566 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



potato-oil, or ainylic alcohol. The first, methyl-thallic alcohol is a crystal- 

 line solid. The second, ethyl-thallic; and the third, amyl-thallic alcohols; 

 are oily, colorless liquids, wliich are decomposed on bailing. 



The Grape Vine Disease. 



Drs. Desmartis and Bonche de Vitray of Bordeaux, have published a 

 brochure, in which they announce the startling fact that the vine disease 

 is inoculable into the huraan system. There is nothing improbable in this 

 should it ultimately prove true, and it may result in the abandonment of 

 the grape culture in many parts of Europe, with a corresponding increase 

 of the vine on this continent. It has long been supposed that intractable 

 skin diseases are of the nature of parasitic plants. Nothing in the 

 advance of natural science to which the microscope has mainly contribu- 

 ted, is more remarkable than the knowledge of the nature and strange 

 transformations of external parasites and internal ones or entozoa. The 

 latter in the human subject have been traced to animal food, and were 

 doubtless carried into the animal through their drink and food. These 

 investigations regarding parasitic life are becoming of paramount import- 

 ance. 



Thermo-electric Piles. 



In consequence of the announcement of this subject by Bnnsen, M. E. 

 Becquerel has presented a paper before the French Academy of Science, in 

 which he states that his father, as early as 1827, made tlie discovery that 

 copper wire covered with sulphur, was strongly positive in relation to ordi- 

 nary copper, and in consequence constructed a pile of two copper wires — . 



one covered with sulphur, and the other not — which, at from 200° to 300°, 



* *■ ... 



developed a force capable of effecting chemical decompositions. He pro- 

 ceeded to state that sulphur profoundly modifies the electric properties 

 of all metals rendering the positive more positive, and the negative 

 more negative. A mixture of sulphur and bismuth which can be easily 

 melted together, for example, is strongly negative to bismuth itself. A 

 couple formed of sulphured bismuth and copper gives three times the 

 electric force of the ordinary bismuth-copper couple. Protosulphide of 

 copper, under certain molecular conditions, is eminently positive in rela- 

 tion to other mineral and metalic substances; and the author has constructed 

 a pile composed of ten cylindrical bars of this substance, ten centimeters 

 long and one in diameter, with copper wire rolled around each extremity 

 with which when raised to 300 deg. or 400 deg. of heat, he is enabled to 

 decompose a solution of sulphate of copper, and work a telegraph. He is 

 still engaged in experiments in this direction. 



Fermentation. 



M. Menard has introduced a new method of fermenting grape juice, con- 

 sequent on observing that by, exposing a very large surface of liquid in 

 the vats, some of the alcohol and much of the bouquet was lost. He, 

 therefore, allows the fermentation to take place in a close covered vessel, 

 and carries the gases and volatile matters evolved through a cooled wash- 

 ing apparatus, which detains the last. The wine thus made has a superior 

 flavor, and contains one per cent more alcohol. 



