CORRESPONDENCE. 127 



greatest advantage for his lifetime. A scholar of Professor Altmiiller is 

 also Mr. Karmarsch, who is at present a renowned man in Technology, and 

 director of the Polytechnical School at Gottingen. The undersigned, who 

 does not assume the title of a scientific man, had got then already so much 

 knowledge of woods that he could assist Professor Altmiiller in arranging a 

 collection of woods, which has since been imitated rather poorly in different 

 museums. In the said polytechnical institution the writer very soon 

 experienced that those professors are the most profitable ones to their 

 scholars who have been before practical men of business, as Professor 

 Meisner, who had been a practical chemist, whereas the real learned men 

 don't produce so much good. At that time Professor Hermstaedt was 

 very much celebrated by his work on Technology, and by his advice he was 

 extremely useful to the manufacturers. At the same time Professor Wolf 

 was very much esteemed as a teacher of the Chemical sciences. I must 

 relate a characteristic case of that time. In the year 1816 the first lac-dye 

 had been introduced by the East India Company, who wished to extend 

 the use of that article. The writer received some specimens of it, and, 

 making use of Dr. Bancroft's receipt, he had the good fortune to produce 

 a very fine scarlet dye, and to spread the said article in Prussia. Wolf, 

 professor of chemical and natural science, also received a specimen for 

 investigation, probably without Dr. Bancroft's description ; and he declared, 

 not as the Academy of Sciences at Paris did in the " Caudide," that the 

 wool was red, because it had been taken from red sheep, but that the product 

 called lac-dye had been prepared from rags of old English uniforms. 



After the commencement of the Technologist, appeared a popular 

 Technology by Mosenius, which was not exactly scientific, but nevertheless 

 extremely useful ; since that time there have been erected polytechnic 

 schools in all the large and middle cities of Germany, where technology is 

 taught. Of all the like journals the Polytechnical journal of Dingier, begun 

 at Augsburg, 1816 — 1820 prospered the most. Mr. Dingier was a calico- 

 printer, and I don't see why a calico-printer should not be as well an editor 

 of a polytechnical journal as a Manchester man could make a treaty of 

 commerce. 



This polytechnical journal, which, under the auspices of the renowned 

 publisher Baron von Cotta, has obtained great fame and circulation, 

 appeared formerly only monthly, but is now issued every fortnight, in 

 octavo volumes of . . . pages. What I have to blame in your journal is 

 not the contents, which I think exceedingly good, but the limited scale on 

 which you have published the Technologist. You will not have sufficient 

 space for the contributions you will obtain in a short time ; and, as an 

 example, I beg to tell you that my friend, Mr. S. C. Hall, published at first 

 the Art Journal at Is. a copy, and had not two thousand subscribers. I 

 took the liberty to tell him that he had better make a journey through the 

 country in order to visit booksellers and others, and now that journal has 

 got more than 14,000 subscribers, who pay half-a-crown a copy ! 



London, October 16th, 1860. Francis Steinitz. 



