all European governments. The monthly Bulletin is full of results obtained by its influence and efforts. We owe to it partly the introduction of the Bombyx Cynthia, the silkworm which feeds on the Ricinus, as already mentioned ;* also the introduction of the Yak, a ruminant of Thibet which is now succeeding well in the Jura mountains where they are in a state nearly of liberty, under the superintendence of two members of the Society residing in those regions. These animals have already reproduced; they afford milk and butter of good quality, and their hide is useful for various purposes. M. Dollfus, President of the Industrial Society of Mulhouse, and M. Schlumberger, Spinner, have made yarn from the wool of the Yaks which this Society had sent them, and they say that the manufacturers of carpets would obtain beautiful results from the product, it having high lustre and uniting the softness and elasticity of wool with the strength of the stoutest hair. According to a report of M. Duvernoy, Professor of Zoology at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle and at the Collège de France, the Thibetans make out of the wool of the yak a cloth which sheds water. This animal has been domesticated in Asia, and there is every prospect of success here. It is important to remember that the domestication of the merinoes, alpaca and lama was slowly accomplished; that of the merino, conceived by Colbert, took a century; that of the lama and alpaca, undertaken by Buffon, Is. Geoffroy St. Hilaire and others, is not yet completely realized. The Society of Acclimation has it in hand, and with its abundant means and extended resources, the experiment will be faithfully tried.

Besides the above, the Society, on the report of Dr. Richard, Vice President, has undertaken to promote the multiplication and training of the Hemione (a species of the genus Horse), which is already domesticated at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, under the care of I. G. St. Hilaire, President of the Society. It has been trained without trouble for the saddle and traces; it carries its rider without "mauvaise volonté." The female is easily managed. The animal is very intelligent, but also very sensitive, and it is necessary to treat him with gentleness, as harshness renders him restive and ugly. Dr. Richard has made the domestication of animals his study through life: his specialty is Zootechny of the mammifers, and his experience is of the highest value in all these questions of acclimation and domestication.

Silkworms.-Since the muscardine has made so great ravages among the mulberry silkworm, there has been an attempt to introduce other kinds of silkworms. I have already spoken of the Bombyx of the Ricinus. It is now proposed to acclimate three American species of Bombyx; the Cecropia whose larves feed on leaves of the willow and may be fed also on the plum; the Luna, an elegant species of a green color, which lives on the Liquidambar, and which will also eat the leaves of different species of walnut; the Polyphemus, a large Attacus, of a brownish gray color, which feeds on the apple, oak, beech, &c. These three species are abundant in the woods of Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina. Their silk is of inferior quality; but it costs so little to obtain it, that the acclimation of the species is regarded as desirable on the score of economy.

*This Journal, January, 1852.

Objections have been made to the introduction of silkworms affording silk of an inferior quality. It is said that the ordinary silkworm is sufficient and that its production may be easily increased by extending its culture, so that France would not have to pay out to foreigners several millions of francs for raw silk for its manufactures; and also that the Indian silkworm is better. This is like objecting to the introduction of the ass because the horse is a superior animal.

The great defender of both indigenous and exotic silkworms, M. Guérin Mèneville, well known by his numerous works in Natural History, has published a series of excellent papers on the subject in the Bulletin of the Zoological Society of Acclimation. He has founded, in connection with E. Roberts, at St. Tulle (Dep. of the Basses-Alpes) a Sericicole Institute (Institut Séricicole) in which they give gratuitously a theoretical and practical course on the silk industry. There are students there from different parts of France, besides some from foreign countries; they assist in the labors of acclimation and amelioration of races which M. Guérin Mèneville has undertaken, this savant giving, with rare disinterestedness, six months of each year to these labors. Anesthesis of Bees.-Apiculturists often find it desirable to stupefy bees, when, for instance, there are two feeble swarms and it is best to kill the queen of one. In Brittany, as well as in Alsace, the smoke of a common puffball, Lycoperdon cryptus Lupi, has been employed from time immemorial. In the Dict. d'Hist. Nat. of D'Orbigny, it is reported that in Southern Russia the Lycoperdon horrendum and the Endoneuron suberosum are used to intoxicate the bees in order to get their honey. Dr. de Beauvoys has taken up this subject, and has found that the best species for the purpose is the Lycoperdon giganteum. In using it, a piece of the Lycoperdon is put on burning charcoal contained in a chafing dish and covered with a funnel of stoneware, and the smoke is directed from it into the suspended hive: a cloth laid on the ground receives the bees as they fall. The experiments have been repeated before the Zoological Society, in which the stupefaction of the bees continued for half an hour.

