Miscellanies. 169 



5. A good Safe, or victual preserver, is prepared, by making it 

 of a double case of wire gauze, and filling the interval with fresh 

 charcoal, in fine pieces. Fresh meat, when suspended by hooks from 

 the top, will keep good and sweet for a week in this safe, in the hot- 

 test weather. (J. G.) 



6. Cure for Cramp. (J. G.) — A bar of iron, placed across the 

 bed on which the person sleeps, under the mattrass, about as high 

 from the foot as the calf of the leg, is said to be an effectual pre- 

 ventive. The bar may be an inch square. In defect of a bar, a 

 poker or other iron will answer temporarily. If there be two mat- 

 trasses, it may be placed between them. This remedy was strongly 

 recommended by Dr. Chretienne, of Montpelier, and has proved 

 availing in a vast number of cases. 



7. Excellent ink, and easily made. (J. G.) — Into a ten gallon 

 keg, put three pounds of copperas, well pulverized. Take three 

 pounds of logwood, and boil it in six or seven gallons of rain or pure 

 river water, and when it has boiled half an hour add four pounds of 

 nut galls, broken up, and a quarter of a pound of alum. After an- 

 other half hour's boiling, pour the whole of the materials into the 

 keg, stir the contents well together, and let it remain a week, stir- 

 ring the whole several times a day. Then put into the keg half a 

 pound of gum arable, in powder, and one pound and a half of sugar 

 candy. Leave the mixture a week longer, stirring frequently. After 

 three weeks' rest and settling, the ink may be used at pleasure, grow- 

 ing better with age. 



To keep it from moulding, add a dram of cloves and cinnamon, 

 in powder, with an ounce of anise seed. 



To render the ink of a beautiful blue black, add to the above con- 

 tents a quart of sulphate of indigo. The latter is prepared by taking 

 a quarter of a pound of indigo, reducing it to small pieces, sprinkling 

 a little water on it, and the next day add to it two pounds of sul- 

 phuric acid, and leave it to digest in a warm place. 



8. To silver iron. (J. G.) — Add to a solution of silver in nitric 

 acid, a portion of common salt. Wash the precipitate thoroughly 

 on a filter, and let it dry. By rubbing this powder on the iron or 

 steel, (previously coppered, by plunging it, with a clean surface, into 

 a warm solution of sulphate of copper, and rubbing it with a polisher,) 



Vol. XXX.— No. 1. 22 



