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CHAPTER IV.

DISCOVERIES, INVENTIONS AND FACTS IN ART, SCIENCE, AND NATURAL HISTORY.

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MODE ODE of Working under Water. By means of an invention of Mr. W. Hookey, master shipwright's assistant at Woolwich dock-yard, a man is enabled to work under water, and the dangerous practice of heeling ships hitherto in use is rendered unnecessary. The water pipe and cock (a considerable distance under water), of his majesty's ship Leven, fitting at Woolwich, was by this contrivance lately shifted.

New mode of Ship-building. An ingenious nautical mechanic has completed the model of an eighty-gun ship of war; the keel, floor-timbers, lower futtock, and bottom planks, are made of copper. A patent, it is said, is taking out for this curious method of shipbuilding; of which, it is added, some naval men, well qualified to judge of its merits, entertain a very favourable opinion.

Carriage to move by Sails.A new carriage was lately exhibited in the garden Marbœuf, at Paris; the model having been previously submitted to the inspection of the King, by Mesdames Dering and Letterly. It appears that this carriage is of English construction; the object of the inventor is to substitute sails for horses. The mechanism is simple and ingenious. A helm, fixed at the hind part of the carriage, serves to guide it; and by the aid of sails fastened on

masts, it receives the force necessary for impelling it forward. It is said, that in favourable weather a carriage constructed on this plan, is capable of travelling thirty miles an hour. The original idea of this machine is by no means new. About the year 1774, the count de Gribauval, an officer of artillery in the French service, exhibited the model of a mechanical carriage, which was set in motion without the help of horses. In Russia and Sweden, when a boat is surprised by frost in a river or lake, it is placed on skates, and continues to advance by means of its sails. Such is probably the origin of the new invention.

Newly-invented Boat.-Some trials of a boat, on a new construction, have lately been made at Paris. In the second trial, the inventor placed himself with his apparatus, below the platform of the Pont Neuf. He set out from this point, at ten minutes before ten, having on board M. Dacheux, an experienced mariner, who took charge of the helm. Messrs. Mailet and Thibault, inspectors of the navigation, followed in another boat, to observe the operation. In twenty minutes at the utmost, he proceeded beyond the Pont Royal, after having passed and repassed under the arches, and landed opposite the Quay d'Orsay, where he made his land apparatus

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act, and rolled the boat to the School of Notation, which was the end of his expedition. The author of this ingenious discovery wished to prove, that by the aid of his machine, we may with equal ease, roll on land, and navigate on water, without the aid of wind, or even of ordinary oars; and that the motions on both elements, are neither intercepted, nor the velocity impeded. The whole secret lies in the moving power which makes it act, and remains constantly the same, except that the hinder wheel becomes the rudder when the boat is in the water. You may go with the wind favourable or against you, tack, ascend, or descend a river at pleasure. The author asserts, that with a small decked vessel of this kind, it would be possible in calm weather to cross the channel rapidly, without fear of being overtaken by any boat. wish, however, that he would try an experiment, on which we at least should be afraid to venture.

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Ancient Cave, at Kirkdale.Last autumn, through the activity of Mr. Harrison, of Kirby-moorside, an horizontal cave or opening was discovered in working a stonequarry a little below Kirkdale church, in Yorkshire. On the 2d of August, it was explored to the extent of 100 yards or more in length, from two to seven feet in height, and from four to twenty feet in width, but contracting and expanding its dimensions as it advanced eastward under an adjacent and incumbent field. The present opening is estimated to be about four yards below the surface of the ground, on the side of a sloping bank; and the cap or covering is principally rock. On the floor of this cave, or opening, was

found a considerable quantity of loose earth, principally calcareous, amongst which were animal remains, much decayed. Several bones of immense magnitude, teeth, horns, stalactites, &c. were collected, which appear to have been those of the bear, the rhinoceros, the stag, &c. &c. Whether these remains, are to be referred to the antediluvian world, or to the subsequent resort of the above animals to the cave, if they ever existed in this island, is a point for geologists to determine. An account of them has since been communicated to the Royal Society, in a very curious paper, by Mr. Buckland, from which we extract the following particulars :-" The den is a natural fissure, or cavern, in ootlitic limestone, extending 300 feet into the body of the solid rock; and varying from two to five feet in height and breadth. Its mouth was closed with rubbish, and overgrown with grass and bushes, and was accidentally intersected by the working of a stone-quarry. It is on the slope of a hill about 100 feet above the level of a small river, which, during great part of the year, is engulphed. The bottom of the cavern is nearly horizontal, and is entirely covered, to the depth of about a foot, with a sediment of mud deposited by the diluvian waters. The surface of this mud was in some parts entirely covered with a crust of stalagmite; on the greater part of it there was no stalagmite. At the bottom of this mud, the floor of the cave was covered, from one end to the other, with teeth and fragments of bone of the following animals: hyena, elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, ox, two or three species of deer, bear, fox, water

