raised reservoirs of masonry about six feet by four, and five deep. When the receiver is full of the sand, sea water is poured on the top; and this, in its way down, carries with it the salt left by the evaporation. When it runs out below at a small hole, it is a very strong brine; this is reduced to salt by being boiled in vessels about three feet wide and one deep. The cakes resulting from this operation are an inch and an half

in thickness.

AMERICAN WATER BURNER.

An apparatus called the American Water Burner has been invented by Mr. Morey, of New-Hampshire, who, after making many experiments, and employing various combustible substances, as tar, rosin, oil, &c. to mix with the steam, has brought his apparatus to perfection. The construction is very simple: Tar is intimately mixed with steam or vapour of water, and made to issue, with a force proportional to the pressure of the steam, from a small orifice, like that in the jet of a blow-pipe, and is there fired. The flame, although the combustible substances issue from so small an orifice, is as large as that of a common smith's forge, and is accompanied with smoke: when this flame is directed against the bricks in the back of a fire-place, they soon become heated to redness: if iron or steel filings be thrown into the flame, they burn with a sparkling brilliancy, similar to iron wire in oxygen gas.

A few experiments have been made to ascertain the effect of steam on burning bodies, and to learn whether it probably suffered decomposition when issuing, mixed with tar, from the jet of the water-burner.

If a jet of steam, issuing from a small aperture, be thrown upon burning coal, its brightness is increased, if it be held at a distance of four or five inches from the pipe through which the steam passes; but if it be held nearer, the coal is extinguished, a eircular black spot first appearing where the steam is thrown upon it. The steam does not appear to be decomposed in this experiment: the increased brightness of the coal is probably occasioned by a current of atmospheric air produced by the steam.

If the wick of a common oil lamp be raised so as to give off large columns of smoke, and a jet of steam be thrown into the flame, its brightness is a little increased,

and no smoke is thrown off.

If spirits of turpentine be made to burn on a wick, the light produced is dull and reddish, and a large quantity of thick smoke is given off; but, if a jet of steam be thrown into the flame, its brightness is much increased; and if the experiment be carefully conduct ed, the smoke entirely disappears.

If vapour of spirits of turpentine be made to issue from a small orifice, and inflamed, it burns, giving off large quantities of smoke; but if a jet of steam be made to unite with the vapour, the smoke entirely disappears.

The same effect takes place if the vapour of spirits of turpentine and of water be made to issue together from the same orifice: hence the disappearing of the smoke cannot be supposed to depend on a current of atmospheric air.

If the flame of a spirit-lamp be brought in contact with a jet of steam, it disappears, and is extinguished at the points of contact, precisely as when exposed to strong blasts of air.

Masses of iron of various sizes, and heated to various degrees from redness to bright whiteness, were exposed to a jet of steam: no flame appeared, as was expected, but the iron was more rapidly oxidated where the steam came in contact with it than in other parts. It is probable, if the water suffered decomposition in this experiment, and if the hydrogen was inflamed, its flame might not be observed when contrasted with the heated iron, a body so much more luminous.

The operation of the water-burner, then, appears to be simply this:-Tar, minutely divided, and intimately mixed with steam, is inflamed; the heat of the flame, aided by the affinity for oxygen of that portion of carbon which would otherwise pass off in smoke, decompose the water, and the carbon and oxygen unite; the hydrogen of the water, and probably of the tar, expand on all sides (and hence the flame is very large) to meet the atmospheric oxygen; water is recomposed, and passes off in steam; a degree of heat is produced, no doubt, greater than that which is produced by the combustion of the tar alone; and this heat is equal to that evolved by the combustion of a quantity of carbon which would otherwise form smoke.

The invention is ingenious, and may be found very useful in steam-boat navigation, where it has already been applied. Probably a

saving of heat would be produced by condensing the products of this combustion, which might be effected to a certain degree by an apparatus of simple construction.

CURIOUS ACCOUNT OF A YEARLY FETE AT PISA.

