The London Smoke Nuisance-Furnace Cinders-The Dahlia-Adamant-State of the Natural Sciences among the Japanese-Electricity.

WE stated lately that by act of Parliament the smoke of London is "suppressed." A scientific writer in the London Times thinks the reform begins at the wrong end: that the sewers, &c., should be first so arranged as not to infect the atmosphere-the smoke is necessary to counteract them. Smoke, he argues, is nothing more than minute flakes of carbon or charcoal. Carbon in this state is like so many atoms of sponge, ready to absorb any of the life-destroying gases with which it may come in contact. In all the busy haunts of men, or wherever men congregate together, the surrounding air is to a certain extent rendered pernicious by their excretions, from which invisible gaseous matter arises, such as phosphuretted and sulphuretted hydrogen, cyanogen, and ammoniacal compounds, well known by their intolerable odor. Now, the blacks of smoke (that is the carbon) absorb and retain these matters to a wonderful extent. Every hundred weight of smoke probably absorbs twenty hundred weight of the poisonous gases emanating from the sewers, and from the various works where animal substances are under manipulation-by fellmongers, for instance, and on the premises of fat-melters, bone-crushers, glue-makers, Prussian blue-makers, &c. This accounts for the undeniable fact that London, although the most smoky, is yet the healthiest metropolis in the world. As London is at present constituted, smoke is the very safeguard of the health of the population; it is unquestionably the mechanical purifyer of a chemically deteriorated atmosphere.

The London Athenæum reports very favorably the result of experiments in England, testing our countryman, Dr. Smith's, invention for the use of Furnace Cinders. Dr. Smith professes to produce from the scoriæ cast aside from the blast furnaces a variety of articles in daily use, such as square tiles, paving flags, and bottles, the last of which are much stronger, and the annealment more complete than in the common glass bottles, from which in appearance they are scarcely to be distinguished. The scori are thrown into a mold before they have time to cool. If it should turn out to be possible to put the furnace cinders to such uses, the invention will be of great importance to all propri

etors of blast furnaces.

The dahlia is a native of the marshes of Peru, and was named after Dahl, the famous Swedish botanist. It is not more than thirty years since its introduction into Europe.

Adamant is a substance so extremely hard as to be able to polish the diamond. It is considered to bear the same relation to diamond which emery does to corundum. A few years ago, M. Dufresney exhibited before the Paris Academy of Sciences, a few pieces of adamant which were met with in the same alluvial formation whence Brazilian diamonds are usually

procured. The largest piece obtained weighed about 66 grains. Its edges were rounded by long continued friction; and it presented a slightly brownish, dull black color. When viewed with a microscope, it appeared riddled with small cavities, which separated very small irregular laminæ, slightly transparent and iridescent. It cut glass readily, and scratched quartz and topaz. On analysis it was found that this adamant contains 96.8 to 90.8 per cent. of pure carbon; the small remainder consisting of vegetable ash.

M. Von Siebold, at a late meeting of the Natural History Society of Bonn, read a paper "On the State of the Natural Sciences among the he says, is much more extensive and profound Japanese." Their knowledge of these sciences, than is supposed in western Europe. They possess a great many learned treatises thereupon, and an admirable geological map of their island, by Buntsjo. They are well acquainted with. the systems of European naturalists, and have translations of the more important of their works. They have a botanical dictionary, in which an account is given of not fewer than 5,300 species, and it is embellished with a vast number of well-executed engravings. The flora of their own island is admirably described in a work by the imperial physician, Pasuragawa.

Some experiments have lately been made at Portsmouth (England) of a most important and remarkable character, and which would appear to open up and promise to lead to further triumphs in electricity, equal in importance to any that have already been achieved. The experiments in question were for the purpose of ascertaining the possibility of sending electric telegraph communications across a body of

water without the aid of electric wires. The space selected for the experiment was the milldam, (a piece of water forming a portion of the fortifications,) at its widest part, where it is something near five hundred feet across. operating battery was placed on one side of the dam, and the corresponding dial on the other side. An electric wire from each was sub

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merged on their respective sides of the water, and terminating in a plate constructed for the purpose, and several messages were accurately conveyed across the entire width of the milldam, with accuracy and instantaneous rapidity. The apparatus employed in the experiments is not pretended to be here explained in even a cursory manner; this is of course the exclusive secret of the inventor. But there is no doubt of the fact that communications were act

ually sent a distance of nearly five hundred feet through the water without the aid of wires, or other conductors, and that there appeared every possibility that this could be done as easily with regard to the British Channel as with the mill-dam. The inventor is a gentleman of great scientific attainments, residing in Edinburgh, and lays claim to being the original inventor of the electric telegraph; but was unable to carry out the invention to his advantage.

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