296 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 
some method usually resorted to. Some few precautions must, of course, 
be attended to. The vessel must stand firmly. If at first. the water 
will not flow, or flows fitfully, the obstruction will be removed by blow- 
ing a little in the spout. ited 
An investigation of some interest, growing out of this matter, may 
properly be noticed. Where we are operating on substances of low spe- 
cifie gravity, say wood or stone, a drop or two o water, or the size of 
the drop, in tapering off the divisor, is of no consequence. But it 1s 
otherwise in the case of a gold coin, for example :—in a double eagle, _ 
a half-grain is, on the average, the smallest of clean water that will de- 4 
be J 
a fluidrachm (page 1405). The differences are very remarkable; i 
tilled water, for instance, being set down at 45 drops, and pure alcohol 
at 138 drops. And in our own experiments, the drop of alcohol was 
about one-third the weight of the drop of water, from the same pipette 
This seemed to point to alcohol as a substitute; but there were obvious 
objections, and a much better vehicle was found in soapy water. aia 
e best white soap, sold at the shops, is of the same specific gravity 
cannot conveniently give this measure in figures), the cohesion or tena 
ity of the water is so much weakened that the drop is reduced to one 
tenth of a grain. No other fluid makes so small a drop as this, Ane — 
there is the further advantage, that soapy water, though excellent 
making bubbles, is less liable to retain them below the surface than pw 
water. So small a drop, of course, makes the experiment more tediot 
and, by using less soap, the size of the drop will be, in many cases, 
vantageously increased. = s - * a 
Discovery of Paleozoic Fossils in Eastern Massachusetts ; by Prof. a 
W. B. Rogers, (from a letter to J. D. Dawa, dated Boston, August — 
13, 1856.)*—You will, I am sure, be surprised as well as pleased by the a 
news I am about to tell you. You are aware that the altered slates an@” 
grits which show themselves interruptedly throughout a good parte 
Eastern Massachusetts, have with the exception e coal measures 
the confines of this State and Rhode Island, failed hitherto to fu 
geologists with any fossil evidences of a ic age, although 
aspect and position they have been conjecturally classed with the system 
of rocks belonging to this period. Indeed the highly altered co dition 
of these generally, traceable no doubt to the great masses of §| 
and other igneous materials by which they are traversed or ' 
. * This important paper was received too late for insertion under Gxorocy. 
ie 
