184 Scientific Intelligence. 



2. Belemnites. — M. Raspail informed the French Academy on 

 the 17th of November last, that a careful study of two hundred and 

 fifty belemnites, collected in the Alps of Provence, had taught him 

 that belemnites are not testaceous coverings of animals, as the mod- 

 erns suppose, but that they are cutaneous appendices belonging to 

 marine animals, approaching to the echinodermes, the living species 

 being no longer found. — Idem. 



3. JVumber of salts — divisibility of matter. — About forty years 

 ago, only thirty salts in all were known. At present, the precise 

 number is not kno^'^Ti, but there are above two thousand ! There are 

 few subjects in natural philosophy, the contemplation of which is 

 better calculated to exalt and improve the understanding, than the 

 vast and almost inconceivable divisibility of matter. 



The vegetable and animal kingdoms afford tlie most wonderful in- 

 stances of the attenuation of matter. The vibrio undula, found in 

 duck weed, is computed to be ten thousand million times smaller than 

 a hemp seed ; and the monas gelatinosa, discovered in ditch water, 

 appears, in the field of a microscope, a mere atom, endued with vital- 

 ity, millions of which are seen playing, like the sun beams, in a single 

 drop of liquid. It has been calculated, that the skin is perforated hy 

 a thousand holes in tlie length of an inch ; and if we estimate the 

 whole surface of the body of a middle sized man to be sixteen square 

 feet ; it must contain not less tlian two million three hundred and four 

 thousand pores. These pores are tlie mouths of so many excretory 

 vessels, which perform the important function of insensible perspira- 

 tion. The lungs discharge every minute six grains, and the surface 

 of the skin from three to twenty grains, the average over the whole 

 body being about fifteen grains of lymph, which consists of water, 

 with a very minute admixture of salt, acetic acid, and a trace of 

 iron. — Grahani's Chemistry, p. 456. 



4. Preservation of Cloth, Furs, S^c. — The English successfully 

 use the following process to destroy moths, or to expel them from 

 cloths, tippets, and muffs. The seeds of the purple sweet sultan, 

 (hibiscus abelmoscus,) are spread lightly among the stuff to be pre- 

 served, between its folds, he. This grain, besides the advantage of 

 expelling moths, gives to the stuff or clodies, an agreeable odor. 

 Furriers, in order to preserve tippets, mufis, skins, and woolen stuffs, 

 and to destroy the vitality of the eggs of the insects which eat them, 



