Foreign Literature and Science. 377 



glass becomes dry. Steatite is not so easily effaced as chalk, 

 and does not, like that substance, change its colors. Tailors 

 and embroiderers also prefer it to chalk, for marking silk. It 

 possesses the property of uniting with oils and fat bodies, 

 and enters into the composition of the greater number of 

 balls which are employed for cleaning silks and woollen 

 cloths ; it also forms the basis of some preparations of paint. 

 It is employed also for giving lustre to marble, serpentine and 

 gypseous stones. Mixed with oil, it is employed to polish mir- 

 rors of metal and crystal. When leather, recently prepared, 

 is sprinkled with steatite, to give it color, and afterwards, 

 when the whole is dry, it is rubbed several times with a piece 

 of horn, the leather assumes a very beautiful polish. Stea- 

 tite is also used in the preparation of glazed paper ; it is re- 

 duced to a very fine powder, and spread out upon the paper, 

 or it is better to mix it previously with the coloring matter. 

 The glaze is then given to the paper with a hard brush. It 

 facilitates the action of screws, and from its unctuosity, may 

 be employed with much advantage, for diminishing the fric- 

 tion of the parts of machines which are made of metal.* 



14. Botany. — M. Ramond on the Vegetation of the summit 

 of the Pyrenees. — In a memoir on this subject read at the 

 Academy of Sciences on the 16th of Jan. 1826, M. Ramond 

 remarks, that, from the base of a high mountain to its sum- 

 mit, the vegetation presents a foreshortened view of the 

 same modifications, which are observed from the same base 

 to the Poles. In proof of this, M. Ramond describes the Pic 

 du Midi, which rises fifteen hundred toises above the level 

 of the sea. On its summit, the barometer stands between 

 nineteen inches and twenty inches three lines. The great- 

 est height of the thermometer, in summer, does nor exceed 

 62° or 63° of Farenheit. Hence M. Ramond concludes 

 that the temperature of the Pic du Midi varies between the 

 same limits as in regions situated between 65° and 70° of 

 latitude. " I have ascended," says M. Ramond, " thirty 

 five times into this island, lost in the middle of the vast 

 ocean of air, and I have remarked that not a flower appears 

 till the summer solstice. The spring, consequently, does not 

 begin at that height till the summer has commenced at the 

 foot of the mountain." This peak is accessible only during 



* See a notice of this use, vol. 13, p. 192, of this Journal 



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