association of English, French, and German booksellers, for £4,000: the work is to appear in the three languages at the same time.
A report made to the council-general of hospitals in Paris, relative to the state of those establishments from 1803 to 1814, contains some important facts. They are divided into two classes, called hopitaux and hospices; the former, ten in number, being designed for the sick and diseased; and the latter, which amount to nine, affording a provision for helpless infancy, and poor persons afflicted with incurable infirmities. The Hotel Dieu, the most ancient of the hospitals, contains 1200 beds. The general mortality in the hospitals has been 1 in 7½, and in the hospices 1 in 6½; and it has been more considerable among the women than the men. It is found, that wherever rooms of the same size are placed one over another, the mortality is greatest in the uppermost. In the Hospice de l'Accouchement, in 1814, there were delivered 2,700 females, of whom 2,400 acknowledged that they were unmarried. In the ten years from 1804 to 1814, there were admitted into the Hospice d'Allaitement, or Foundling Hospital, 23,458 boys, and 22,463 girls, total 45,921 children, only 4,130 of whom were presumed to be legitimate. The mortality of infants in the first year after their birth was under 2-7ths. During the ten years, 355,000 sick were admitted into the hospitals, and 59,000 poor persons into the hospices. The total number that received relief out of these establishments in 1813, which gives about the average of that period, was 103,000, of whom 21,000 belonged to the department of the Seine.—Some pains have been taken to ascertain the different causes of mental derangement. It appears, that among the maniacs the number of women is generally greater than that of men. Among the younger females, love is the most common cause of insanity; and among the others, jealousy or domestic discord. Among the younger class of males, it is the too speedy developement of the passions, and with the others, the derangement of their affairs, that most frequently produces this effect. The calamities of the revolution were another cause of madness in both sexes; and it is worthy of remark, that the men were mad with aristocracy, the women with democracy. Excessive grief occasioned lunacy in the men; whereat the minds of the females were deranged by ideas of independence and equality.
The National Institute of France has this year adjudged the prize, founded by Lalande for the most interesting observation or the most useful memoir in astronomy, to M. Bessel, director of the Royal Observatory of Konigsberg.—As the Institute has received no satisfactory memoir for the premium of 3,000 francs left by the late M. Ravrio, for any person who should discover a process by which mercury may be employed, without injury to the workman, in the art of gilding, the same subject is proposed anew for 1818.—Two other prizes, gold medals, of the value of 3,000 francs each, remaining also unmerited by any of the memoirs which they have produced, are in like manner offered again for 1818. The subject of the first is "To determine the rise of the thermometer in mercury comparatively with its rise in air from 20 below to 200 centigr.; the law of cooling in a vacuum; the law of cooling in air, hydrogen gas, and carbonic acid gas, to different degrees of temperature, and according to different states of rarefaction." The subject of the second prize is, "To determine the chemical changes which fruits undergo during and after their ripening." Another prize to the same amount is offered for 1819, for the following subject:—"To determine by accurate experiments the detraction of luminous rays direct and reflected, when they pass separately or simultaneously near the extremity of one or many bodies of an extent either limited or indefinite."
On the first day of the publication of Germanicus at Paris, 1,800 copies were sold. The copyright has been purchased for 4,500 francs.
The grand desideratum of rendering sea water potable, seems at length to be obtained by simple distillation. The French chemists have been unable to discover in distilled sea water, any particle of salt or soda, in any form; and it is ascertained that one cask of coals will serve to distil six casks of water. A vessel going on a voyage of discovery, by order of the French government, commanded by M. Freycinet, will only take fresh water for the first fortnight, and, instead thereof, coals, which will be but one sixth of the tonnage; distilled sea water being perfectly as good as fresh water that has been a fortnight on board.
M. Dorion has discovered that the bark of the pyramidal ash, in powder, thrown into the boiling juice of the sugar-cane, effects its clarification. The planters of Martinique and Gaudaloupe have given him 200,000 francs for communicating his discovery.
Perpetual Motion.—Mr Maillardet of Neuchatel announces, in a foreign journal, that he has succeeded in resolving the celebrated problem of perpetual motion, so long regarded as a scientific chimera. The piece of mechanism to which he applies his principle is thus described: It is a wheel, around the circumference of which there is a certain number of tubes, which alternately radiate or turn in towards the centre, rendering the moving power at one time strong, at another weak; but preserving throughout such an intensity of force, that it is necessary to keep it in check by a regulator.
M. M. Majendie and Pelletier have communicated to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, an interesting discovery upon ipeca-
