260 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



PRESERVATION OF SEEDS. 



Moisture is the great difficulty with us. The vast longevity uf 

 some seeds is well known to physiologists ; but how long some 

 seeds have lasted, or will endure, it is as yet impossible to say. 

 Second forests, of different trees, present phenomena not yet suf- 

 ficiently studied by botanists. A serious examination will doubt- 

 less give us discoveries in physiology, of the very highest interest. 



COMBUSTION WITHOUT SMOKE. 

 The Secretary General communicated an extract from the bul- 

 letin of the Society, for the encouragement of National Industry, 

 on an apparatus presented to the Society, for combustion without 

 smoke. It is an invention of Mons. Dumery's. He had it in ope- 

 ration in the glasses of the Museum, for sixteen days, without 

 producing the least smoke. 



[Journal De L'lnstruction Publique. Montreal, April 1857.] 



[Presented to the American Institute by Mons. L. A. Huguet 

 Latour, corresponding member.] 



Extracts^ translated by H. Meigs. 



In eighty-nine years there were two masters only of the public 

 school of Hareville. 



There were but two masters of the public school of Germany, of 

 whom Mons. Renaud, the last, is still in office. 



At Usseln, in the principality of Waldeck, in Germany, the 

 masters have for about two hundred years, been of one family — 

 the Genuits. The present one has served fifty years. 



Louis Napoleon is establishing a college in Algeria, where 

 French and Arabic languages will be taught. 



Mons. Guerin Meneville, has presented to the Academy of Sci- 

 ence, Paris, some samples of wheat grown from five grains of 

 wheat, obtained by Mons. Drouillard, from an ancient tomb in 

 Egypt. Those grains, so long preserved, have grown and pro- 

 duced each, twelve hundred grains — much of which has been 

 sown on several farms, in the south of France. 



Just experiments have proved that this wheat, of some thousand 

 years ago, is superior to all our modern known species. 



The honorary premium for the Department De L'Indre has 

 twenty competitors from the improvement classes. 



