1842.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



1.37 



motive traffic over that railway as great, if not grentcr, than over any one in 

 Great Britain. The average expense of the canal maintenance in this country 

 seems to 50^ per mile per annum. 



The Professor concluded by stating, that he would close his somewhat 

 desultory discourse by calling attention to the fact, that the first elements of 

 the amelioration of internal improvements, he would not say internal com- 

 munication, which arose in this country, date from the period of the intro- 

 duction of the Poor Laws into Kngland, the effect of which has been to compel 

 the rich to (ind employment for the poor, or to support them, and thus has 

 been carried out the great principle of self-dependence, in separate districts, 

 to work out their own improvements. Certain it is. that, from the passing of 

 the ,,^ct of Elizabeth, which instituted a legal maintenance for the destitute, 

 and, by making mendicity a crime, swept the hordes of beggars, idlers, and 

 sorners, from the face of the land, this country took a start, and, overtaking 

 in im|irovement the other states of Europe, then far in advance of her, has 

 since pursued that successful and continued march of amendment of her 

 internal communication, which forms so remarkable a feature of England, 

 proving her wisdom and proclaiming her prosper! ly. He begged that, with 

 his previous cautions, the students would remember that the agent for the 

 carrying out of such improvements, past and to come, has been, and he 

 trusted long would continue to be. the civil engineer. 



ON ARCHITECTURAL CRITICISM, &e. 

 To Mr. East, with a word to H. S. 



I SHALL be glad to be allowed to correct an error into which Mr. East has 

 been led by the mystical signature of another correspondeut, since he attri- 

 butes to roe a certain harsh voice which emanated from " Ditto." At the 

 same time, I must acknowledge myself unable to comprehend the meaning 

 of many of the hints, which is to be attributed to their not being written in 

 a simple style, suited to the difficulty of the subject. That much of their 

 obscurity arises from the manner of writing, I am led to infer from my total 

 ignorance, after five careful perusals, of the meaning of the first paragraph 

 addressed by mistake to me. 



This will be, perhaps, the best opportunity for saying, that the whole of 

 II. S.'s last communication might he readily inferred from the first ; but they 

 neither of them afford the explanation required, viz. liow to account for the 

 extension of precedent worship from Grecian to Gothic, and that a time when 

 the classics have more than begun to find their proper level in every liberal 

 education— when this age has the character for carrying utilitarianism and 

 the study of science, if possible, to excess, and when general literary and 

 scientific institutions are springing up in every direction. 



If the cause stated by H. S. is correct, we are now only suffering from the 

 effects of a past evil, and may be sure of a speedy reformation. As a proof 

 of this, we need only refer to the programme of the University of London for 

 the B.A. examination, where the classics form less than one-twentieth part of 

 the course of study required. That there is a considerable movement in the 

 architectural world in this direction, I may mention that the doctrine pro- 

 mulgated in the essay to which the medal of the Institute was awarded on 

 the 28th of February last, was in unison with that of H. S., Ditto, and 

 myself; and that it appeared to be received with general satisfaction. 



J. L. 



ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



Jan. 24.— M. Pelouze read a report on a memoir communicated some 

 weeks since to the Academy of Sciences at BerUn, by M. Magnus, on the ex- 

 penments by M. Gay-Lussac and M. Rudberg to ascertain the dilatation of 

 gas. AL Gay-Lussac had arrived at the conclusion, that what is called " the 

 arithmetical co-efficient " of the number expressing the rate of dilatation 

 should be expressed by the decimal number -00375. This was the supposi- 

 tion that the volume of gas was measured under a constant pressure ; but M. 

 Rudberg had fixed the same co-elficient at -003(546, by measuring the gas under 

 a variable pressure. M. Magnus had repeated these experiments, and had 

 arnved at results much nearer those of M. Rudberg than those of M Gay- 

 Lussac. This he attributed to a defect in mercury, as being unfit for exactly 

 closing the apertures and joints of the vessels receiving the gas, notwithstand- 

 ing that the use of mercury for these experiments was recommended by M 

 Biot in his Traitede Physir/ue. M. Magnus had experimented on different 

 gases and gaseous fluids, and had found the following co-efficients of dilata- 

 bihty : viz., air .003005, hydrogen .003050, carbonic acid .00369, and sul- 

 phuric acid .003850. It would appear doubtful whether the dilatability of 



gas remains always constant, and whether it mav not varv under various 

 pressures. 



Feb. 1. — M. Ebelmcn read a memoir on the nature of the various rajmurs 

 developed m smellinri furnaces, as observed at different altitudes -within the 

 furnaces. The object of such researches was to determine the degree of heat 

 at various points, and to devise means for the improved regulations of the fires. 

