AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



doses! Faraday already teaches, instead of the terrible multiplication 

 chemical table of modern chemists; French, more espeially, we have 

 but about a dozen constitutional elements to deal with. Some years ago, 

 the Institute of France, translated a very small botanical work of Theo- 

 phrastus, who lived about 100 years, and taught botany much more per- 

 fectly, as regarded a tree, than any other man, ancient or modern. I 

 translated that for our Triinsactions, some years ago. -Your will find it 

 there. 



Mr. Tillman. — The ancients knew but little of chemistry and natural 

 philosophy. The blow pipe, the galvanic battery, the thermometer, baro- 

 meter, telescope, and microscope, have revealed to moderns only, the mys- 

 teries of nature. 



Mr. Meigs. — We do not know how to make such steel as was made by 

 them, or by East Indians ; nor can we cut the hardest bodies in nature bet- 

 ter than they ; nor have we formed cutting instruments as hard as steel out 

 of copper ? 



Mr. Tillman. — We can harden copper with tin ; but there is no proof 

 that the ancients did it in any other v/ay. 



Mr. Butler. — I deal largely in iron, for safes, and find trouble in the 

 want of homogeniety in it ; suppose we could test it by acids, which would 

 show us the bad spots. I saw a steam boiler, some time ago, lifted from 

 its bed, and at one end left a piece behind — so corroded was it by a trifling 

 action just at that point ! 



Dr. Levi Reuben. — Iron bars in bundles, in a damp place, found fairly 

 rotted at the ends, and variously so; not one continuous rot as in wood, 

 but in particular places — thus plainly indicating the want of uniform 

 quality in a piece of iron. I have noticed that invisible fractures of iron 

 are rendered visible by means of the corrosion of some fluid in it. There 

 is also molecular play — there is, too, galcanzc action! Much agitation 

 granulates iron also I 



The Chairman. — We used iron pipes through meadow land to conduct 

 water ! We lost our outlay, and tried block tin and failed. We are in 

 our infancy as to knowledge of iron. 



Mr. Stetson. — We must collect samples of iron corroded ever}- way, and 

 examine them. We must bend all our philosophy to that valuable work. 



REMARKS MADE BY R. L. PELL ON BUTTER-MAKING. 



I was invited by your commiittee to visit Mr. Johnson, and examine his 

 churn and mode of making butter ; but was unavoidably prevented. Plow- 

 ever, with your permission, will present the circumstances which aifect the 

 quality of butter. 



It is well understood by those who have given any attention to this im- 

 portant matter, that butter made in one district of country, difi"ers often in 

 quality from that produced in another, though precisely the same plan of 

 manufacture is pursued in both. In different seasons the same farm even 

 will afford entirely different qualities of butter. Cows depastured in May, 