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rat, and birds. The bones are for the most part broken and gnawed to pieces, and the teeth lie loose among the fragments of the bones; a very few teeth still remain fixed in broken fragments of the jaws. The hyena bones are broken to pieces as much as those of the other animals. No bone or tooth has been rolled, or in the least acted on by water, nor are there any pebbles mixed with them. The bones are not at all mineralized, and retain nearly the whole of their animal gelatin, and owe their high state of preservation to the mud in which they have been imbedded. The teeth of hyenas are most abundant; and of these the greater part are worn down almost to the stumps, as if by the operation of gnawing bones. Some of the bones have marks of the teeth on them; and portions of the fœcal matter of the hyenas are found also in the den. Five examples are adduced, of bones of the same animals discovered in similar caverns in other parts of this country, viz. at CrawleyRocks, near Swansea, in the Mendip-Hills, at Clifton, at Wirksworth in Derbyshire, and Oreston, near Plymouth. In the German caves, the bones are nearly in the same state of preservation as in the English, and are not in entire skeletons, but dispersed as in a charnel-house. They are scattered all over the caves, sometimes loose, sometimes adhering together by stalagmite, and forming beds of many feet in thickness. They are of all parts of the body, and of animals of all ages; but are never rolled. With them is found a quantity of black earth, derived from the decay of animal flesh; and also in the newly-discovered

caverns, we find descriptions of a bed of mud. The latter is probably the same diluvian sediment which we find at Kirkdale. The unbroken condition of the bones, and presence of black animal earth, are consistent with the habit of bears, as being rather addicted to vegetable than animal food, and in this case, not devouring the dead individuals of their own species. In the hyenas' cave, on the other hand, where both flesh and bones were devoured, we have no black earth; but instead of it we find, in the album græcum, evidence of the fate that has attended the carcases and lost portions of the bones whose fragments still remain. Three-fourths of the total number of bones in the German caves belong to two extinct species of bear, and two-thirds of the remainder to the extinct hyæna of Kirkdale. There are also bones of an animal of the cat kind, (resembling the jaguar, or spotted panther of South America,) and of the wolf, fox, and polecat, and rarely of the elephant and rhinoceros. The bears and hyænas of all these caverns, as well as the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, belong to the same extinct species that occur among fossils in the diluvian gravel, whence it follows that the period in which they inhabited these regions was that immediately preceding the formation of this gravel by that transient and universal inundation which has left traces of its ravages, committed at no very distant period, over the surface of the whole globe, and since which, no important or general physical changes appear to have affected it."

Roman Eagle. It is well known

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to the studious in classical history and antiquities, that at the defeat of the Roman legions in Franconia, in the days of Augustus, one of their ensign bearers, (Aquilifer,) buried the eagle that was confided to his charge in a ditch, lest it should fall into the enemy's hands; and that afterwards, when the victors were compelled to resign their trophies, one of the captured eagles could not be procured. Time and chance has at length brought it to light. Count Francis of Erbach, who has a country-seat at Eulhach, and who has formed a magnificent collection of Roman antiquities, has found, in the vicinity of his residence, a Roman Eagle, in a good state of preservation. It was discovered in a ditch, not far from some remains of a Roman entrenchment. It is of bronze, thirteen inches in height, and weighs seven pounds. It is not very easy to say that this is the very eagle formerly missing, but the presumption is strong in its favour, and, therefore, it may now be appropriated to the 22d, or the Britannic Legion, which was stationed in the lines of the Forest of Odenwald.

