Miscellanies. 39 j 



i 



Moll, of Utrecht, I wish you would call his attention to the list of 

 errata in No. 1 of the subsequent volume to that just referred to, in 

 which the line beginning " Its inflammation occurs when phosphorus 

 alone is placed," &c. is directed to be changed to " No inflamma- 

 tion occurs," he. The word " Its" was substituted by the printer 

 for " No," which was in my MS. I was so much struck with the 

 influence that this typographical error would have in throwing the 

 experiments into disrepute, should they be noticed and their repetition 

 attempted, that on finding the note copied into Brewster's Edinburgh 

 Journal of Science, I wrote to request a formal correction of the 

 mistake. The letter, perhaps, did not reach him, or his known cour- 

 tesy would have prevented the neglect of the request, and the subse- 

 quent insertion of a stricture upon the very passage, in which Prof. 

 Moll supposes me to contradict the Holland experimenters. 



I have not published the entire results of those experiments, from 

 a wish to see how far they might have been anticipated, in a memoir 

 contained in the transactions of the Zealand Society of Arts ; the 

 existence of which was made known to me by Prof. Moll's commu- 

 nication. These transactions I have in vain attempted to procure, 

 and having no desire to reproduce any experiments already made 

 abroad, I have thought it most prudent, for the present, to withhold 

 my paper. 



6. On the growth of timber. — Extract of a letter from Mr. Alexan- 

 der C. Twining, to the Editor, dated Albany, April 9, 1833. 



Dear Sir — I take this opportunity to mention a fact, which I once 

 observed, and which may, perhaps, prove interesting to the readers 

 of your Journal and lovers of natural science. In the year 1827, 

 a large lot of hemlock timber was cut from the north eastern slope 

 of East Rock, near New Haven, for the purpose of forming a founda- 

 tion for the wharf which bounds the basin of the Farmington Canal 

 on the East. While inspecting and measuring that timber, at the time 

 of its delivery, I took particular notice of the successive layers, each 

 of which constitutes a year's growth of the tree; and which, in 

 that kind of wood, are very distinct. These layers were of various 

 breadth, indicating a growth five or six times as full in some years 

 as in others, preceding or following. Thus, every tree had preserv- 

 ed a record of the seasons, for the whole period of its growth, wheth- 

 er thirty years or two hundred, — and what is worthy of observation, 

 every tree told the same story. Thus, if you began at the outer layer 