Pisciculture. This important subject has occupied much the Society of Acclimation. A method has now been ascertained by which we may know the maturity of the eggs of certain fishes, a method which has been arrived at through the researches of MM. Valenciennes and Frémy on the eggs of osseous fishes. These investigators have found that the eggs, while adhering to the ovarian lamellæ, givę with water an abundant precipitate of a substance named by them Ichtuline; while the mature egg affords no ichtuline: whence the eggs of certain fishes are ready for fecundation when they give no precipitate with distilled water. In this trial with the Cyprinoids, for example, an egg is taken and broken upon a plate of glass, and a drop of pure water added if the liquid is not clear the egg is not mature.

Production of Alcohol.-The question bearing on the cheap production of alcohol has not made much progress since my last commu. nication. New projects and new processes have been sent to the Société d'Encouragement without appearing to resolve the problem. As. phodel, in this connection, may look forward to a fine future. According to Dumas, the quantity of bulbs of asphodel in Algeria is enormous,

they cover a space 20 leagues square and are so crowded that clearing them out is a great labor.

General Vaillant, who commands one of the military divisions in French Algeria, states that the pulp proceeding from the extraction of the alcohol from asphodel may be used as food for hogs, who eat it without hesitation and with advantage. In the month of May, June, July, and August, the proportion of the fermentable principle reaches even 12 p. c., nearly the maximum of that of cane sugar, and almost double that of beet sugar.

M. Dumas also calls attention to another plant more abundant still in Algeria, the Scilla maritima, whose large and dry bulbs are so crowded in the soil that no space is left between. According to M. Fée, Professor of Botany in the Faculty of Medicine of Strasburg, the Scilla affords more than 30 p. c. of saccharine matter. It is however important to remark that it contains also a bitter principle which may injure the alcohol.

Photographic news.-A number of Photographers are attached to the army in the east and share in the fatigues of the Crimean campaign. Four hundred photographic proofs have already been sent by them to Paris. They present the facts respecting the land and sea forces in all their aspects and circumstances, with astonishing precision. One of the most surprising operations in Photography is the reproduction of flowers, leaves and branches. At a recent meeting of the Academy of Sciences, amateurs have been agreeably surprised with the exhibition of an album containing more than one hundred photographic proofs of flowers, remarkable for the harmony and perfection of the work. The author is a protestant pastor, M. Braun, of Doznach near Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin). He proposes to form a collection of studies, for artists who employ flowers as a means of decoration for painting cloth or paper, a manufacture for which the HautRhin is distinguished. He also engages to group branches and flowers in a manner to produce effects highly interesting in an artistic point of view. Unfortunately M. Braun has not made known his secrets: we have heard accomplished photographers say that the processes actually known are altogether insufficient for attaining the results which he claims.

Photographic proofs of another kind have been exhibited at the same Academic session by MM. Bisson brothers, Parisian photographers, for a long time well known. They are views of the Louvre, of a size which exceeds all that has been hitherto seen. They had before exhibited some fine views; but they were far inferior to these, which are 80 centimeters (30 inches) high and 60 broad, and as perfect at the border as at the centre. The negatives on collodion were taken with objectives having an aperture of 5 inches, and 2 meters focal distance, from the shop of Lerebours and Secrétan. The plate was exposed about 20 minutes.

Euvres de François Arago, tome ii, Des Notices Biographiques. Paris. Chez Gide et Baudry.-This new volume contains the Eulogies of Ampère, Condorcet, Bailly, Monge, and Poisson, which were read at different times at the sessions of the Institute of France, and are almost all unpublished.

Astronomie Populaire, par FR. ARAGO, tome i. Paris. Chez Gide et Baudry. The author, in this volume, describes with his usual clearness the instruments used by astronomers. Apparatus the most delicate and the most complicated are treated of with so much simplicity that they become intelligible to persons least familiarized with physics.

Leçons Elémentaire de Chimie, par M. MALAGUTI, Prof. de Chim. à la Faculté des Sciences de Rennes. 2 vols. in 12 mo, pp. 736-740. Paris. Chez Dezobry et Magdeleine.-These Lessons are arranged in the form of a course. In preparing them the author had his audience under his eyes. They are written with a precision and perspicuity which have given great success to the work. M. Malaguti has bestowed upon it the same care as on his fine discoveries in organic chemistry.

