The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-07-10 00:00:00

SCIENCE AND ART.

DE. ROBERT DE LAMBELLE, a distinguished physician of
Paris, announces that a shock of electricity, given to a patient
dying from the effects of chloroform, immediately counteracts
its influence, and returns the sufferer to life.

M. HULOT, one of the chiefs in the electrotypic department
of the French Mint, has found out that the newly-discovered
metal, aluminium, may replace platina as an element of the
galvanic pile, and that this metal having zinc as an electro-
negative element, gives rise to a considerable disengagement
of hydrogen for several hours.
PAINTINGS AT THE PARIS EXIIIBITION.—The general
relative numerical proportions which have obtained between
the works of the different nations are as follows :—Austria,
52 ; Nassau and Baden, 14 ; Bavaria, 65 ; Belgium, 224 ;
Denmark, 5 ; Sicily, 5 ; Spain, 84 ; the Pontifical States, 13 ;
the United States, 39 ; Great Britain, 376; the Grand Duchy
of Hesse, 4 ; Mexico, 1; Holland, 98 ; Java, 1; Peru, 5 ;
Portugal, 23 ; Prussia, 137; Sardinia, 26 ; Saxony, 12 • Swe-
den, 28 • Norway, 16 ; Switzerland, 94 ; Tuscany, 6 ; t 'Turkey,
1; the Hanse Towns, 18 ; Wurtemburg, 9 ; France, 2,060,
that is to say, nearly twice as many as all the other nations
put together.
AN ARTIFICIAL AVIARY has lately been uncovered in the
Paris Palais de l'lndustrie. Under an immense glass globe is a
tree whose branches are covered with stuffed birds of brilliant
plumage. On turning a key a spring at the foot of the tree
begins to run, the birds skipfrom branch to branch, and chirp
and sing in the most agreeable manner. Their little beaks
and breasts are in constant agitation, as in life, and not a few
who have heard them declare that the notes are preferable to
those of the living birds at the aviary of Tattaru, whieh is close
at hand.

A VERY IMPORTANT DISCOVERY has been made by a M.
Petit, of Lyons, of a means of impregnating silk by a chemical
process with gold, silver, brass, or iron, so that it can be woven
with perfect flexibility, and thus form, as it were, stuffs of those
metals. The invention has been secured by patent, and will
be worked by a company of capitalists. Permission has been
given to place a specimen in the Universal Exhibition. It is
said that the price of this new material will not be high.
ON BOILER EarLostoNs.—Not a month passes which does
not give us some new instance of their fatal effects ; and as
almost in all cases the explosion occurs when the steam is
comparatively at a low pressure, it must be the effect of a
strange force that has by some means or other introduced
itself into the boiler, and which instantaneously raises the
pressure from several atmospheres to several hundreds, and
against which force the safety-valve is nothing. My firm
conviction is, that this force is electricity. It is a well-known
fact, that boilers contain more or less of the electric fluid, and
that the maximum is formed with a low pressure, which fact
tends to verify my hypothesis. Now, whatever may be the
cause which makes it fulminant, if it could be conducted
safely out of the boiler the explosion would not take place,
and I see no reason why the application of the lightning-
conductor could not be made with success. For example, if
several insulated conductors, terminating with points made of
a metal inoxidable, were introduced into the boiler, the elec-
tricity could be carried through the sides of the boiler (as fast
as it developed itself) with safety, into the tank or elsewhere.
POTICITOMANIE.—The new practitioners of this old art
take a much higher flight than our good old grandmothers of
the sand-bottles, and are content with no less a victory than
an exact imitation of everything in the shape of porcelain that
falls into their unmerciful clutches. To this all their energies
are directed: on this all their talent is displayed. No im-
provement in the characteristic of the art is sought after, nor
the perfecting its capabilities as a distinct branch of repre-
sentation and colouring of beautiful forms ; all this is cast
aside for the tempting ultimatum, which is to make blown
glass appear baked pottery, and coloured prints pass as porce-
lain painting. But no human being could ever mistake the
one for the other on close inspection, and painted porcelain
invites minute examination ; we must, therefore, pronounce
the present practice of Potichomanie as an unmistakable
abortion. It is a misfortune that popular favour should have
taken this bent, when so many beautiful effects are within
its reach, and might so easily be obtained, if those who prac-
tise the art studied the harmony of colour, the disposition of
form, the peculiarities and difficulties of the process of appli-
cation, overcame the latter, and turned the former to advan-
tage. I would suggest that the forms of the beautiful
Etruscan vases in the British Museum should be reproduced,
as the material which Potichomanie is best fitted to render
beautiful. These, when produced in clear thick glass, might
be decorated with. Rowney's water-colour prints, or the chro-
molithography of Vincent Brooks, especial care being taken
in harmonising the background with its subject, so, that an
violent contrasts. may be avoided. This would give us tbe.•

