595 Oh Uric Acid and Burajr. 



NATURAL HISTORY C0Ll,i:CTlON FUOM INDIA. 



M. L. de Latour, king's iiatiualit-t at Pondicherry (from the 

 year 1816, when the French regained possession of it), has 

 iateJy returned to Paris. Fie has visited successively various 

 districts of the peninsula of India, including a part of Bengal, 

 in the island of Ceylon. The fruit of his labours will be of con- 

 siderable utility to the French colonies, and conducive to the 

 progress of the natural sciences. To the king's gai'den at 

 Paris he early transmitted a zoological collection, considered 

 as one of the greatest then received. Fie has since sent a num- 

 ber of live animals to the royal menagerie, and a vast number 

 of herbs and seeds. Among the former are a young elephant, 

 an Indian chacal, and different species of land and sea tor- 

 toises. With each assortment he has forwarded a descriptive 

 catalogue, and accompanying memoirs. Fie has also brought 

 with him a considerable collection from the three kingdoms of 

 nature; and he had previously introduced at Pondicherry, 

 among other useful plants, that known by the name of the 

 guinea-herb, which is the more valuable from forage being 

 scarce on the coast of Coromandel. 



MOTION OF GASES THROUGH CONDUIT-PIPES. 



From numerous experiments made by M. Girard, in the 

 apparatus erected at the Flospital St. I^ouis for lighting by 

 means of coal-gas, it results: — 1. That carburetted hydrogen 

 gas and atmosi^heric air, brought to the same state of compres- 

 sion, move according to the same laws, and experience the same 

 resistance in the same pipes, and that they do so independently 

 of their specific gravities. 2. That the resistance to the motion 

 of aeriform fluids in conduit-pipes is exactly proportional to 

 the squares of their mean velocities ; and lastly, That in con- 

 sequence of this law and of the law of linear motion, the expen- 

 diture of gas by a given conduit, of uniform size, is always in 

 the direct ratio of the pressure indicated in the reservoir which 

 feeds the stream, and in the inverse ratio of the square root of 

 the length of the conducting pipe through which it passes. — 

 Annates de Chimie, 



ON URIC ACID AND BORAX. 



Mr. Wetzlar, a pupil of Mr. Wurzer, in making a series of 

 interesting experiments on uric acid, (of which he readily pro- 

 cured considerable quantities, after having observed that urine 

 mixed with any acid became instantaneously turbid by rub- 

 bing with a stick &c. against the sides of the vessel containing 

 it, and jnclds in a few minutes a precipitate m.ore or less abund- 

 ant 



