184 Seentifie Intelligence. 
2. Belemnites—M. Raspail informed the French Academy on 
the 17th of November last, that a careful study of two hundred and 
fifty belemnites, collected in the Alps of Provence, had taught him . 
that belemnites are not testaceous coverings of animals, as the mod- 
erns suppose, but that they are cutaneous appendices belonging to 
marine animals, approaching to the echinodermes, the living species 
being no longer found.—Idem. 
3. Number of salts—divisibility of matter—About forty years 
ago, only thirty salts in all were known. At present, the precise 
number is not known, but there are above two thousand! There are 
few subjects in natural philosophy, the contemplation of which is 
better calculated to exalt and improve the understanding, than the 
vast and almost inconceivable divisibility of matter. 
The vegetable and. animal kingdoms afford the most wonderful in- 
stances of the attenuation of matter. The vibrio undula, found in 
duck weed, is computed to be ten thousand million times smaller than 
a hemp seed; and the monas gelatinosa, discovered in ditch water, 
appears, in the field of a microscope, a mere atom, endued with vital- 
ity, millions of which are seen playing, like the sun beams, in a single 
drop of liquid. It has been calculated, that the skin is perforated by 
a thousand holes in the length of an inch; and if we estimate the 
whole surface of the body of a middle sized man to be sixteen square 
feet ; it must contain not less than two million three hundred and four 
thousand pores. These pores are the mouths of so many excretory 
vessels, which perform the important function of insensible perspira- 
tion. The lungs discharge every minute six grains, and the surface 
of the skin from three to twenty grains, the average over the whole 
body being about fifteen grains of lymph, which consists of water, 
with a very minute admixture of salt, acetic acid, and a trace of 
iton.— Graham’s Chemistry, p. 456. 
_ 4. Preservation of Cloth, Furs, §¢.—The English successfully 
use the following process to destroy moths, or to expel them from 
cloths, tippets, and muffs. The seeds of the purple sweet sultan, 
(hibiseus abelmoscus,) are spread lightly among the stuff to be pre- 
_ served, between its folds, &c. ‘This grain, besides the advantage of 
expelling moths, gives to the stuff or clothes, an agreeable odor. 
Furriers, in order to preserve tippets, muffs, skins, and woolen stuffs, 
and to destroy the vitality of the eggs of the insects which eat them. 
