the inhabitants drink the very water in which the amalgamation has been purified (aqua de lavaderos) without feeling any injury from it. This fact has often struck Europeans not intimately acquainted with the principles of chemistry. The water is at first of a greyish-blue colour, and contains in suspension black oxid of mercury, and small globules of native mercury and amalgamation of silver. This metallic mixture gradually precipitates, and the water becomes limpid. It can neither dissolve the oxid of mercury nor the muriate of mercury, which is one of the most insoluble salts which we know. The mules are very fond of this water, because it contains a little muriate of soda in dissolution.

In speaking of the progress of the Mexican population, and of the causes which retard that progress, I have neither mentioned the arrival of new European colonists, nor the mortality occasioned by the black vomiting. We shall dis'cuss these subjects in the sequel. It is sufficient to observe here, that the vomito prieto is a scourge which is never felt bui on the coast, and which does not, throughout the whole kingdom, carry off annually more than from two to three thousand individuals. As to Europe, it does not send more than 800 to Mexico. Political writers have always exagge rated what they call the depopulation of the old continent by the new. M. Page*, for example, asserts in his work on the commerce of St. Domingo, that the emigrations from Europe supply annually more than 100,000 individuals to the United States. This estimate is twenty times higher than the truth; for, in 1784 and 1792, when the United States received the greatest number of European colonists, their number did not exceed 5000+. The progress of population in Mexico and North America is solely derived from an increase of internal prosperity.

On some Exotics which endure the open Air in Devonshire. By A. HAWKINS, Esq.

(From the Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London.)

IN October, 1795, a CAMELLIA JAPONICA was planted, (in the South Hams of Devonshire) among other shrubs, in the open ground; it has stood every winter since, without the smallest shelter, thrives 'well, and has never had a branch

* Vol. ii.

p. 427.

Samuel Blodget's Economics, 1806, p. 58.

or

or leaf injured by the weather; it is now about four feet high, the size of a gooseberry bush, but has not flowered.

Two plants of the FUCHSIA COCCINEA were planted about four years ago under a brick wall, facing the South. At first the branches suffered by the frost, but they put forth new shoots in the spring,_ with much strength, and have flowered wellevery summer. During the two last years 'I was absent, but I understand that only the extremities of the branches were injured, and they have always flowered in great perfection.

Some plants of the SOLANUM PSEUDO CAPSICUM, or AMOMUM PLINII, are also under a brick wall, (but not nailed against it), which have stood many years, and only a small part of the extremities of their branches has been injured by frost.

MYRTLES of every kind (even the double-blossomed and orange) do exceedingly well in the open ground, though the Silver, from the richness of the soil, soon becomes plain,

The BUDDLEIA GLOBOSA likewise stands the climate, and some of the plants are ten feet high, spread wide, and make a handsome appearance. One of them is placed in a situation open to the North-east winds, where the sun cannot shine during the short days, yet it has stood there since 1794, and never had more than the extremities of the branches hurt.

About two miles from my house is the small sea-port town of Salcombe, just between those two well-known points, the Prawl and Bolt-head; the latter of which is in the parish whence this letter is written, a place that the sea washes on three sides. Perhaps of all spots in the British isles, Salcombe is the very first for climate and shelter. The celebrated Doctor Huxham used to call it the Montpellier of England. In 1774, a large AMERICAN ALOE, only twentyeight years old, and which had always stood in the open ground, without covering, flowered there; it grew to the height of twenty-eight feet, the leaves were six inches thick, and nine feet in length, and the flowers, on forty-two branches, innumerable.

Several plants of the VERBENA TRIPHYLLA are growing at Salcombe in the open ground, and are now six feet high. I have not tried any of them myself; but as I expect to be more at home in future, than for some years past, I shall not fail to add this plant to those tender shrubs already growing

around me.

Oranges and Lemons, trained as peach trees against walls, and sheltered only with mats of straw during the winter, have been seen in a few gardens of the South of Devonshire for these hundred years. The fruit is as large and fine as any from Portugal. Some lemons, from a garden near this place, (No. 145.)

Kk

were

were about thirty-five or forty years ago presented to the King by the late Earl Poulett, from his sister Lady Bridget Bastard, of Gerston; and there are trees still in the neighbourhood, the planting of which I believe is beyond memory. The late Mr. Pollexfen Bastard, uncle of the M. P. for Devon,) who had the greatest number of oranges and lemons of any one in this country, remarked, above thirty years since, that he found trees raised from seed, and inoculated in his own garden, bore the cold better than oranges and lemons imported.

Of the Koumiss of the Calmucks, and of the ardent Spirit which they distil from Milk. By EDWARD DANIEL CLARKE, LL.D.

[Clarke's Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa.]

