On the Manufacture and Uses of Animal Charcoal. 17 
ber to have seen in any former year, but not a white-tailed one 
could ever be detected in the assembled multitude. Their ga- 
thering song was more than usually cheerful; their training and 
spiral flights, from their augmented numbers, were particularly 
amusing ; and their merry-making was louder and longer heard 
after their fight was beyond the reach of the visual organs: per- 
haps this might be heightened by an uncommonly mild humidity 
in the air, which being more conductory of sound than a dry at— 
mosphere might aid the vibration of their noisy clamour. At 
tength they took their final departure, leaving ‘* not a rack be- 
hind,”’ under all the similar circumstances of former years. On 
the evening of the seventh dav, however, after they had totally 
disappeared, we had again the unusual pleasure of a revisitation 
from our old friends. It was a fine summer evening; the exhala- 
tions of the meridian sun hovered over our heads in calm sere- 
nity; while not a breath ef wind nor the rustling of a leaf dis- 
turbed the rays of the sun, half smothered, half reflected, glim- 
mering through a misty veil of snow-white brightness, and height- 
ened by the increasing obliquity of the departing beams, which threw 
over the waning day an air of heavenly sublimity. Enticed from 
the elevated regions (to which | am of opinion they retire, and 
keep on the wing during the whole of their absence, or through 
which they wing their flight to distant climes) by the uncommon 
mildness and calm serenity of the evening, the swallows were: 
first heard but faintly, as at a great distance in the air. Their 
well-known voice however was instantly recognised, and the sound 
of the ethereal crowd (of swallows) brought some of the servants 
from the field, to intimate the return of their old and particular 
friends. From the increasing sound, we discovered they were 
gradually continuing their descent, till their well-known and fa- 
miliar tones were distinctly heard in loud clamour by every ser- 
vanton the field. None ventured to descend below the vapour ; 
consequently none of them were seen, although they remained 
within hearing for nearly an hour together. They reascended 
with the going down of the sun, and have never been heard nor 
seen again. Yours sincerely, 
Gavin INGLIs. 
V. On the Manufacture and Uses of Animal Charcoal, known 
by the Name of Ivory Black, &c. By the Chevalier Capit 
DE GAssICoURT. 
Ths physical and chemical properties of animal charcoal have 
heen known only for a few years. Formerly bones and ivory were 
calcined in close vessels merely to procure a fine black for paint- 
Vol. 53, No.249, Jan, 1819. B ing ; 