(From Milford's Tour.)

"On the centre bridge is annually celebrated a festival, or sham fight, of great antiquity, between the inhabitants of each side of the town, who have grotesque arins, and are habited in the most fantastic costume. In their struggles of desperation for conquest, the combatants do not lie down and die, like the warrior in Tom Thumb, but the vanquished boldly and nobly jump over the bridge into the Arno; where they refresh themselves with swimming out of the reach of their conquerors, to the admiration of the fair umpires who are spectators. Boats are stationed on each side of the river, to make prisoners, or rescue the swimming vanquished, or probably, in fact, to prevent these

ADVERTISEMENT

PERSIAN AND DIPLOMATIC ASTRONOMY!

Russian Embassy to Persia. Extract from the Journal of Captain Lieutenant Moritz Von Kotzebue.

Mirza Awdul Wehab, the second minister of the Schach, invited us the following day to dinner, but which, on account of the fast of Ramazan, could not take place before 8 o'clock in the evening. At an early hour he sent the ambassador a valuable present of Schiras wine, which sometimes resembles port, but is lighter, and has a very peculiar, agreeable, and aromatic taste. The minister had the politeness to borrow for us chairs, and knives and forks, that the ambassador might not be under the disagreeable necessity of eating with his fingers. The tables were very prettily laid out, and not as in the Persian fashion, hundreds of dishes piled upon each other, but the dishes were earried about, which was again another mark of politeness in him. After we had seated ourselves, nothing was touched till VOL. IV.-No. IV.

40

the voice of the Mollah was heard without; upon this a box was given to the minister, from which he took a little opium, which the Persians use instead of a dram. The various dishes, sweet and sour alternately, did not indeed please our taste; no more did the bread, which is a cake of flour baked in the sun: however, the wine was very good, and that of Ispahan much resembles Ma deira. After dinner we went to another tent, where coffee, without sugar, and tobacco pipes, which are a very important article in Persia, were presented to us.

The ambassador had the kindness to give me the undeserved name of astronomer, upon which the minister invited me to come to him on the following day, as he was himself a great lover of the mathematics and astronomy. The next day, accordingly, M. Nigri, the counsellor of legation, had the kindness to accompany me, as the usual interpreters would not have been able to translate such things. Knowing that the Persians are very fond of astrology, I thought arrival of our embassy. It occurred to me I ought to give some astrological turn to the that Jupiter stood now in the sign of the Scorpion; and 1 therefore first of all declared to the minister, that this planet represented Russia in extent and splendour, and that Asia was generally represented in Europe under the sign of the Scorpion; and as these were just now in conjunction, there was not the least doubt but that the friendship of these two nations was determined in heaven, and therefore agreeable to God. The minister agreed to what I said, and affirmed that the Persian astronomers had also found that the Russian embassy had arrived under the most favourable signs.

A corpulent Persian, who was the only the side of the minister, and held a great one present during our conversation, sat at book before him, the leaves of which he constantly turned over, and leered from time to time angrily at me under his great black eyebrows. The minister recommendbelieve that he was an astrologer, who was ed him to us as a great mathematician, but I to examine me. He turned over the leaves with still more violence, and whispered something to the minister; upon which the latter asked me, whence eclipses proceeded? I rose and walked round the corpulent astrologer, who looked angry and uneasy, and at first could not conceive what I would have of him. But he was still more frightened when I stooped down behind him, and asked the minister whether he could see me? The astrologer was corpulent enough to cover me entirely, and the minister therefore could not but say, no. Upon this I got up, and asked the astrologer's pardon for having made him act the part of our earth; but to the minister I said, that he represented in this moment the sun, I the moon, and the whole process, from which the astrologer could not yet recover himself, an eclipse of the moon. Hereupon I went between the

minister and the earth, and said to him, that the astrologer had now no more the happiness of seeing the sun, and consequently an eclipse of the sun was now taking place on the earth; but I could not represent a total eclipse, because the astrologer was a little too corpulent. The sun laughed, and the earth murmured. Thus it is impossible to please every body.

