Miscellanies. 183 
puddling, and cementing of the metal, necessarily requires a great 
number {of furnaces, their appearance on approaching Merthyr, by 
night, from the hills with which it is surrounded, presents a scene 
which is probably without a parallel.—Jameson’s Jour. Oct. 1830. 
12. Importance of the discovery of the curing of Herrings.—The 
_ discovery of the mode of curing and barreling Herring, by an obscure in- 
dividual of the name of Beukles, or Beukelzon, towards the middle of 
the 14th century contributed more, perhaps, than any thing else, to in- 
crease the maritime power and wealth of Holland. Ata period when 
the prohibition of eating butcher meat during two days every week, 
and forty days before Easter, was universal, a supply of some sort 
of subsidiary food was urgently required; so that the discovery of 
ukles became of the greatest consequence, not to his countrymen 
only, but to the whole christian world. The Emperor Charles V. be- 
ing in 1550, at Biervliets, where Beukles was buried, he visited his 
grave and ordered a magnificent monument to be erected, to record the 
memory of a man who had rendered so signal a service to his coun- 
try.—Idem. 
CHEMISTRY. 
1. Quantity of carbonic acid in the atmosphere.—An elaborate 
Series of experimental observations to determine the changes which 
take place in the quantity of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, has been 
made by Theodore De Saussure, an account of which, was given in 
‘memoir read at the Societé de Phys. et d’Hist. Nat. de Genéve on 
ene bteenth of February, 1830. The following is the author’s 
mé 
“The variations, which I have observed in the atmospheric car- 
bonic acid, in the open country, are due to two principal causes : 
“Ist. To the changes which the soil undergoes in its moisture, 
Which absorbs this gas, and the dryness which evolves it. 2nd. To 
~ °pposing influences of night and day, or from darkness which in- 
*reases, and light which diminishes, the proportion of this gas. 
“The upper strata of the atmosphere contain more carbonic acid 
than the lower. ; 
“The variations of this gas from day and night are scarcely sensi- 
ble in the upper strata. They appear to participate more fully in the 
less sudden changes of the lower strata by the general effect produ- 
ced by moisture. 
“The variation, occasioned by day and night, is relatively small in 
the Streets of Geneva; but it is considerable on the adjacent lake, 
ch presents no obstacle to the lateral circulation of the air of the 
“ountry, 
