Polytechnic Association Proceedings. 651 



As a general rule, the digestive apparatus of the herbivorous 

 animal is much more complicated than that of the carnivora. In 

 vegetable substances, the nutritious matters are frequently present 

 in a solid and inconvenient form, as, for example, in raw starch and 

 the cereal grains, and are almost always entangled among vegetable 

 cells and fibers of an indigestible character. In those cases where 

 the food consists mostly of herbage or grass and leaves, the diges- 

 tive materials bear only a small projjortion to the entire quantity, 

 consequently a large mass of food must be taken, in order that the 

 requisite amount of nutritive material may be obtained. In all 

 these cases, the alimentary canal will be found large and long, and 

 divided into many compartments, wherein the different processes 

 of disintegration, transformation and solution are carried on. In 

 the carnivora the alimentary canal is shorter than in the herbivora, 

 and it presents fewer complexities. The food upon which the car- 

 nivora subsist is softer than that of the herbivora, and is less 

 encumbered with indigestible matter, consequently the process of 

 its digestion requires a less extensive apparatus. 



IMPRO'VEMENTS IN INDIA. 



India now contains three thousand miles of railway, and twelve 

 thousand miles of telegraphic lines. 



QUALITY OF GLASS. 



The most stable glass is that which contains the greatest number 

 of bases; that is, which has the most conflex composition. 



ALIZARIN. 



The coloring matter from madder, after sublimation or exposure 

 to 280° C, no longer give the tints desired hy dyers. Koechlin 

 and other chemists are searching for the missing yellow tint. 



CHANGE IN GLASS. 



M. Peligot discovered that a piece of St. Gobain glass, which 

 had lost its transparenc}^ when placed in a drawer and sustained 

 horizontally by one end, became, after some days, curved by its 

 own weight. This malleable glass was also covered by an efflo- 

 rescence. 



A NEW RESERVOIR FOR THE CROTON AQUEDUCT. 



The Croton Board are constructing a new reseiToir about tweucy- 

 four miles above Croton dam, and seventy-one miles from the city 

 of New York. The new dam will be seven hundred feet in length, 



