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86 tific characters whom this country contains,—The instrument itself, by means of which all those important results have been obtained, has also received some improvements from the hand of the doctor, by which not only greater safety is obtained in the use of it, but a very considerable degree both of power and of facility has been added to the energy which it originally possessed; while the splendid scientific results which its employment has developed, have also been accompanied by some of the most brilliant phenomena which chemistry has to exhibit. The combustion of iron has been particularly mentioned as actually exhibiting a shower of fire. "The general result of my observations," says the author, "has excited in my mind a hope that the means I have used will be employed upon a more extended scale to aid the manufactures of this country. By increasing the capacity of the reservoir, and the condensing power of the apparatus, the diameter of the jet may be also enlarged; and the consequence will be, that a power of fusion the most extraordinary, as a work of art, which the world ever witnessed, may be employed with the utmost economy both of space and expenditure, and with the most certain safety."—We hope these splendid anticipations will soon be realized: and, upon the whole, we cannot help expressing our satisfaction that the employment of this powerful instrument, in the developement of such striking results, has fallen to the lot of a gentleman who has already rendered such essential service to the literature of his country, and whom, from the evidence afforded by his works (for we have not the honour of any more intimate acquaintance with him), we are really disposed to regard as not only one of the most accomplished scholars, but one of the best men also, which this country contains.

The Lockhart Papers are announced for publication, consisting of memoirs concerning the affairs of Scotland, from Queen Anne's accession to the commencement of the Union; with commentaries, containing an account of public affairs from the Union to the queen's death. All these papers were composed by, and are chiefly in the handwriting of, George Lockhart, Esq. of Carnwath, who was a very able and distinguished member of the Scottish and British Parliaments, and an unshaken disinterested partizan of the fallen family of Stuart. They contain also a register of letters between the son of James II. generally called the Chevalier de St George, or the old Pretender, and George Lockhart; with an account of public affairs from 1716 to 1728; and journals, memoirs, and, circumstantial details, in detached pieces, of the young Pretender's expedition to Scotland in 1745; his progress, defeat, and extraordinary adventures and escape after the battle of Culloden in 1746, by Highland officers in his army. All these manuscripts are in the possession of Anthony Aufrere of Hoveton in Norfolk, Esq. who married Matilda, only surviving daughter of General James Lockhart of Lee and Carnwath, Count of the Holy Roman empire, grandson of the author of the Memoirs. This work will be comprised in two quarto volumes, of six or seven hundred pages each; it admirably connects with the Stuart and Culloden papers, and is calculated to excite and reward the attention of all lovers of national history and political anecdote.

A paper has been read to the Royal Society by Dr Brewster, containing the results of a very extensive and ingenious series of experiments on the action of regularly crystallized bodies upon light. From these experiments Dr Brewster has determined all the laws by which the phenomena are regulated, and has been enabled to compose formulæ, by which the tints, and the direction of the axis of the particles of light, may in every case be calculated a priori. The law of double refraction investigated by La Place, and the laws of the polarising force deduced by M. Biot, are shewn to be merely simple cases of laws of much greater extent and generality, being applicable only to a few crystals, while those investigated by Dr Brewster are applicable to the vast variety of crystallized bodies which exist in nature.

We understand that Professor Leslie has very lately made an important addition to his curious and beautiful discovery of artificial congelation. He had found by his early experiments, that decayed whinstone, or friable mould, reduced to a gross powder and dried thoroughly, will exert a power of absorbing moisture, scarcely inferior to that of sulphuric acid itself. But circumstances having lately drawn his attention to this subject, he caused some mouldering fragments of porphyritic trap, gathered from the sides of that magnificent road now forming round the Gallon Hill, to be pounded and dried carefully before the fire in a bachelor's oven. This powder, being thrown into a wine-decanter fitted with a glass stopper, was afterwards carried to the College; and, at a lecture a few days since in the Natural Philosophy Class (which he has been teaching this session in the absence of Professor Playfair in Italy), he shewed the influence of its absorbing power on his hygrometer, which, enclosed within a small receiver of an air-pump, fell from 90° to 320°, the wetted bulb being, consequently, cooled about 60° of Fahrenheit's scale. The professor, therefore, proposed on the instant to employ the powder to freeze a small body of water. He poured the powder into a saucer about 7 inches wide, and placed a shallow cup of porous earthen-ware, 3 inches in diameter, at the height of half an inch above, and covered the whole with a low receiver. On exhausting this receiver till the gage stood at 2-10ths of an inch, the water in a very few minutes ran into a cake of ice. With the same powder an hour afterwards, he froze a large body of water in three