JMiscellanies. 365 
selected is done up into bundles, steeped in water, and when well 
drained, they are disposed around the walls of a room, (the bundles 
being as large as possible) i in the center of which sulphur is then set 
on fire and the room is closely shut. ‘The design of this exposure 
to burning sulphur is to increase the whiteness of the straw, to give 
it greater consistence, to destroy insects, and to preserve it from pu-— 
trefaction. 
When this operation is completed, the straw is assorted into thirty 
or forty qualities according to the size, which determines the fineness 
of the hats and consequently their price. The plaits are generally 
made with three straws each, the size depending of course on the 
relative fineness of the straws which compose them. The beauty 
and fineness of the hat result from the greater or less number of 
turns which the plait must take to compose the flat. 
The culture of this plant has been successfully attempted upon 
the driest hills of Nice. ‘The hats made of this straw, in the hospital 
of that city, under the direction of the Abbe de Cessoles, obtained 
at the last exhibition of the products of industry of Piedmont, a pre- 
mium medal.— bib. Univ. July, 1831. 
21. Non-vaporization of a liquid falling in small quantity on an 
incandescentmetal.—M. N. W. Fischer by an experiment with con- 
centrated sulphuric acid, has been confirmed in the opinion which 
he before advanced that the fluid which falls in very small quan- 
tity on an incandescent metal is decomposed. This acid when vola- 
tilized in the way alluded to, flies off in a thick bluish vapor, which 
is perfectly respirable, and occasions not the least cough, an effect 
which, as is well known, is immediately produced by the evapora- 
tion of undecomposed sulphuric acid. 'The sulphuric acid he suppo- 
ses is decomposed into oxygen and an oxide of sulphur, which con- 
stitute the innoxious vapor. He was unable for want of a tubula- 
ted platina retort, to ascertain whether the latter compound is a new 
acid, or one of those already known, e. g. the hyposulphuric. It can- 
not as he states be simply sulphurous acid ; because it is unattended 
with any peculiar odor. 
He has proved that the same phenomena occur with heated glass 
and porcelain as well as with metals, especially when liquids are em- 
ployed more volatile than water —Brb. Univ. Oct. 1831. 
Vou. XXIL—No. 2. 47 
