Miscellanies . 177 



2. CtystaUization of Barley sugar. — The change in appearance 

 arising from crystallization, which sticks of barley sugar undergo in 

 keeping, is always instanced as a case of crystallization occurring in 

 a solid body without solution, and independently of external agents. 

 The barley sugar certainly does not then become a hydrate, and 

 probably at the completion of the change is exactly of the same 

 weight as before it began. But it would appear that the presence 

 of a little moisture is necessary for the change, and probably that 

 every portion of barley sugar which suffers this change has been 

 successively loosened, and held in solution by that small portion of 

 water which begins to act on the outer surface of the stick and trav- 

 els inwards. Two fresh sticks of barley sugar, dry and transparent, 

 were introduced at the same time into separate phials ', one of them 

 with a stick of caustic potash, and the other by itself, corked up and 

 laid in a drawer. 



The barley sugar in company with the caustic potash, which would 

 preserve it perfectly dry, did not undergo the slightest alteration in 

 six months, but remained as transparent as at first. The barley 

 sugar in the other phial was scai-cely altered during the first four 

 months ; but during the last two months, which were colder and 

 damper, it became opaque on the surface, and the crystallization 

 thereafter was propagated inwards to a considerable depth. — Quar- 

 terly Journal. 



3. Vegetable crystallization. — Various naturalists have taken no- 

 tice of the appearance of crystals in the internal parts of vegetable 

 tissues ; but nothing very explicit and certain has been stated respect- 

 ing them. M. Turpin has discovered in the cellular tissue of an 

 old trunk of the Cereus Peruvianus, in the garden of plants at Paris 

 where it had been growing one hundred and thirty years, an im- 

 mense quantity of agglomerations of crystals of oxalate of lime. 

 They are found in the cellular tissue of the pith and bark. They 

 are white, transparent, foursided prisms, with pyramidal terminations, 

 collected in radiant groups. — Rev. Encyc. Mars, 1830. 



4. Disinfecting powers of chloride of lime. — M. Poutet of Mar- 

 seilles says, that this substance cannot be used with advantage in de- 

 stroying the bad odor of fish or marine animals, for that it evolves 

 one as bad as any they can previously possess. The powder added 

 with a little water to fresh or salt fish, cut into small pieces evolved 



Vol. XIX.— No. L 23 



