5th, The laws of the intensities and anomalies are represented by the formulæ of M. Cauchy.

6th, If substances are superposed, the reflexion from their surface of separation follows the same laws.

7th, In this case it is impossible to predict the value and the sign of the coefficient of ellipticity.

The memoir, moreover, includes a table of the constants of reflexion for a number of liquids.

Translated for the Journal of the Franklin Institute.

Formation of Minerals in the Moist Way.

M. de Senarmont, to whom we owe the valuable and ingenious experiments upon the conducting power of crystallized substances, has been engaged in the endeavor to form some of our common minerals occurring in veins, by the liquid way-and has succeeded in getting from solutions containing carbonic acid and sulphuretted hydrogen, and the alkaline sulphurets and bicarbonates, either alone or together, microscopical but perfectly formed crystals of the following substances:

Native metals-Copper, silver, mixed without alloying, arsenic.
Oxides Hematite, quartz, red oxide of copper.

Carbonates, of magnesia, iron, manganese, cobalt, nickel, zinc, copper, (Malachite.)

Sulphate of Baryta.

Sulphurets of arsenic (Realgar,) antimony, bismuth, iron (Pyrites,) manganes, cobalt, nickel, zinc (blende,) copper.

Oxysulphuret of antimony.

Arseniosulphurets of iron (Mispikel) silver.
Antimoniosulphuret of silver.

"What I proposed to myself was, to establish by experimental proofs, the opinion controverted, but to me very probable, which attributes the filling of concretionary veins to the thermul incrusting deposits, and to shew that the formation of a great number of the minerals which are there met with, whether crytallized or amorphous, does not always require conditions or agents very different from actual causes.-Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences de Paris, 24 March, 1851.

Proceedings of the Stated Monthly Meeting, June 19, 1851.

S. V. Merrick, President, in the chair.

John F. Frazer, Treasurer.

Isaac B. Garrigues, Recording Secretary.

Present.

The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved.

Donations were received from The Royal Irish Academy, Dublin; The Royal Institution of Great Britain, London; The Governor of Min

nesota; H. Haupt, Esq., Harrisburg; Elwood Morris, Esq., Chilicothe, Ohio; Pofessor S. S. Haldeman, Columbia, and Messrs. A. Hart, Professor John F. Frazer, and W. C. Grimes, Philadelphia.

The Periodicals received in exchange for the Journal of the Institute were laid on the table.

The Treasurer read his statement of receipts and payments for the month of May.

The Board of Managers and the Standing Committees reported their

minutes.

New candidates for membership in the Institute (1) were proposed, and those proposed at the last meeting (4) were duly elected.

The Committee on the Cabinet of Minerals and Geological specimens reported, that the collections of the Institute were so far arranged as to admit of the room being thrown open for the use of the members.

Dr. Rand, Chairman of the Committee on Meetings, brought before the members a specimen of silvered glass, consisting of a cup manufactured by the New England Glass Company, being the first manufactured for sale in this country. It was of great beauty, resembling solid silver, and was much admired by the members present: the process was not known, but we suppose it to be Drayton's. The agents for the sale of the article are Messrs. Muzzey & Monroe, of this city.

Mr. Wm. Winter exhibited a new ventilating chimney cap, of galvanized iron, consisting of a square base and three circular pieces, pointed at the top and bottom, the lower angles overlapping the open spaces for the exit of the heated air. It has a concave top on three standards so as to prevent any downward draught. The great advantage claimed to be derived from the circular pieces, is the greater amount of expansion allowed for the heated air, and the prevention of side currents of cold air. Mr. J. A. Maynard, of Boston, exhibited to the meeting his improved patent hot air and water tuyeres for blacksmiths' forges, and made the following remarks:

This tuyere consists of a hot air chamber, and water nozzle, placed within the forge on the side, which can be extended to a greater or less distance, as the work may require. The arch nozzle, so termed, is filled with water, supplied from a vessel placed behind the forge. The pipes which supply it are tapped into the nozzle, and extend through the hot air chamber and the back of the forge, one conducts the water in, and the other, when steam is generated, passes it out at the top of the vessel that contains the water; there are two pipes connected behind the hot air chamber, the top one conveys the air from the bellows into the hot air chamber; and from thence it is blown hot, through the water nozzle into the fire, the nozzle being filled with water is defended from the action of the fire. No clinker can adhere to the nozzle and the arch form prevents it running in to clogg, there being no surface for it to rest upon; the iron being set low in the forge, it gives a body of coal between the tuyere and the iron, which prevents the blast from coming directly on the iron to burn it; the blast is blown a little upwards, which is an advantage. A wide or crooked piece of iron can be wrought as advantageously as a small or straight one; there is no chance for the coal to be consumed except around the iron that is being heated. On the end of the lower

pipe there is a valve through which the ashes pass, which is opened by the action of the bellows or gate when stopped, and being open it prevents all gas or heat from going back so as to burn the bellows; it also gives a draught into the fire to keep it alive.

Mr. G. W. Smith made some interesting remarks upon the lights on our coasts, which he had carefully examined during a recent trip to Charleston, in the steamer Albatross.

Mr. I. W. P. Lewis exhibited a beautiful model of the Sand Key light house, as well as drawings of various others. A full report of Mr. Lewis' observations with drawings will be published in a subsequent No. of the Journal.

The propeller and calculating machine of Mr. Nystrom, of which full accounts have been published in this Journal, were exhibited and explained by Prof. Frazer.

OBITUARY NOTICE.

For the Journal of the Franklin Institute.

Character of the late M. Bendant, the Mineralogist.

