PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 653 



families of these men, and we may suppose that the winner of the 

 match, and the enormous stakes, needs no suggestion in the pre- 

 mises. With the exception of this loss, nothing mars the pleasure 

 of the race. The triumph of the American over the English 

 yachts was not more flattering to our yachtsmen than this, and 

 yet we must not overestimate its importance. The Henrietta is 

 about 98 feet in length of keel, but Columbus discovered America 

 iu a four-masted vessel of but 90 feet length of keel, accompanied 

 by two caravels, one of which was probably but half the size of 

 the Santa Maria. 



New Cooking Appaeatus. 

 Mr. J. Newburg exhibited his apparatus for cooiving meats and 

 vesretables without the direct use of a fire. The article to be 

 cooked is placed in an ordinary tin kettle with water, and heated 

 to or near the boiling point ; it is then placed in another vessel, 

 which is surrounded by a substance which is a very poor conductor 

 of heat, when the food, after remaining three or four hours in this 

 apparatus, is found to be well cooked. In this manner a piece of 

 meat was cooked in the room in one hour and a half. 



' Petroleum and Bitumen. 



Mr. L. B. Page exhibited a great variety of specimens of petro- 

 leum, and described the qualities of each. Among them was the 

 oil from Burmah, India, very clear and white, being purihed as it 

 came through the earth. There is also a heavy oil from there 

 called tar. The oil from Mexico is of a gravity of only 45 deg. 

 Baume. It would seem that this oil, in its natural state, is white. 

 The specimen shown had never been distilled, and it is perfectly 

 white. The oil that had been passed through boneblack but once, 

 was also very white. The dark oil shown was what is called pitch 

 at the present time ; it is very tough. This is the material that 

 the ancients used to cement their brick. He exhibited a little ball 

 of pitch and sand, which was found on the coast of California. It 

 had been tossed by the rolling waves until it assumed that shape. 

 The specimen called the Albert coal was of such a questionable 

 ciiaracter, that it gave rise to a law-suit, involving the testimony of 

 many experts to determine whether it was coal or bitumen. The 

 oil shown from the river Euphrates was exactly the same as our 

 petroleum. He believed that bituminous coal came from oil, and 

 not the oil from the coal. 



