Various Communications. AIT 
consist of an organic and a nitrogenized substance, which the author 
has now under examination. 
arious Communications.—In the name of a Commission consisting 
of MM. Thenard, Balard and General Piobert, M. Balard read a very 
favorable Report on the researches of M. Violette on the carbonization 
of wood by means of over-heated steam, of which we gave an account 
in the number for September, 1853.—M. Payen read a memoir, demon- 
strating the presence of carbonate of lime in vegetables.—A naval 
flicer, M. Tramblay, read a paper on a new apparatus for saving prop- 
i 
mpolsiely the problem of calculating machines: we shall return again 
oO it.—At each session of the Academy, communications flow in from 
the four quarters of the globe both on the subject of the Bréant legacy 
(100,000 francs, to the person who shall discover the cause and cure o 
cholera), and that of the prize proposed respecting the disease of the 
now amounts to thousands. 
In the year X. of the first Ronnivice the French Government founded 
a prize of 60 ,000 francs, to a given to the person who should through 
Sciences. The fact of this offer has recently been called to mind by 
Madame (Ersted, who claims the prize in the name of her late husband, 
M. CErsted. A commission consisting of MM. Pouillet, Becquerel, 
Despretz, Thohare and Regnault, have been charged with the examin- 
ation of this demand. hey nd much embarrassment, since without 
ae the merit of Girsted’s discovery, his is not the only important 
made since “ year 1801. The discoveries of Dav vy, Ampere, 
ig Faraday, Ohm, Morse, Wheatstone, Jacobi, the pile with a 
constant ectaet: discovered by M. Becquerel, the thermo-electric cur- 
Tents discovered by Seebeck,—all show that it would have ek far 
easier to have awarded the prize in 1820 than at the present ii 
Industrial Photometry.—An instrument by Mr. Babinet for exact 
Photometric measurements, has for a long time been used, which is. 
ed on the neutralization of the tints of vocab light, as alicia’ 
in eaccmmetty by Tago. -We have not space for a figs ure and com- 
ing a ground ee at one end, and at see other e d 
an analysing prism of Iceland spar. A pile of plates of glass, serving 
as a polarizer is fixed to the tube so as to form with it dn angle of 35°, 
the angle of polarization of the glass. The light diffused upon the 
ground glass, reaches the eye only after having passed across the pile 
of glass, and is consequently polarized by refraction perpendicularly to 
ak of incidence of the rays. 
The ground glass is for receiving the illuminations for parepacisen, 
is successively illuminated by the lights to be compared. On trav- 
pile of glass blniers she FAAP ght into a condition | 
