Miscellanies. 183 



puddling, and cementing of the metal, necessarily requires a great 

 number [of furnaces, their appearance on approaching Merthyr, by 

 night, from the hills Avith which it is surrounded, presents a scene 

 which is probably without a parallel. — Jameson's Jour. Oct. 1830. 



12. Importance of the discovery of the curing of Herrings. — The 

 discovery of the mode of curing and barreling Herring, by an obscure in- 

 dividual of the name of Beukles, or Beukelzon, towards the middle of 

 the 14th century contributed more, perhaps, than any thing else, to in- 

 crease the maritime power and wealth of Holland. At a period when 

 the prohibition of eating butcher meat during two days every week, 

 and forty days before Easter, was universal, a supply of some son 

 of subsidiary food was urgently required ; so that the discovery of 

 Beukles became of the greatest consequence, not to his countrymen 

 only, but to the whole christian world. The Emperor Charles V. be- 

 ing in 1550, at Biervliets, where Beukles was buried, he visited his 

 grave and ordered a magnificent monument to be erected, to record the 

 memory of a man who had rendered so signal a service to his coun- 

 try.-r^Idem. 



CHEMISTRY. 



1. Quantity of carbonic acid in the atmosphere. — An elaborate 

 series of experimental observations to determine the changes which 

 take place in the quantity of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, has been 

 made by Theodore De Saussure, an account of which, was given in 

 a memoir read at the Societe de Phys. et d'Hist. Nat. de Geneve on 

 the eighteenth of February, 1830. The following is the author's 

 Resume. 



" The variations, which I have observed in the atmospheric carr 

 bonic acid, in the open country, are due to two principal causes : 



" 1st. To the changes which the soil undergoes in its moisture, 

 which absorbs this gas, and the dryness Avhich evolves it. 2nd. To 

 the opposing influences of night and day, or from darkness which in- 

 creases, and light which diminishes, the proportion of this gas. 



" The upper strata of the atmosphere contain more carbonic acid 

 than the lower. 



" The variations of this gas from day and night are scarcely sensi- 

 ble in the upper strata. They appear to participate more fully in the 

 less sudden changes of the lower strata by the general efiect produ- 

 ced by moisture. 



" The variation, occasioned by day and night, is relatively small iu 

 the streets of Geneva ; but it is considerable on the adjacent lake, 

 which presents no obstacle to the lateral circulation of the air of the 

 country. 



