278 Vhr'amarhte, — Anatomical Preparatkn. ■* 



The fecond memoir relates to falamanders, to which our 

 anceftors afcribed the property of refifliug the flames j but 

 they have fhovvn to our cotemporaries a property more au- 

 thentic, and equally wonderful, that of reproducing their 

 limbs when they have been cut ofF. C. Latreille has de- 

 fcrlbcd fix fpecies which hitherto have not been dillinguidied 

 by naturalifts. 



Every body knows ultramarine, that valuable colour, whiph 

 alone imitates the azure of the heavens. It is extrafted from 

 a ftone named lapis lazuli, by a very tedious manipulation ; 

 and though it has been known for a long time, and w as even 

 employed in the middle ages for thofe miniatures with which 

 manufcripts were ornamented, no precife idea was enter- 

 tained refpe£ting its colouring principle: it was long be- 

 lieved that it w as copper. Margraf proved that it is iron ; 

 but the queftion was, to find in what ftate it exills in the 

 ilone, and how it produces that beautiful blue colour with- 

 out being combined with the acid of Prulfian blue. C. Guy- 

 ton, treating gypfum which contained abundance of iron, 

 remarked that, in changing itfelf into a fulfure, that matter 

 afllimed a blue colour as unalterable as that of lapis lazuli, 

 and preferving itfelf even in pot-afii in fufion. Guided by 

 this phenomenon, he treated lapis lazuli itfelf; and his ex- 

 periments leave him no doubt that the colouring principle 

 of that ftone is a blue fulfure of iron, which has hitherto 

 eluded the refearches of chemifis, becaufe they confounded 

 the produfts of it with thofe of the grains of pyrites or yel- 

 low fulfure of iron, which exift in every kind of lapis lazuli. 

 By a few fteps more the arts will perhaps be enriched with a 

 rare fubftance, which may be formed at pleafure. 



C. Chaufiier has rendered an important fervice to all thofe 

 fciences the objeft of which is organifed bodies, by commu- 

 nicating the means of preferving to the different parts of the 

 human body, and of thofe of animals, the forms which they 

 poffeflTed when in the ftate of life. This procefs confifts in 

 keeping them for fome time in a folution of the oxygen- 

 ated muriat of mercury, commonly called corrojive fublimate. 

 When fuftered to dry, after being taken from this mixture, 

 they aflunie a confiftence like that of wood^j and become 



abfolutely 



