1846.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



159 



Earl de Grey :— to Mr. Wortbington ; to Mr. S. J. Nicboll ; and to Mr. 

 J. F. Wadraore. 



The President announced that the Queen had been graciously pleased 

 to bestow a further mark of favour upon the Institute, by giving annually 

 a gold medal for the promotion of the useful purposes of the Society, and 

 that the regulations connected with this gratifying instance of Her Ma- 

 jesty's continued favour, would be forthwith determined and communicated 

 at the earliest opportunity. 



DECORATIVE ART SOCIETY. 



Mr. E. Cooper exhibited a process for producing a volute by means of a 

 natural form. He had selected a shell, the Buccinum spiratum, or Syra- 

 cuse whelk, and affixed it to a board ; a string with crayons attached was 

 then wound along the spiral hollow of the shell, and this, in the course of 

 its convolutions, delineated what he assumed to be the Greek volute. He 

 compared the result, satisfactorily, with engravings, by Nicholson, from the 

 Ionic capitals to the Temple on the lUissus and the Temple of Bacchus at 

 Teos, and he also had detected an exact correspondence in size in Inwood's 

 Erechtheion, plate 21, from the Temple of Victory on the Acropolis. BIr. 

 Cooper then explained that, in an examination of an Ionic capital in the 

 British Museum, he observed that the eye had been litted with a stone 

 simitar to the other parts ; and, further, that in another instance the eye 

 had been lost out. The orifice thus exposed, he conjectured, had been ne- 

 cessarily made to receive an instrument for guiding the tools used in work- 

 ing mouldings on the face of the volute. Its diameter agreed very nearly 

 with that of the lower part of his shell, and he presumed that a modified 

 cast in metal from the shell would supply an instrument suited to such a 

 purpose, and which, at any rate, oft'ered an inexpensive and ready mode of 

 striking scrolls for hand-rails, &c. Mr.Tapling tested the volute described 

 by Mr. Cooper by a notation of eight radial intersections, and he contended 

 that the scale of expansion was ditfereut from that of the Greek volute. 

 His remarks were afterwards sustained by a comparative experiment upon 

 a rubbing which Mr. Cooper had in his possession. It was also said, that 

 the engravings referred to by Mr. Cooper were incorrect. 



NOTES OF THE MONTH. 



One of the entire floors of the new Houses of Parliament of the build- 

 ing|facing the river, is to be completed forthwith for the numerous commit- 

 tees that are likely to be called into action by railway proceedings in the 

 Houses of Parliament. 



Mr. Ambrose Poynter, the indefatigable Hon. Sec. of the Royal Institute 

 of British Architects and the architect of numeroua ecclesiastical buildings, 

 and Mr. John Shaw, architect, of Christ's Hospital, have been appointed, 

 under the new act, official referees in place of BIr. Higgins, who some time 

 since resigned the appointment. We feel assured these appointments will 

 give great satisfaction to the profession. 



We regret to announce the demise of Mr. Le-keux, justly celebrated for 

 the accuracy and neatness of his engravings connected with architecture. 



Lord Mahon has been appointed President of the Society of Antiqua- 

 rians. It is time that this Society commenced a revolution in its proceed- 

 ings ; it ought to embrace all the intentions of the two rival Societies — the 

 Archaeological Institute and Association. 



The Royal Academy has announced for its architectural prize, to be 

 awarded on the 10th December next, a silver medal for the most accu- 

 rately finished drawings of St. Peter's, Cornhill ; the plan, elevation, and 

 section to be drawn from actual measurement. 



The progress of the new Houses of Parliament have been greatly de- 

 layed on account of Dr. Reid's system of warming and ventilation ; serious 

 disputes have arisen with Mr. Barry, the architect, who was obliged to 

 take his stand against the enormous inconvenience Dr. Reid's works occa- 

 sioned to the progress of the building. At length Government has taken 

 the dispute in hand ; in the House of Lords, Viscount Canning announced 

 that three gentleman had been selected to enquire into the whole subject 

 connected with both the warming and ventilation, and to advise Go- 

 vernment thereon. The gentlemen to whom instructions have been ad- 

 dressed are Mr. Hardwick, so well known as the architect of the new 

 dining hall and library at Lincoln's-inn; Professor Graham, the Professor 

 of Chemistry at tlie University of London ; and Mr. George Stephenson, 

 the engineer, a gentleman who, apart from his general scientific reputation, 

 has given much attention to the subject of ventilation. 



The ancient temple of the Knights of Malta, at Laon, has been com- 

 pletely restored under the auspices of Government. 



