78 Notes and Memoranda. 



which not only is very offensive, bnt a source of great waste. This 

 is entirely prevented by mixing superheated steam with the petro- 

 leum vapour, as has been done for some time past in America, and 

 more lately at Woolwich Dockyard ; which causes the smoke in- 

 stantly to disappear, and the whole fire-place and tubes to be filled 

 with a bright white flame. We need not remark that the decom- 

 posed water causes no addition to the total amount of heat, since 

 water absorbs the same quantity of heat during decomposition as 

 its elements afterwards give out during combination. The economy 

 arises from the waste of a large part of the fuel, as smoke, being 



prevented. New mode of fixing Photographic Prints. — Chloride 



of sodium (common salt) was one of the very first fixing agents 

 employed ; it was used by Daguerreotypists before Sir John Her- 

 schel's discovery that hyposulphite of soda is better suited for the 

 purpose was generally known. A slight modification in the use of it 

 renders it, however, all that can be desired as a fixing agent. The 

 prints, when taken out of the frame, are to be placed for some time in 

 a solution containing five per cent, chloride of it, and the solution is 

 then to be raised to the boiling point, and left at it for about ten 

 minutes. The prints may then be removed and washed, and the 



pictures will be found completely fixed. New Mode of Utilizing 



Combustible Fluids as Fuel. — For this purpose a lamp is used in 

 which the turpentine, or other combustible fluid, is reduced to a 

 fine dust by an apparatus, which the inventer, a Russian professor, 

 terms a "pulveriser." The flame produced by means of this is of 

 great size and power, and of a whitish-yellow colour. The heat it 

 emits is so intense as to melt steel. The contrivance is certainly 

 not so economical as the ordinary furnace ; bnt it is expected that, 

 for many purposes, this will be far more than counterbalanced by 

 its convenience and power. 



NOTES AND MEMOKANDA. 



The Dhtjemsaiia Meteoric Stone. — A paper in Proceedings of 'Royal 

 Society, by Professor Haughton, states that on the 14th July, 1860, at 2.15 p.m., 

 a remarkable meteoric stone fell at Dhurmsalla, and that the cold of the frag- 

 ments that fell was bo intense as to benumb the hands of the coolies who picked 

 them up. A fragment tbey sent to the museum of Trinity College, Dublin, was 

 analjzed by Professor Haughton, who found 100 parts to contain nickel iron 8 - 42, 

 protosulphuret of iron 561, chrome iron 4'IG, chrysolith (peridot or olivine) 

 47'67, and minerals insoluble in muriatic acid 34'14. The proportion of chrome 

 is unusually large. 



New Maeine Woem (Phenacia pttlcliella). — Mr. Edward Parfitt describes, 

 in Annals of Natural History, No. 103, a new species of marine worm thrown up 

 by the sea at Exmoulh on 6th January during a heavy gale. It inhabits a thin, 

 fiexuous, horny tube, three inches long. The worm itself is two inches long, the 

 body composed of forty annulations, the anterior of which were armed with two 

 fascicles of yellow bristles of about three or four each, placed opposite to o;k'1i other. 

 The rest of the rings have about two each, but the numbers vary. Colour pale 

 orange, red mouth with a purple cast. Buccal cirri twenty, white, beautifully 



