74 Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



DISCOVERY OF A SUBSTANCE THAT INFLAMES UPON CONTACT 

 WITH WATER. 



The following details have been communicated to us, which it 

 would be desirable to have verified. At Doulens, near Amiens, is 

 a large manufactory for spinning cotton, which is lighted by oil-gas. 

 This gas upon its return from the cast-iron cylinder, filled with red- 

 hot coal, where it is formed, traverses a reservoir of oil in which it 

 deposits a white liquid matter, which can be taken away by means 

 of a spigot situated at the lower part of the reservoir. The workmen 

 employed in this duty having dropped some of it to the ground upon 

 water, the matter took fire spontaneously, and having run into a 

 neighbouring rivulet, it spread itself upon the surface of the water, 

 which ap[)eared to be all on fire. The proprietor of the factory 

 intends to send a bottle of this singular substance to M. Gay-Lussac, 

 to have it cliemically analysed. — Bull. Univ. 



ENORMOUS FOSSIL VERTEBRA. 



In the neighbourhood of Bridport, in Dorsetshire, a short time 

 ago a labourer digging for an ingredient used in mortar, found a 

 vertebra of an enormous animal, larger than that of the whale, and 

 supposed to belong to a land animal. This curiosity is in the pos- 

 session of a gentleman at Bridport, who generously rewarded the 

 finder with ten guineas. Search has been made after the other 

 parts of the same animal, but hitherto without success. The per- 

 foration for the spinal marrow is stated to be nearly equal in cir- 

 cumference to the body of a man. 



AFRICAN EXPEDITION. 



By the kindness of a friend we are enabled to lay before our 

 readers the copy of a letter, addressed by the well known Captain 

 Clapperton to one of his connexions in this quarter. It is dated 

 from Hio, or Eyo, the capital of Youriba, 22d February 1826, and 

 is highly interesting on many accounts : 



" No doubt you, and all my other kind friends in our dear native 

 land, would be much alarmed for my safety, when the sad news of 

 the deaths of the rest of my party reached you, as bad news always 

 travel fastest. I certainly was very ill when poor Pearce died ; but 

 the circumstance of having to act as my own doctor, and the pow- 

 erful medicine I took, I believe saved me, not forgetting that Divine 

 Power, which ever, when a man is plunged in deep distress, gives 

 him new courage to exert himself, and bear up against all misfor- 

 tunes. You may in some measure guess my feelings, when so many 

 deaths occurred so rapidly in so small a party. It is impossible for 

 me to express them. I may tell you how I acted when poor Pearce 

 died, whose death aftected me most. After closing his eyes, I sat 

 before the corpse with my head between my knees for nearly an 

 hour, without saying a word. I then ordered a light and a watch to 

 be kept over the body, and crawled to the place where I had to pass 

 the night, and next day saw him buried, and read the Church of En- 

 gland service over him. This was the most trying duty of all. It is 

 little to see a man die; but to see the earth thrown on one whom you 



knew. 



