200 Miscellanies. 



for this purpose ; that season is chosen, as far as I have learned, simply 

 because it is the most leisure period in the year. For the same reason, 

 fire-wood is generally cut at that time. 



The hop-hornbeam ( Ostrya Virginica) is considered a very unfit 

 species of wood for durability ; and is scarcely ever used on that ac- 

 count. On the 26th of June, 1830, I had a tree of this kind cut 

 down, the bark taken off, and the trunk, whose widest diameter was 

 seven inches, converted into two posts and a rail. The posts, support- 

 ing the rail, were set in the ground the next day. Here they remained, 

 exposed to all the vicissitudes of weather, till last fall, when they were 

 removed to make way for a neater fabric. The parts inserted in the 

 earth, were very much decayed and worm-eaten ; but the exposed por- 

 tions of the posts and the rail, although deeply cracked while seasoning 

 in the air, were almost perfectly sound from the centre to the very exterior 

 layers. Thus, contrary to the theory before us, the alburnum proved 

 to be as durable as the heart- wood. A transverse section of one of the 

 posts, shows an area of heart- wood, one third less than the alburnal area. 



This is an interesting question ; and I hope it will receive a more 

 accurate investigation. John T. Plummer. 



Richmond, Ind., February, 1841. 



5. Sunset at the West.* — In a former number of this Journal, the fact 

 of the splendid radiations of light at sunset, as it occurs in the state of 

 Illinois and west of several of the great lakes, was mentioned to show 

 that the cause exists in the atmosphere or above the earth. One of 

 these splendid sunsets was seen in this city on the 21st of August, 1840, 

 The western horizon for 40° perhaps on the east side of the sun, and 

 as many above it, was of a bright blood-red color immediately after 

 sunset, except where the blue light in three distinct radiations passed, 

 as from the sun, in a perfectly straight line through it, and widening of 

 course as it passed upwards. No line could appear more straight than 

 that which bounded the blue light. The whole was brilliant. 



In Illinois, a similar appearance is often seen on the east side of the 

 horizon, directly opposite the sun, and as it has just disappeared below 

 the horizon. My attention had been called to this fact by a friend from 

 that state, a few days before I visited Niagara Falls. On the evening 

 of September 9th, at the Falls, I had the pleasure of seeing this same 

 phenomenon in the east. The sun set with no uncommon appearance, 

 except the stream of white light which rose high towards the zenith 

 from a thunder cloud behind which the sun disappeared a little before 

 it came to the horizon. As I crossed from Goat Island just after sun- 



This communication has been in our hands more than a year, but was over- 

 looked until now. — Eds. 



