By the common process of hand labour, one 
man has been known to mould eleven thou- 
sand in a day; the average quantity, how- 
ever, is not more than 5000, which shows, 
that manufacturing bricks by machinery 
could never be attended with profit. Itisa 
matter, perhaps, not geuerally known, that 
vast quantities of bricks are exported from 
England to different parts of the world. 
The modern city of Moscow has in a great 
measure been built with English bricks. 
Coral Islands.—The subject of the coral 
insects has occupied the attention of two 
eminent Trench naturalists, MM. Quoy 
and Gamard, who, contrary to the re- 
ceived opinion, suppose that those animals, 
which work in solid masses, and form coral 
reefs and islands, do not in fact operate at a 
lower depth than from 25 to 30 feet. From 
various facts, and analogical reasonings, they 
demonstrate, that these animals commence 
their operations only on the peaks of sub- 
marine mountains, working gradually to the 
surface ; and they deny that these animals 