We take the following beautiful trait of character in a distinguished French scientific man, recently deceased, from l'Institute, where it is given as an extract from the funeral eulogy of M. Bendant, pronounced by M. Milne Edwards.

"After having filled with distinction the chair of Physics in the Lyceum of Marseilles, and acquired a high rank in France, by his numerous works of investigation, M. Bendant was designated by the Academy of Sciences, and by the college of France, to fill the place of Professor of Physics in this latter establishment. The ordinance of the King Louis XVIII., which conferred this title, was already signed by that monarch, when our modest colleague learns that his friend Amperé eagerly desired to have that position, and that it was necessary that he should have it, to allow him to employ himself with experiments, whose value he knew; perhaps he also thought that the scientific rights of Amperé were superior to his own; and obeying only the noble impulses of his heart, he went to the minister, and requested that the ordinance which had been issued in his favor, and was intended to appear in the Moniteur the next day, should be annulled; pleaded his friend's cause warmly, and not being able in this first interview to overcome the resolution which M. Corbiere (in whose department the College of France was at that time,) had taken, he perseveringly insisted for two weeks on obtaining the change which he solicited, as many others would have solicited a favor; and finally, to cut the question short, he made his resignation public through the press. This act of so rare a disinterestedness, opened to Amperé the laboratories of the College of France, where he in a short time made his beautiful discoveries in electro-magnetics, and Bendant, seeing his friend render such services to science felt himself happy to have been the primary cause of his success, and found in the glory of Amperé, the recompense of the sacrifice which he so generously imposed on himself.

On the Comparative Qualities of the Metal Employed in the Construction of Railroads. By HU L. DAMSEL.

Continued from page 21.

Attempts have been made to remedy the tendency of best iron to laminate, but from not sufficiently attending to the minutiae of the manufacture, they have been but partially successful. An ingenious apparatus for twisting the rail bar, whilst it is in course of manufacturing, has been patented in the States, and also in England. Through the medium of powerful machinery, the bar is twisted while in its rough state, until the fibres of metal encircle the rail instead of lying in a direction parallel with its axis. The metal thus prepared, appears to be much better adapted for certain manufacturing purposes than that produced in the usual way; but its superiority, as alleged, for railway bars, is not so apparent. Indeed, on attentive consideration, it will be manifest that the twisting of the bar alone, cannot retard the laminating process, for the fibrous character of the metal still exists, though it has been forced into a spiral instead of its previous parallel direction in the bar.

An English manufacturer has patented a process for manfacturing what appears to be a nearer approach to an anti-laminating rail. His plan is to construct the upper or wearing part of the rail, from puddled charcoal iron, in the unwrought state, and the lower or non-wearing part, from such iron as is ordinarily used in manufacturing rails. By this arrangement of the materials, the formation of fibre is materially reduced. Its existence, however, even in a reduced degree, must exercise a prejudicial effect on the durability of the rail bar. Yet, notwithstanding this circumVOL. XXII.-THIRD SERIES.-No. 2.-AUGUST, 1851.

7

stance, rails made under this patent have stood considerable rolling with fewer instances of lamination than might have been expected.

But the high price which is charged for these rails in England, where charcoal iron readily sells at prices nearly double those of ordinary coke pig iron, has hitherto limited their employment to a few isolated experi ments on some of the leading railways in that country. Besides which, there does not appear to be any sufficient reason why charcoal iron should be necessary to the production of an anti-laminating rail. The high character which charcoal iron possesses for purity and tenacity, and its peculiar fitness for numerous minor manufactures, has led to its adoption as a standard of quality for iron, without sufficiently considering the various purposes to which this metal is applied, and the very different circumstances under which it is employed. Common brands from coke and coal fuel furnaces, have been used in the manner in which this charcoal iron has been used, and with similar success. They produced rails equally free from lamina, and with the important advantage of not increasing the cost of production.

Although the rails thus manufactured con'ained less than the usual quantity of fibre, the disadvantage of having masses of various sizes in the same pile, the injurious effects from which has already been made known, must not be overlooked. Lamination from this cause exceeds that from all others, whence the necessity for equalizing the sectional dimensions of the pieces composing the pile. The disproportion between the masses of metal composing the patent pile is very great, and their ability to laminate from this cause is therefore imminent.

To discover means whereby wrought rails might be rolled from common metal, and yet be free from the laminated structure attendant on its employment, experimental trials were made with rails rolled from variously constructed piles, built up of common puddled iron, with and without the admixture of superior qualities. This was done with the view of ascertaining if the present system of piling could not be advantageously altered for one which, with little or no additional expense in manufacturing over that now incurred, would result in the production of a perfectly non-laminating rail. The object aimed at, therefore, was one which, if attained, would be of incalculable benefit to railroad companies.

The plan usually adopted, is to arrange the bars, whether these are of mill or puddled iron, side by side, and one on the other, till a pile is built of the required dimensions. By thus arranging them, the grain or fibre of all the bars runs in the same direction-longitudinally. This parallelism is maintained in the subsequent process of rolling, when the pile is distended from its original length of about 3 feet into a finished rail of from 24 to 26 feet long, but is reduced laterally and vertically from 7 inches wide and 9 inches high, equal to 63 sectional inches to a bar, averaging, perhaps, 6 square inches. The fibres of metal are thus distended longitudinally to 9 times their original length, and to meet this elongation, they are compressed into one-ninth of their original sectional area. The fibrous character of the metal continues, and is multiplied at each successive rolling, until, as is not unfrequently the ease at iron works, it is no longer available for manufacturing purposes.