372 Miscellanies. 



13. Crystals of Oxalate of Lime in Plants. — M. Turpin has dis- 

 covered that the celkiles of Cereus Peruvianus contain an immense 

 quantity of crystals of oxalate of lime. He represents them as ap- 

 pearing to the naked eye like very fine glittering sand, and, under 

 the microscope, as rectangular prisms with tetrahedral points, and a 

 square of parallelogrannmic base ; their size is variable ; they are 

 sometimes found collected in groups of three or four, but more com- 

 monly forming radiating spheroidal clusters, composed of crystals of 

 various sizes. They existed in such abundance in some parts of the 

 tissue, as to form at least an 80th of the whole mass. The presence 

 of such crystals in the tissue of plants, has lately become well known 

 to botanists, and they are distinguished by the name of raphides. They 

 may be found abundantly, in the form of needles, in the common 

 Hyacinth, and in most succulent Monocotyledons, and in Phytolana 

 decandria they give a kind of silvery appearance to the subticular 

 tissue ; but in no plants had they been previously seen so abundantly 

 or so large, as in the plant which forms the subject of M. Turpin's 

 memoir. 



14. To restore the Elasticity of a damaged Feather . — A feather, 

 when damaged by crumpling, may be perfectly restored by the sim- 

 ple expedient of immersing it in hot water. The feather will thus 

 completely recover its former elasticity, and look as well as it ever 

 did. This fact was accidentally discovered by an amateur ornithol- 

 ogist of Manchester. Receiving, on one occasion, a case of South 

 American birds, he found that the rarest specimen of it was spoilt, 

 from having its tail rumpled in the packing. Whilst lamenting over 

 this mishap, he let the bird fall from his hands into his cofFee-cup ; 

 he now deemed it completely lost, but, to his agreeable surprise, he 

 found, that after he had laid it by the fire to dry, the plumage of the 

 tail became straight and unrufiled, and a valuable specimen was add- 

 ed to his collection. — Id. 



15. On the Produce of Gold and Silver in the Russian Empire. — 

 (Alexander von Humboldt.) — The yearly produce of the Russian 

 gold and silver mines has lately been variously stated ; and, as I am 

 afraid that some of these statements may be attributed to me, I take 

 the liberty of giving the following numerical exposition of the fact. 



According to official documents, the Russian mines yield annually 

 about 22,000 marks of gold, and 77,000 of silver. In 1S28, the 