Instrument for Copying Drawings. An invention has been made by a young man belonging to Mauchline--Mr. Andrew Smith, of the Water of Air Stone Manufactory. This is an instrument for copying drawings, &c. called by the learned who have seen it, an apograph. It is so constructed, that drawings of any kind may be copied by it upon paper, copper, or any other substance capable of receiving an impression, upon a scale either extended, reduced, or the same as the original. The art, we understand, furnishes, no in

stance of an instrument resembling this, either in its appearance or operation, save what is called the pantograph, and even from this machine it differs materially. The beam in the former is suspended vertically from an universal joint; whereas the beam of the latter is supported on an horizontal plane. There is also a counterpoise added to the apograph above the centre of motion, which relieves the hand almost entirely of the weight it would otherwise have to sustain when the beam is out of the verti cal position.

Pearis.-A number of pearls have been recently found, by the country people, in a particular species of muscle, which abounds in a river contiguous to Omah, in Ireland. A gentleman has procured a considerable quantity of them, some of which are as fine as Oriental pearls. One is as large as a marrowfat pea; another equal in bulk to a small marble; the rest are of a minor size.

Museum at Göttingen.-Under the title of the Ethnographic Museum, a collection has been formed at Göttingen, which is now very complete, of the dresses, fashions, ornaments, utensils, arms, and idols, of the nations which inhabit the islands and the shores of the Great Ocean. Beginning at the north, these people are the Samoiedes, the Tchoukchis, the Kamtschatchdales, the Kuriles, the Elieuths, the natives of Ounalashka of Zadiak;-then the inhabitants of China, of Japan, of Tibet; those of the Sandwich Islands, of Otaheite, &c. Even the miserable Patagonians of Terra del Fuego, the most southern points of the globe, have furnished their necklaces of shells to this Museum,

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The most curious articles contained in it are complete suits of clothing made of New Zealand hemp; overalls against rain, made of fish skin, and the clothing made of fur of Zadiak, and the north-west coast of America; also the implements for tattooing, and mourning dress of Otaheite; the needles made of fishbones, the thread made of tendons of animals, and the beautiful patterns wrought by the natives of the south-west coast of America, with instruments apparently the most uncouth and clumsy.

Encouragement of Science in Hanover. The operations which have for some time been carrying on, by order of the king of Denmark, for measuring an arc of the meridian in Denmark and Holstein, are to be continued through the kingdom of Hanover. For the purpose of accurately examining and describing the vegetable productions of that kingdom, his Britannic majesty has been pleased to approve of the appointment of a physiographer for that purpose, and of the nomination of Dr. G. F. W. Mayer, to the office, with the title of Counsellor of Economy.

New Islands in the South Seas. M. Graner, a major in the Swedish service, dispatched some time since to explore in the South Seas, a new route for merchant vessels from Chili to the East Indies, has discovered in that ocean, a group of islands hitherto unknown to mariners. To the largest of them he has given the name of Oscar.

Hydrophobia. A series of experiments have recently been made at the Veterinary School at Paris, relative to the cure of this dreadful malady. The object in view was to confirm the efficacy

of a specific imported from Italy, which it is reported will not only act as a preservative immediately after the bite, but as a cure also when the fatal symptoms have appeared. The result of these experiments is not yet ascertained.

New Febrifuge.-A plant bas been brought to Bourdeaux, known in Asia by the name of Cherayita. It is very bitter, and much valued as a febrifuge, having been prescribed in Europe for the gout, and weakness of the digestive organs. No botanical description of this plant has yet been given; but it has been considered in the Asiatic Researches as a species of gentian, and is there denominated Gentiana Cherayita.

Antidotes against Poisons. Mr. Drapier has found that the fruit of the Feuillea Cordifolia, is a powerful antidote against vegetable poisons; and Dr. Chisholm recommends the juice of the sugarcane as the best antidote against arsenic.

Remarkable Picture.—An artist of the name of Francia has brought to this country from St. Omer's, a very extraordinary altar-piece of the fifteenth century, which he obtained from the ruined abbey of St. Bertin, in that city. The painter is John Hemminlroeth, of Bruges; the subject, the Life of Bertin. The execution equals the highest finish of the Flemish school at any period, and boasts of passages not inferior to the Italian of a century later. A still more curious fact is, that the original idea of Holbein's Dance of Death is distinctly and strikingly contained in this picture.

Preservation of Flowers.--A few grains of salt dropped into the water in which flowers are kept, preserves

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