Scientific Intelligence. — Arts. 395 



scene which is probably without a parallel. — Forster in Trans- 

 actions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, 

 Durham, and Newcastle. 



32. Importance of the Discovery of the Curing of Herrings. 

 — The discovery of the mode of curing and barrelling herring, 

 by an obscure individual of the name of Beukles, or Beukelzon, 

 towards the middle of the 14th century, contributed more, per- 

 haps, than any thing else, to increase the maritime power and 

 wealth of Holland. At a period when the prohibition of eating 

 butcher-meat during two days every week, and forty days be- 

 fore Easter, was universal, a supply of some sort of subsidiary 

 food was urgently required ; so that the discovery of Beukles 

 became of the greatest consequence, not to his countrymen only, 

 but to the whole Christian world. The Emperor Charles V. being, 

 in 1550, at Biervliet, where Beukles was buried, he visited his 

 grave, and ordered a magnificent monument to be erected, to 

 record the memory of a man who had rendered so signal a ser- 

 vice to his country. 



33. On the Setting of Plaster, by M. Gay Lussac. — The 

 property which plaster-of-Paris (gypsum or sulphate of lime) 

 possesses, when deprived of its water by heat, of setting 

 into a firm mass, by combining with additional water, is well 

 known to most persons. The consistency which it acquires is 

 very variable, and it is purest plaster that acquires the least. 

 The solidification has been attributed to the presence of some 

 hundredth parts of carbonate of lime ; but doubtless erroneously, 

 for the heat necessary to bake plaster, and, which, in the small 

 way, does not rise to 150° cent, is not sufficient to decompose 

 carbonate of Ume. Besides, baked plaster does not ordinarily 

 contain quickhme, and the addition of this base to plasters of 

 feeble consistency, does not sensibly improve them. I think 

 that the difference observable in the consistency of baked plas- 

 ters is to be ascribed to their hardness in a crude state. I con- 

 ceive that hard stone plaster, after losing its water, will resume 

 a firmer consistency in returning to its former condition, than 

 that which is more tender. The primitive molecular arrange- 

 ment, is in some sort i-egained. On the same principle it is, 

 that good cast steel, the carbon of which has been removed by 

 cementing it with oxide of iron, produces, by a fresh cementa- 



c c2 



