Miscellanies. 371 
December 20, 1839.—Doctor Hare made a verbal communication 
relative to the application of radiant heat to glass. 
_ The combustion of anthracite coal, in an open grate, in his labora- 
tory, having four flues of about 4.12 by 2.12 inches each, in area, just 
above the Jevel of the grate, (the upper stratum of the fire having 
nothing between it and the ceiling,) had allowed him to perform some 
operations with success, which formerly he would have considered 
impracticable. The fire having attained to that state of incandes- 
cence to which it easily arrives when well managed, he had, on open- 
ing a hole by means of an iron rod, so as to have a perpendicular 
perforation extending to the bottom of the fire, repeatedly fused the 
beaks of retorts of any capacity, not being more than three gallons, 
causing them to draw out, by the force of gravity, into a tapering 
tube; so that, on lifting the beak from the fire, and holding the body 
of the retort upright, the fused portion would hang down so as to 
form an angle with the rest of the beak, or to have any desired 
obliquity. By these means, in a series of retorts, the beak of the 
first might be made to descend through the tubulure of a second; the 
beak of the second through that of a third, and so on; the beak of 
the last retort in the row being made, when requisite, to enter a tube 
passing through ice and water in an inverted bell-glass. 
Dr. Hare further communicated a method of preparing pure chlo- 
rohydric acid, from the impure muriatic acid of commerce, by the 
action of sulphuric acid. 
_ It is known, said Dr. Hare, that concentrated sulphuric acid, when 
added to liquid chlorohydric acid, expels more or less of it as a gas, 
in consequence of its superior affinity for water. At the present low 
price of the ordinary acid of commerce, Dr. Hare had found it advan- 
ageous to procure the latter in purity, by subjecting it to the former. 
‘A tubulated glass retort, having been half filled with chlorohydric 
acid, sulphuric acid was allowed to drop from a glass funnel, with a 
cock, into a tube descending into the acid in the retort, through the 
tubulure, to which it was luted by strips of gum-elastic. The tube 
terminated in a very small bore. The beak of the retort, bent in the 
fire, as he had just described, descended through the tubulure into the 
body of a small retort containing water not refrigerated. © 
of the latter descended into a larger one, half full of water, to which 
ice was appiied.. Of course the beak of the third might, in like man- 
ner, enter the body of a fourth. After an equivalent weight of sul- 
we do not insert it, although it is a most able document, and should be 
ad. ee pees toh to the la of the Secretary of War, 
tea of Con ngress. —_—, 
per time, 
generally re 
was referred to 