After the two gentlemen had played such flattering parts, they became proud, and affirmed that every thing seen in the heavens was only a meteor, because Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus, were the only stars which they recognized as bodies, and these, they said, were far more happy than our earth, as they were much nearer the sun than we, and were therefore much warmer. "With respect to Venus," said I, "you are right, she is much nearer to the sun than we are, or else we could not see her pass over the sun once every hundred years; but with respect to Jupiter and Saturn, they are much further from the sun than we are, and can therefore never be seen between the sun and us.

The astrologer, was already afraid that I might begin again the ceremony of an eclipse, agreed to every thing, and then opened in his book a large leaf, on which was painted a great he-goat with bieroglyphics: after he had looked at it several times with a pleased countenance, he asked me very seriously, what was, according to our opinion, behind the stars?—I told him that our astronomers were not agreed; but most probably behind the last stars which we could discover, there were other stars without end, and "if there were an end, this end was joined to a beginning, which however was without an end."

Here the goat fell out of his hand; he laughed with an air of triumph and wisdom, and observed, that such things were too difficult for the Europeans. He picked up his great book much pleased, and said, smiling, still turning over the leaves, "We will now say no more on this subject!" Who could be more pleased than I, for "without beginning and without end" was, I am sure, more unintelligible to me than to

him.

He laid his hand on a page which was full of dots, and a million of little devils seemed to be painted between them; he asked, "What is wind?" I began an explanation of the more subtile and denser strata of air, which being more or less warmed by the sun in different places, might be put into a kind of undulation, which would probably produce wind, which most likely arose only in our atmosphere, because farther off there was a thinner air which we called æther, and "What nonsense you talk," cried be aloud; "that is the way of the Europeans, they always puzzle themselves about causes and reasons, and thus lose sight of the subject itself.-Wind, said he, is a substance which exists and acts in and for itself, and

fills up all the space which is between all visible and invisible bodies: or else how could comets arise? These are the true purifiers of the wind; they fly about and burn every thing which might lessen or destroy the power of the wind, for the wind is a beneficial gift of God!"

The last opinion in the hot climate of Persia, where without the wind all the inhabitants must perish, is very natural. In the meantime he had himself tumbled over the leaves of his book like the wind, and at last dwelt with pleasure upon a page upon which were painted a number of globes, and at the top a hideous figure.—“ What do you think of the motions of the bodies? Does the sun stand still, or does it move?" "It stands still," answered I. "There we have it! Do not you know the effects of the power of nature, which is singular in its kind? Nature gives to every thing only one power, never two at once, otherwise she would be unjust, and that she cannot be ; if this power has once acted, nothing is able to increase or lessen its action, and much less to add a second to it. If you suppose that the earth turus round its axis, that is already one power; it cannot consequently turn at the same time round the sun; but if you suppose that the sun revolves round the earth, then the earth does not turn round its axis."— "In this manner," said I, " Nature has given to the earth the power of standing still!""Right; that is what we Persians affirm. You affirm the same of the sun, and are wrong. Every thing is created for the pleasure of man and the Schach; we are with the earth in the centre look gratefully on."

Upon this he shut his book, and said, "That these matters were of a sublime nature, and it was proper to spare the understanding for a future opportunity; meanwhile he would speak of things of less puzzling import, as, for example, of the mathematics." Now he showed me how to measure distances beyond a river, how to measure the elevation of remote objects, &c. upon which the minister said, that the Schach bad once given him such a commis sion, which he executed wonderfully.

He seemed very much surprised on bear ing that in Europe the little boys began geometry with such operations. Upon this I began to demonstrate a trigonometrical problem, but this the astrologer did not comprehend, and seemed in general to have no idea of Logarithms.

At the end I was obliged to relate to the admiring company various particulars of my voyage round the world, of which two things seemed quite impossible to them; first, that I had been once their antipode, and that there existed finer countries in the world than Persia !

The minister thanked me for the agree