250 Scientific Intelligence. 
descending to the very surface of the liquid; into the second is 
fixed a loosely-fitting cork which carries the platinum spiral, the 
third neck communicates with a condenser the lower end of which 
tor by which a current of an through the whole 
system. The spiral is then heated to redness and plunged into the 
bottle. After a few minutes, irritatin vapors are formed and 
oh of liquid soon condense in the receiver. If the current of 
air be properly adjusted, the platinum spiral remains incandescent 
for hours, and even for days, and there is no omens in Sea 
of an aspirator to keep the whole spiral incandescent. A harmless 
; b its presence by prepar 
methylic sulph-aldehyd, €H,S, which is a beautiful white erys- 
talline substance fusing at 218° C., and subliming without decom- 
sition. The author promi ore e 
the new aldehyd, which can hardly fail to prove a most interes 
substance.— Proc. Royal Soc., Xv1, 156. W. G. 
4. On Fraunhofer’s lines and on the violet portion of the solar 
spectrum.—ANestTR6M and THALEN have communicated to the Royal 
Swedish Academy of Sciences a memoir on the part of the solar 
spectrum between G and H, which is accom died by a map, and 
Serves to complete the work left unfinished by Kirchoff. : 
thors find that with a single prism of 60° filled with bisulphid of 
carbon, and with a magnifying power of 40, all the lines upon 
about 90 millimeters aperture and 3 meters in foe 
image of the sun as thus concentrated was allowed 
to fall upon the slit of the condenser. In the neighborhood of the 
lines H and H,, a colored glass was employed to exclude all foreign 
Tays. measurements were made aie by a glass micrometer 
d into the eye-piece and partly by a filar micrometer 
whenever it was le to illumi i 
H were too faint 
, 
