470 Scientific Intelligence. [Dec. 



with the expedition under the command of Capt. Frankland, that the 

 party had arrived at about 64° N. lat. and 1 10 W. long. The whole 

 expedition were in good health and spirits, and had passed an agreea- 

 ble winter, living on the flesh of rein deer, which animal abounds in 

 those regions, and passed them in great droves. The encampment 

 was made in Sept. 1820, when further progress became impracticable, 

 and in June of the present year, they were to commence their passage 

 down Hearn's River. The party consisted of Capt. Franklin, two 

 naval officers, one seamen, 19 Canadian voyageurs, and 17 Indians, 

 making in all 40 persons. 



Letters have also been received from the Discovery Ships, dated 

 July 16; they were then at Resolution Island, in Hudson's Bay. 

 They had met with some heavy icebergs, and considerable obstructions 

 from the field ice, which was then rapidly disappearing. When, how- 

 ever, the accounts came away, they had surmounted these inconve- 

 niences, and were pursuing their voyage of discovery up the inlet at 

 the north of the Bay. The officers and men were in the highest health 

 and spirits, being well provided with all the necessary articles of 

 provision and clothing adapted to the climate. 



X. Musical Permutation. 



A very curious invention has been made in the art of musical com- 

 position. It consists in the use of prepared cards, on each of which a 

 bar of an air is arranged according to a certain rhythm and key. Four 

 packs of these cards, marked A, B, C, and D, are mingled together, 

 and as the cards are drawn and arranged before a performer in the 

 order of that series, it will be found that an original air is obtained. 

 The cards hitherto made are as waltzes, and succeed perfectly. 



XI. Singular Species of Strawberry. 



A correspondent states, that the singular species of strawberry 

 lately noticed in the public papers, found in Scotland, and which, like 

 the famous Glastonbury thorn, blooms in winter, is not confined to one 

 part of our island, but has flourished upwards of 50 years in the garden 

 of Tintern Abbey, the seat of Caesar Colclough, Esq. It was trans- 

 planted thither from Holland by a Mr. Simon, who presented it to one 

 of Mr. Colclough's ancestors. 



XII. Adulteration of Milk. 



Mr. E. Davy has lately completed a series of experiments on this 

 subject. He states that the amount of adulteration even in skimmed 

 milk sold in Cork, amounted to from one-fourth to one-sixth part. 

 The worst of the adulterated milk from themarket being of the specific 

 gravity of 1 "026, while the highest of the genuine milk from the 

 market was 1*039. In no case, however, did it appear that either 

 chalk, flour, or starch, was employed, the first being insoluble in 

 skimmed milk, and as well as the flour and starch speedily subsided. 



To ascertain the purity of new milk, it is only necessary to employ 

 a glass tube or lactometer minutely graduated, and the proportion that 

 the cream bears in point of depth to the milk beneath, marks the 

 purity of the fluid operated upon. The lactometer employed by Mr. 

 Davy, and with which he produced the above results, was little more 