A statue of Sophocles is on its way from Athens to Paris, to be placed 

 in the Louvre. It is said to be one of the most remarkable antique works 

 of art. 



At New York, the new Trinity Church, said to be one of tlie best ex- 

 amples of Gothic architecture in that city, is nearly [finished. It has a 

 tower and crocheted spire 300 feet high ; and the windows are filled in 

 with stained glass. 



M. Blouet, architect to the Arc de I'Etoile (given in the Journal, vol. II., 

 1839), has been elected of succeed the Baltard professor at the School of 

 Fine Arts, in Paris. 



The restoration of the works at the Chateau of Blois, by M. Duban, is 

 making great progress. 



An electroiihonic telegraph, the invention of Chevalier Laskott, has been 

 presented by Professor Jacob to the Imperial Academy of Petersburgh. 

 It is composed of a clavia of ten keys, ten bells of different sizes, and ten 

 conducting wires, by which the letters of the alphabet, and words which 

 they form, are expressed by sounds and harmonics. 



On the Dublin and Kingstown Railway the consumption of coke per 

 train per mile is 2G|lb., and the total cost of power and maintenance of 

 way 10-7 pence. 



Mr. Bidder, in his report on the recent gauge experiments (detailed in 

 the Journal for February last, p. 49), gives the following results : — 



Broad Gange. 



The friction of air through tubes, Mr. Bidder observes, is tolerably well 

 ascertained ; it appears that, with a pressure of -04 lb. per inch, the velo- 

 city of the air through the long tubes of the A engine used in the narrov^ 

 gauge experiments was 16 miles per hour, and through the shorter tubes 

 of the Ixion 18 miles per hour. 



ARTESIAN WELLS IN CHINA. 



It is about twenty years since the report of Artesian wells in that coun- 

 try has reached Europe, through the medium of the French missionaries. 

 According to these statements, one single district of the Celestial Empire, 

 equal in size to one of the provinces of France, contains more than 

 10,000 (?) Artesian wells, some of which attain the astonishing depth of 

 8 to 900 metres. These extraordinary soundings of the earth's surface are, 

 it is said, made by very simple means, and for various purposes, of which 

 one, certainly, is most extraordinary, and altogether peculiar to the 

 Chinese. Some of them discharge a water greatly impregnated with, 

 common salt, others bring to the surface a bituminous oil, others in fine, 

 seemingly by passing through coal measures in the state of ignition, exhale 

 constantly combustible (hydrogen) gas. These are the so-called fire-wells 

 of the missionaries, with which the Chinese procure the gas which they 

 use for the evaporation of the salt brine of the adjacent wells. 



The importance of these statements is easily conceived, not only in a 

 scientific but also a practical point of view, as we might be able thereby 

 to furnish our cities, at a nominal rate, with that vast quantity of gas we 

 now consume, but the jealousy hitherto of the Chinese authorities prevents 

 travellers pushing to that quarter. The French Academy of Sciences has, 

 therefore, of late inspected with great interest the specimens of bitumen 

 and brine which the director of the French missions in China has addressed 

 to them. The only fact of importance elicited by the chemical analysis 

 which these substances have been submitted to is the complete absence of 

 iodine in the brine. M. Boussingault acted as reporter in this important 

 transaction. 



J. L Y. 



THE AURIFEROUS SAND OF THE RHINE. 



Some observations on the utilizing the hitherto hidden riches of this 

 river have been laid before the French Institute, by M. Daubr^e, Engineer 

 of Mines at Strasburg. It has been calculated that the amount of gold 

 contained in the sand of the above river amounts to 35,916 kilogrammes, 

 of the value of 114 millions of francs. M. D. has made many experiments 

 to determine how the particles of gold detached from the Alpine rocks are 

 distributed in the alluvion {atterissements) of the banks of the Rhine. 



The pebbles most usually searched after for gold are those which the 

 river deposits at a short distance from the stratum, subjected to the abra- 

 sion of the waters.. It is on the upper part of banks thus formed, in the 

 midst of large pebbles, to a depth of not more than 15 centimetres, that gold 

 is to be met with. Out of the actual bed of the river, gold is also to be 

 met with in the ancient deposits of the river, which form a band of 4 to (> 

 kilometres broad. In the fine sand without pebbles, such as is deposited 

 in the hollows of the bed, no gold is to be found, any more than in the 

 alluvial soil (slime), which, nevertheless, is of Alpine origin. The sand 

 which is usually searched after for gold contains generally from 13 to 16 



