fected the establishment of two normal schools, one for training masters, and the other mistresses. The country towns want nothing but teachers to found institutions similar to those of Paris: and in several places, societies numbering more than 700 subscribers have been formed. The methods of Bell and Lancaster have been combined, and improved in various respects. In the garrison towns a beginning has been made to apply the new method to the education of soldiers' children. The minister of the interior has sent out teachers to the Isle of Bourbon, Senegal, and Corsica. Swiss, Spaniards, Italians, and Russians, have come to Paris to learn the new method; so that we may fairly presume, that the benefits of this system, which originated in England, will soon be diffused over all Europe. The Society of Paris speaks in high terms of the encouragement and the assurances of friendship that it has received from the Society of London, with which it keeps up a correspondence.
At a general meeting of the Society for the Encouragement of Industry in France, held on the 9th April 1817, the secretary, Baron de Gorando, read a report of the labours of the Society during the preceding year.
In the department of experiments and observations, notice is taken of a siphon presented to the Society by M. Landren, which has two branches that convey at the same time both water and air, and is supposed by the inventor to be capable of renewing the air in mines. The committee of the Society, to whom it was remitted, had not been able to form a judgment of this instrument, but from very imperfect models, and from reports, the results of which they have not been able to verify. Similar in some respect to the tinman's pump of Seville, and the horns of the Catalonian forges, it can introduce air into furnaces and mines at all times, when there is an opportunity of carrying off the water employed or deposited; but in the one case the humid air unavoidable by this method must, in the opinion of the committee, be injurious to the fusion of the metals; and in the other case the chance, they think, is greater, of the noxious gases common to mines being aspired than of their being displaced by the introduction of new air.
Among new improvements of existing processes, the attention of the Society was particularly directed to the perfection to which the preparation of platinum had been brought. Not only is the mode of purifying it most complete; but little ductile as it seems, it is now reduced into leaves as fine as those of gold. MM. Cuog and Contourier of Paris, have presented to the Society a vase of platinum, purified according to the process of M. Breant, assayer to the mint, which is formed of one single leaf without soldering; contains 160 litres, and weighs 15½ kilogrammes (31 lbs.). The cost is 18 francs per ounce. The vase is intended to be employed in the concentration of sulphuric acid. It is but just, the Report adds, to observe that Janety the younger was the first to fabricate vases of platinum of a large size, but not without soldering. This artist furnishes the metal at present at 14. francs the ounce, either in plate or wire.
The most remarkable of the new inventions which have been submitted to the Society, is one of a portable anemometer, constructed by M. Regnier. The idea of it was suggested to the inventor by M. Buffon. It has been applied in a very ingenious manner to make a hall clock indicate not only the force and direction of the wind, but even the maximum of action which it has exerted during the absence of the observer.
GERMANY.
The illustrious anatomist Sömmering has just published the description of a new species of the fossil genus of animal, named ornithocephalus, under the name brevirostris. Of the ornithocephalus antiquus or longirostris, a figure and description has been given to the public, by Professor Jameson, in the third edition of Cuvier's Theory of the Earth.
Dr Spix of Munich, well known to naturalists by his history of Zoology, and a splendid work on the Crania of Animals, is now preparing for publication an uncommonly interesting work, entitled "Zoologia et Phytographia Bavaria Subterranea."
The celebrated comparative anatomist Tiedmann, along with Oppel, is employed on an extensive work on the Anatomy of the Amphibia. It is promised to compare the structure of the present tribes of amphibious animals with those fossil species found in limestone and other rocks, and thus to connect together, in an interesting manner, the views of the zoologist with those of the comparative anatomist.
Mr Secretary Von Schreiber has brought to Vienna a series of specimens of the diamond imbedded in a venigenous mass, not an amygdaloidal rock, as maintained by some mineralogists.
Count Dunin Borkowsky, a distinguished pupil of Werner, has discovered amber imbedded in sand-stone, a fact of great interest to geologists.
Blesson has just published a treatise on the Magnetism and Polarity of Rocks.
