826 Transactions of the American Institute. 



Lefort averred that the change was only molecular, and that no sugar 

 was formed. M. Schiitzenberger now confirms the views of Gellaty 

 by boiling rhamnegine in very dilute sulphuric acid, from which he 

 obtains sixty-five per cent of sugar and forty-two of insoluble coloring 

 matter. The sugar is uncrystallizable and is an isomer of mannite. 

 The coloring matter is not identical with quercetine, as M. BoUey had 

 supposed. 



Indianite. 



This name is given to a composition invented by M. Boquet, a 

 chemist of Havre, France, which consists of 100 parts of India rubber, 

 fifteen of resin and ten of shellac. It becomes very hard in a short 

 time, and ma}^ then be reduced to a liquid by the addition of bisul- 

 phide of carbon. When applied, it dries rapidly, and its power of 

 adherence is such that it can scarcely be torn from the surface on 

 which it has been laid. It is impervious to wet, and is not afiected 

 by heat or cold. It may be used on any kind of metal in ordinary 

 use, as well as on wood and other building materials, and will pro- 

 tect articles exposed either to air or sea water. It is applied without 

 any previous coating of paint directly to the substance to be protected. 

 Iron reservoirs, used as aquariums, have been coated inside and out- 

 side with Indianite, and nefther the reservoir nor the water within 

 have been discolored by 'it in the slightest degree. 



Photogkaphing- the Solar Eclipse of 1868. 

 The North German expedition, consisting of Drs. Yogel, Fritsch, 

 Thiele and Lenker, reached Cairo late in S\Aj and proceeded by the 

 Eed Sea .steamer, through the Straits of Bab el Mandel to Aden, 

 where they arrived on the second of August. Aden, a seaport on 

 the Arabian coast, \vas })urchased, nearly thirty years ago, l)v the 

 East India Company, as a coal depot and mail station for its line of 

 steamers. The eclipse at tliis point would last only three minutes, 

 while in India it would be five ; yet as scores of French and British 

 observers were to operate much further eastward, the Germans 

 decided to note the event an hour earlier at Aden, in order to com- 

 pare their observations with those made in India, for the purpose of 

 ascertaining whether the wonderful violet colored protuberances, seen 

 during a total eclipse above the dark edge of the moon, were changed 

 in form at the end of sixty minutes. The sky at Aden was cloudy 

 nearly up to the time for observation ; fortunately a rent in the clouds 



