Northern Rice. — Prof. Jlgassiz. 191 
poses of utility. It is impervious to both air and water; it is hard 
iron, and ahnost as enduring, and as soft as silk and pliable as wax. 
But one of the most useful applications which has been made of it, is 
for banding, both flat and round, for machinery, in which respect it 
is decidedly superior, as we have been informed by those who have 
used it, to any thing that has ever yet been employed. Compared 
with leather in durability, without being liable to its objections, 
it is as four to one, in banding as five to one, in shoe soles as 
eight to one, in harness as ten to one. Its strength is prodigious; 
a piece one-eighth of an inch in substance will sustain a weight 
of fifty-eight pounds. We have seen a round band of about one 
inch in diameter, to which we were told that the force of twelve 
horse power had been applied, without parting it. Its property 
of tenacity is beyond that of any other substance that can be 
adapted to a like object. There is manufactured in this establish- 
ment about two thousand feet of banding daily, and even at this 
rate, the company are scarcely able to meet the orders for this 
article. From the arrangements they have made with the East 
India Company, they will always have on hand an abundant sup- 
ply of the imported material, and from the nature and facilities of 
their establishment, they expect to be able to meet orders of any 
description of manufacture to which this gum can be converted. — 
JV. Y. Far. Sf Mech. 
NORTHERN RICE. 
Gen. Verplanck, the commissioner to negotiate a treaty with the 
Chippewas, in speaking of the Wild Rice which grows abund- 
antly in Minnesota, says it is better than the southern rice. The 
berries are larger, and its flavor is better; for when boiled and 
stewed and left to cool, it forms a consistent mass, like good wheat 
bread, and more nutiicious. Any quantity of it groAvs on all the 
lakes in this northern country. The outlets and bays are filled 
with it. It ripens in the month of August, and is the main reli- 
ance of the Indians, during the winter months, for their subsist- 
ence. — Selected. 
Prof. Agassiz. — It aflords us great pleasure to announce, that 
this distinguished naturalist has accepted an invitation to remain 
in this country in connexion with the scientific corps of Harvard 
College, and at the head of the Lawrence Institute. Every friend 
of science in America, we are sure, will rejoice to hear such un- 
expected good news. 