Dictionnaire raisonné d'Agriculture et d'Economie du Bétail, suivant les principes des Sciences appliquées, par le Dr. Richard (du Cantal) Vice President of the Zoological Society of Acclimation, &c. 2 vols. in 8vo. Paris. Chez Auguste Goin.-Definitions of technical terms; rural economy; multiplication, hygiene, crossing, pairing, raising, acclimation, of domestic animals; study of good and bad conformation; choice of kinds or types for reproducing; their influence on the amelioration of races; elements of the veterinary art, of physics, of agricul tural entomology, of grazing, botany, &c. &c.; such are some of the subjects, treated by Dr. Richard, with his recognised ability. This work of the Vice President of the Zoological Society of Acclimation has been received with acclamation by its distinguished members.

Correspondence of M. Nicklès, dated, Paris, March 1, 1855. Obituary notice of Melloni.-The philosopher Melloni, whose death we announced in November, 1854, was born near the commencement of the century at Parma, where he began his studies. His sagacious and observing mind was soon apparent to his parents and teachers. The phenomena of the radiation of heat even thus early interested him and he was not slow to suspect the analogy between the radiation of heat and of light. More fortunate than Laurent and other promising youths, the young Macedoine Melloni had at least the satisfaction of seeing himself understood by those who had charge of his education. They encouraged his studious habits instead of endeavoring to divert him, and when in 1824 the Chair of Physics at Parma became vacant, Melloni was appointed to it although he had not then published any of his researches.

Completely destitute of instruments, the young professor devoted his first efforts to contriving them. Nobili had just then constructed his thermoscope. Melloni soon brought it to perfection, and Nobili was so pleased with the result that he proffered him his friendship. A note which Nobili inserted in the "Bibliothèque Universelle" of Geneva is a token of the interest which that philosopher felt in the researches of Melloni. This was almost his only Jabor at Parma where he remained till 1831; a considerable change then took place in his position which stimulated his activity and from that time he began to publish the beau. tiful discoveries which established his fame.

The political events which overturned Italy during 1831 were the cause of this change. Melloni was one of the leaders of the Carbonari. Unfortunate and proscribed, he took refuge in France with his thermo

scope. As he was already well known to the French savants they were not slow in giving him a position and thus provided him with the means of continuing his studies. He was appointed to the chair of Physics in the College of Dole (in the Jura) a little village unfortunately destitute of scientific resources. Not wishing to remain long at such a distance from all scientific centres, he took his dismission and returned to Geneva long renowned for Saussure, DeCandolle, De la Rive and Prevost. Now at length his intellectual wants were satisfied. De la Rive put at his disposal his scientific apparatus, and with these conveniences he prepared his first memoir upon the radiation of heat, soon followed by many others, for which, on the recommendation of Faraday he obtained the Rumford Medal which had been given some years before to Malus and Fresnel. At the same time M. Biot made an able report to the French Academy upon all the labors of Melloni, from his thermo-multiplier which was so sensitive as to be affected by the heat of the human body at a distance of 50 feet, down to the heterogeneity of the calorific spectrum, a discourse which led De la Rive to call Melloni "the Newton of heat." During this time, the Italian philosopher was attentively examining the different sources of heat: he repeated the experiments of Davy upon the proper heat of insects, and he observed anew that the phosphorescent bodies give certain indication of sensible heat. He also studied the moon with reference to its radiation of heat and was a long time without obtaining satisfactory results. However after a time he succeeded, having used a lens a metre in diameter, and taking many precautions.

So many remarkable labors called toward him the attention of the Italian government. He was summoned to Naples as Professor of Physics, and charged with meteorological observations upon Vesuvius. He remained in this position until quite recently and was removed from it at a time when he least expected it. Without taking into the account the services which he had rendered to science, the Italian government heeding only its own fears or its resentments, deprived him of his post and rendered it impossible for him to continue his researches. He retired to a farm which he owned in the vicinity of Naples and there occupied himself with some investigations in electricity, until his death, which occurred on the 7th of August, 1854, brought them unfinished to a close. A treatise upon the calorific spectrum, entitled, "La Thermochrose," was found among his papers and published by his friends. Melloni was a corresponding member of the French Institute, and also of other scientific bodies.

Death of M. Braconnot.-The discoverer of xyloidine, pyrogallic acid, equisetic acid, leucine, populine, etc., the author of the transformation of wood into sugar, the patient analyst, who for half a century has continued his labors upon the proximate principles, died at an advanced age at Nancy in the department of Meurthe on the 13th Jan., 1855, where he was established and where nearly all his labors had been performed. In another communication, I will give some biographical account of this celebrated chemist.

Death of Joseph Remy.-We have often brought before our readers the poor fisherman of the Vosges mountains who without instruction, without scientific education, was a discoverer in the domain of natural history, and gave to humanity a new branch of useful industry well