 He has arrived at the following results. — 1 . The gaseous vapours, on coming out 

 of a furnace heated by charcoal or wood, contain watery vapour, carbonic acid, 

 and oxides of hydrogen and azote, but no carbonated hydrogen. At 6 or 8 feet 

 below the mouth of tlie furnace the watery vapour is not found, .and the propor- 

 tion of oxide of carbon increases, while those of hvdrogen and carbonic acid di- 

 minish, according as the observations are made lower and lower down in the 

 furnace.— 2. When coal is used jointly with wood for heating the furnace, the 

 carbonization of the vapours takes place in an internal zone, and the water is 

 expelled from the metal at a very low altitude. He found that the propor- 

 tion of gas which traverses a certain zone of the furnace per minute, is 

 greater according as it is further from the bottom of the furnace. 



The Minister of Commerce communicated to the Academv some observa- 

 tions from the Industrial Society of Mulhausen, on the importance of adopt- 

 ing an unit of measure for the force of machines, considered not only in 

 the power exerted, but in the time required. The Society observed, that the 

 usual estimation of horse-power was not uniform, and proposed that the unit 

 for France should be the force required to raise one kilogramme to the height 

 of a metre in a second. To this unit they proposed that the name of dyne, 

 from the Greek root, signifying " moving force," should be applied, and then 

 that it should be compounded with Greek and Latin words, in the same way 

 as the metre, the gramme, &e. Thus the iilodyne would signify a thousand 

 times this unit, and the miUidyne would signify the thousandeth part of the 

 same unit. 



M. Aiago read a communication from M. Rusiger, a German geologist, on 

 certain geometrical ohscrv.itioiis, made in order to ascertain the relative alti- 

 tudes of the Dead Sea, in Palestine and the Mediterranean. It appeared not 

 only that the surface of the Dead Sea was 219 toises, or about 1,314 feet 

 lower than that of the Mediterranean, but also, from the geological pheno- 

 mena observed on its shores, that the formation of the basin in which it hes 

 was antecedent to all historic epochs. Hence the supposition that the sea 

 was formed by the sinking of the plain on which the cities of the PentapoUs 

 (Sodom, Gomorrah, &c.) were situate, is incorrect. M, Arago added, that 

 the observations of M. Bertou, a French engineer, made the depression of the 

 Dead Sea below the Mediterranean 419 metres, or 1,374 English feet. 



Feb. 7. — M. .\rago gave an occount of two memoirs by Mr. Dove, " Oii, 

 the Phenomena of Chemical Induction.'" An electrical current causes, in a 

 mass of iron placed near it, two kinds of plieiiomena — one corresponding to 

 magnetism, the other to dynamical electricity. The author of these memoirs 

 announced that he had succeeded in separating the two classes of action, by 

 giving them different degrees of relative intensity ; and he had shown the 

 magnetic action to exist in substances where its presence had not been 

 suspected. 



M. Valle, colour-dealer, submitted to the notice of the members some 

 specimens of canvas for oil-painting, covered with a substance intended to 

 preserve the colours laid on it from all ert'ects of moisture. 



Feb. 14. — A communication was read from M. Combes, on a supposed 

 cause of the contortions of the metallic tube in the bore of the well of 

 Grenelle. 



Extract of a memoir, by XL Bessell, on a phenomenon of atmospheric 

 light, which appeared to be the reflection of a fire on the earth from the sur- 

 faces of clouds, which were probably frozen. 



A note was read from M. Mallet, of St. Quentin, upon some furtlicr im- 

 provements in the purification of gas. He had succeeded in depriving gas, 

 uot only of its ammonia and its sulpli-hydric acid, but also of its empyreu- 

 matic products and of its naphthahne. The gas, thus purified, was found to 

 retain only a very slight empyreumatic smell, very different from the fetid 

 odour which it commonly possessed. 



M. Nothomb informed the Academy that he had found considerable ad- 

 vantage, in photographic operations, resulting from the use of protochloride 

 of mercury, instead of pure mercury, as originally used by M. Daguerrc. 



Feb. 21. — Some curious experiments were mentioned as having been lately 

 made by Capt. Bailly, of the engineers, on an artesian well at Lille, which 

 had exhibited some remarkable phenomena of intermission in tlie discharge 

 of the water. M. Bailly had proved that these intermissions corresponded 

 with the tides at Dunkirk. 



M. Arago read a communication from Mr. Nasmyth, an English engineer, 

 stating that it had been observed, on several lines of railroads in England, 

 that the rails never rusted when they were traversed by wagons going al- 

 ways in the same direction ; but that when they served for wagons going in 

 opposite directions, as in the case of a single line of rails, they became rusted 

 very soon. 



Feb. 28.- — M. Arago gave an account of tlie proceedings of the commission 

 on the question of inventing either an indelible ink, or else a " paper of 

 safety," in order to prevent forgeries. It appeared that the invention of an 

 indelible ink was given up, as insufficient for the purpose, and that the efforts 

 of competitors for the ]ireniiuni of 30,000 fr. offered by Government in 1836, 

 were now directed to the making of the safety paper. It had been proposed 

 to cover the paper with a kind of vignette, or tool-work, in an ink that 

 should he in part liable to be effaced ; so that if any attempts shoulil be 

 made to alter the writing or printing on such paper, the vignette work would 



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