EVERY body has heard of the koumiss and the brandy

which the Calmucks are said to distil from the milk of mares. The manner of preparing these liquors has been differently re lated, and, perhaps, is not always the same. They assured us that the brandy was merely distilled from butter-milk. The milk which they collect over night is churned in the morning into butter; and the butter-milk is distilled over a fire made with the dung of their cattle, particularly the dro medary, which makes a steady and clear fire, like peat. But other accounts have been given both of the koumiss and the brandy. It has been usual to confound them, and to consider the koumiss as their appellation for the brandy so ob tained. By every information I could gain, not only here, but in many other camps which we afterwards visited, they are different modifications of the same thing, although different liquors; the koumiss being a kind of sour milk, like that so much used by the Laplanders, called pina, and which has undergone, in a certain degree, vinous fermentation; and the brandy, an ardent spirit obtained from koumiss by distillation.

In making the koumiss they sometimes employ the milk of cows, but never if mares milk can be had; as the koumiss from the latter yields three times as much brandy as that made from cow's milk.

The manner of preparing the koumiss is by combining one-sixth part of warm water with any given quantity of warm mare's milk. To this they further add, as a leaven, a little old koumiss, and agitate the mass till fermentation

ensues.

ensues. To produce the vinous fermentation, artificial heat and more agitation are sometimes necessary. This affords what is called koumiss.

They gave us this last beverage in a wooden bowl, calling it vina. In their own language it bears the very remarkable appellation of rack and racky, doubtless nearly allied to the names of our East-India spirit, rack and arrack. We brought away a quart bottle of it, and considered it very weak bad brandy, not unlike the common spirit distilled by the Swedes and other northern nations.

Some of their women were busy making it in an adjoining tent.

The simplicity of the operation and of their machinery was very characteristic of the antiquity of this chemical process. Their still was constructed of mud, or very coarse clay; and for the neck of the retort they employed a cane. The receiver was entirely covered by a coating of wet clay. The brandy had already passed over. The woman who had the management of the distillery, wishing us to taste of the spirit, thrust a stick with a small tuft of camel's hair at its end, through the external covering of clay and thus collecting a small quantity of brandy, she drew out the stick, dropped a portion upon the retort, and, waving the instrument above her head, scattered the remaining liquor in the air. ́ ́I asked the meaning of this ceremony; and was answered, that it is a religious custom, to give always the first drop of the brandy which they draw from the receiver to their god. The stick was then plunged into the receiver a second time; when more brandy adhering to the camel's hair, she squeezed it into the palm of her dirty greasy hand, and, having tasted the liquor, presented it to our lips.

We traversed continued steppes [immense flats] from Kamenskaia. Camps of Calmucks were often stationed near the road. We paid visits to several of them. In one of them, containing not more than four tents, we found only women, who were busy in distilling brandy from milk. The women confirmed what we had been before told concerning the mate rials used for distilling, and said that, having made butter, they were distilling the butter-milk for brandy. We could not credit that brandy might be so obtained; but to prove it, they tapped the still as upon a former occasion, offering us a tuft of camel's hair soaked in brandy, that we might taste, and be convinced.

On the Alteration which Air and Water produce on Meat. BERTHOLLET.

By M.

[Phil. Magazine.]

:

I BOILED some beef, renewing the water until the liquor no longer gave any precipitation with tannin: I then suspended it in a glass cylinder filled with atmospheric air, and which I placed on a plate filled with water in a few days the oxygen was changed into carbonic acid; the interior of the cylinder was infected with a putrid smell; the beef that had been boiled gave once more an abundant precipitation with tannin: the ebullition was repeated until the water was no longer disturbed by the tannin: the beef had then almost entirely lost its smell, and it was put again into the apparatus.

The operation was repeated several times, when the following were the results:

The alteration of the atmospheric air and the disengagement of the putrid smell gradually slackened: the quantity of gelatine formed became progressively smaller the water upon which the vessel rested gave only feeble indications of ammonia. When I finished the operation there was no longer any putrid smell; but a smell similar to that of cheese, and in fact the animal substance which now preserved scarcely any fibrous appearance, had not only the smell, but precisely the taste of old cheese.

I distilled, separately, an equal weight of beef and of Gruyere cheese, making use of two bell-glasses, each of which communicated with a tube inserted in water; the operation was conducted so as to decompose, as much as possible, the two substances, and to retain all the ammonia. which was set free: I compared the quantities of ammonia; that which was furnished by the cheese was to that of the beef nearly in the ratio of 19 to 24: hence it appears that it is one of the distinctive characters of the caseous substance to contain less azote than meat does..

If we may be permitted to draw any inferences from the foregoing imperfect experiments, we may conclude,

1st. That the gelatine which we may obtain from an animal substance is not completely formed in it; but that when this substance has been exhausted by water, it may be once more formed by the action of the air, the oxygen of which is combined with the carbon, while a portion of substance for merly solid becomes gelatinous, as a solid vegetable part becomes soluble by the action of the air.

We must, however, remark, that the property of precipitating with tannin belongs to substances which have very

different