652 Transactions of the American Institute. 



sixty-four feet in depth, and about six hundred feet above tide- 

 water. The capacity of the new reservoir will be nearly 8,370,- 

 000,000 gallons. Other important improvements are soon to be 

 added by the Crotou Aqueduct Board to the magnificent work 

 under their charge. 



CLEANING GLASS. 



A method of cleaning glass, which may answer when other 

 methods fail, is, to dilute the ordinary hydrofluoric acid, sold in 

 gutta-percha bottles, with four or five parts of water; with this, 

 wet a cotton rubber, and apply the rubber to the glass pretty 

 thoroughly; afterward wash the glass until all traces of the acid 

 are removed. The effect of this operation is to dissolve off a very 

 thin portion of the glass, thus leaving a new and bright surface. 



NEW DENTAL SCHOOL. 



The corporation of Harvard college have voted to extend the 

 technological department, by establishing a dental school in the 

 [Jnivcrsity. The faculty will consist of the President of the Univer- 

 jitj^ the professors of anatomy and physiology, surgery, and chem- 

 istry, of the medical school, and three new professors respectively 

 filling the chairs of Dental Pathology and Therapeutics, of Opera- 

 tive Dentistry, and of Mechanical Dentistry. 



INSTANTANEOUS LIGHTNING. 



At the Royal Palace, Berlin, forty thousand wax candles are 

 lighted instantaneously by a single match. The wicks are all pre- 

 viously connected by means of a thread spun out of gun-cotton, 

 and, on being set on fire, seven hundred apartments are illuminated 

 at once. The same method has been emplo3'ed in lighting Russian 

 churches. The preparatory work of connecting the wicks is so 

 great, there is really no such saving of labor as in the case of light- 

 ing gas-burners by means of the electric current. 



NEW PROCESS FOR MAKING STEEL AND WROUGHT IRON. 



Mr. Siemens, of England, has patented a process for making 

 steel and iron directly from the ore, which differs from that intro- 

 duced by Mr. Rogers in New Jersey, several years ago, only in the 

 substitution of rich hydrocarbons for pulverized charcoal. The 

 iron ore, in a finely divided state, is heated in a closed vessel, and 

 lirought in contact with hydrocarbon currents, which percolate 

 through the mass of ore and unite with the oxygen of the ore, thus 

 reducing the metal. 