pure beauty of form in the vase, and when we examined more
minutely the_, colour of the prints, we should there find no
disappointment. In this way many beautiful objects might
be obtained; at a cost which would place them within the
reach of all. ' And, then, as a distinct and really legitimate
branch of art, let us call it by a name which neither breaks
our teeth nor excites commiseration ; for this, I would
humbly suggest that the treatment I have proposed should
be distinguished from its meretricious sister by the name of
" Raffia Ware."—Builder.
CLARIFYING OF WATER.—WeII-waters sometimes contain
vegetable substances also of a peculiar kind, which render
them unwholesome, even over large tracts of country. In
sandy districts the decaying vegetable matters of the surface-
soil are observed to sink down and form an ochrey pan, or thin
yellow -layer in the subsoil, which is impervious to water, and
through which, therefore, the rains cannotpass. Being arrested
by this pan, the rain water, while it rests upon it, dissolves a
certain portion of the vegetable matter ; and when collected
into wells, is often dark-coloured, marshy in taste and smell,
and unwholesome to drink. When boiled, the organic
matter coagulates, and, when the water cools, separates in
flocks, leaving the water wholesome, and nearly free from
taste or smell. The same purification takes place when the.
water is filtered through charcoal, or when chips of oak
wood are put into it. These properties of being coagulated
by boiling, and by the tannin of oak wood, show that the
organic matter contained in the water is of an albuminous
character, or resembles white of egg. As it coagulates, it not
only falls itself, but it carries other impurities along with it,
and thus purifies the water—in the same way as the white of
egg clarifies wines and other liquors to which it is added.
Such is the character of the waters in common use in the
Landes of the Gironde around Bordeaux, and in many other
sandy districts. The waters of rivers, and of marshy and
swampy places, often contain a similar coagulable substance.
Hence the waters of the Seine at Paris are clarified by intro-
ducing a morsel of alum, and the river and marshy waters of
India by the use of the nuts of the Strychnos potatorum, of
which travellers often carry a supply. One or two of these
nuts, rubbed to powder on the side of the earthen vessel into
which the water is to be poured, soon causes the impurities to
subside. In Egypt, the muddy water of the Nile is clarified
by rubbing bitter almonds on the sides of the water-vessel in
the same way. In all these instances the principle of the clarifi-
cation is the same. The albuminous matter is coagulated by
what is added to the water, and in coagulating it embraces the
other impurities of the water, and carries them down along
with it.. These cases, and especially that of the sandy Landes
of Boideaux, and elsewhere, throw an interesting light upon
the waters of the Marah, as given in the fifteenth chapter of
Exodus. "So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea ; and
they- went out into the wilderness of Shur ; and they went
three days in the wilderness and found no water. And when
they came..to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of
Marah; for they were bitter : therefore the name of it was
called Marsh. And the people murmured against Moses,
saying, What shall we drink And he cried unto the Lord,
and the Lord showed him a tree, which, when he had cast into
the waters, the waters were made sweet."—Professor Johns-
ton's Chemistry of Common Life. -