field had been pastured with cattle, which had destroyed nearly all of the Pyrularia. Hence it has already become rare, and the general occupancy of the mountains with herds of cattle and flocks of sheep would soon destroy it entirely. Mr. Durand of Philadelphia thinks that the oil expressed from it is superior to the best olive oil. Our specimens of the Pyrularia have been planted at Philadelphia, New York, and at the botanic garden of Cambridge, near Boston, and also some of them have been sent to Paris to the Acclimating Society of France, whose object is to acclimate useful trees, shrubs and plants.

On Mount Mingus we first met with the Rugelia, a new genus of Shuttleworth, in the natural order Compositæ, which has not yet been described in American works on botany. It is frequently found along the Smoky mountains to the extent of twenty-five or thirty miles. Dr. Gray recognized it at once, he having received it from Mr. Shuttleworth, a European botanist to whom Rugel sent plants. Sixteen years before, in the early spring, we had visited those same mountains with Dr. Rugel, a German botanist, and we were right glad to learn that his name was affixed to one of their interesting plants. The Solidago glomerata grows on most of the Balsam mountains, and the Potentilla tridentata of the New England mountains also grows on the bald peaks of Macon county, North Carolina.

The Carolina mountains have a great variety of huckleberries (Vaccinium and Gaylussacia) ripening in succession from July to September. When we first met with acres of those bushes, in September, covered with large delicious fruit, the temptation was so great that we partook rather freely, expecting to pay the penalty of over indulgence, but were happily disappointed. Judging from the experience of others and our own on many occasions, those berries are remarkably healthy. Most of them were larger than any we ever saw at the south. The Vaccinium Constablei of Gray, which sometimes grows ten or fifteen feet high (on Shining Rock), was covered with ripe fruit as late as the middle of October. There are several species of the huckleberry which are worthy of cultivation. The common high blackberry (Rubus villosus) is often found in dense patches on and near the mountain tops, with its stems smooth, and destitute of prickles. This rule is constant. We do not remember to have met with an exception. The same species growing in the valleys has its stems armed with prickles.

In the month of September many of the women and children dig "sang," (Aralia quinquefolia,) in the valleys and on the mountain sides. The dry roots of the ginseng or "sang," as it is always there called, are worth at home twenty-five cents per pound. We met with one man who had bought 30,000 pounds, and we remember being with one family whose children sold seventy pounds of dried sang. These roots are dug with a long narrow hoe called the "sang hoe."

Snow birds (Fringilla nivalis) we saw on the Black mountain, and also on many of the other Balsam mountains south and west of Asheville. They were solitary or in pairs, showing evidently that they breed in those places. Another species of bird, whose summer habitat is generally supposed to be confined to the north, also breeds and summers in those Balsam mountains. It is the Crossbill (Loxia curvirostris) whose curious

bill is well adapted to extract seeds from the cones of the black spruce and balзam trees. In the mountain valleys we frequently met with many northern birds, among which was that sweet songster, the rosebreasted Grosbeak (Fringilla Ludoviciana).

The tedium of the night, when encamping on the mountains, is almost always enlivened by the stories of the guides and their adventures in hunting. They all positively assert that the bears in early spring, when first emerging from their winter quarters, are as fat as when they first retire for the winter. During the winter they shed the soles of their feet, which renders their walking difficult in the first of spring, when their food consists of the young plants, on which diet they soon become lean, and remain so until the ripening of berries in August and September. They are very fond of hogs and pigs, pork and honey being their favorite diet. Why they bite and scratch the bark and limbs of the balsam and black spruce we cannot tell. It cannot be for food, because they do not generally leave the marks of their teeth on a tree, except in one or two places. Sometime they rise on their hind legs and make long deep scratches in the bark with their fore paws. It may be done for sport, or to let their companions know their whereabouts. We have seen those fresh bites and scratches on different trees at all seasons of the year. The bears show great sagacity in feeding at the leeward of the paths on the mountain ridges, along which the hunter is almost obliged to travel, hence if the wind blows it is almost impossible to get a shot at them, their keen scent discovering the hunter long before he gets within shooting distance. They are stupid and unwary about traps, entering without fear the log pens; these are shallow, with a depth of not more than two feet, over which is raised a very heavy top, which falls and crushes the bear when he disturbs the bait. Hundreds are caught in this manner every year. In the unfrequented parts of the mountains the large steel trap is concealed in the bear trail; but this is dangerous, and liable to catch dogs, of which we saw two caught in one morning to our great sorrow. The piteous yells of those unfortunate dogs rang in our ears long afterwards. The bears rarely disturb calves or young cattle, but in one locality of the Smoky mountains we were told that they did much damage in killing young cattle, and that there could be no mistake about it, because a large bear had been caught in the act of killing a young steer. The panther, wild cat, and wolf are all troublesome to the mountain farmer of those regions. The panther destroys sheep and hogs; the wild cat, lambs and pigs. Both are cowardly and thievish, being rarely seen.

The Red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) called Mountain Buman in North Carolina, is common on all the higher mountains. They rarely descend into the valleys. They are fond of the seeds of the balsam and black spruce, and as they are rarely molested by the hunters, they are very noisy, active, and more fearless of man than their brothers at the north. The Ground squirrels (Sciurus striatus) are also very abundant, often destroying a good deal of corn, but as corn is plenty, and larger game common, the ground squirrel is rarely killed. We were told by a travelling fur merchant, whom we there met, that the skins which he bought among the mountains, equal in fineness and goodness those of

the north, and that northern merchants could not tell the difference; still in order to get the highest price he was obliged to send his skins to New York, through Ohio and via the Erie Railroad as if they had come from the northwest. The principal furs obtained in the southern Alleghanies are the skins of the otter, mink, black fox, red fox, raccoon, and muskrat.

From the great height of the southern Alleghanies, there being twentyfour peaks higher than Mount Washington, it will be readily inferred that they have a northern climate. A year ago, our guide to the top of Roane told us that he had been on its summit when it was covered with snow on the 17th of June. There is a table land extending from near the Roane to the head of Turkey Cove and Linville Falls, a distance of twenty or thirty-five miles, on which the inhabitants succeed with difficulty in raising Indian corn sufficient for their own consumption. Occasionally thay have frost during every month in the year, and then they resort on horseback or on foot to the valleys for corn. About the first of last May we saw the mountains in Haywood covered with snow about six inches deep. The wheat harvest at the Forks of Pigeon begins about the first week in July; and we know of no better criterion for isothermal lines than the time of ripening wheat. We kept a record of it in western New York, and in ten years the annual time of beginning the wheat harvest did not vary three days from the 16th of July.

The valleys in the Carolina Mountains vary in elevation from two thousand to upwards of three thousand feet, hence a few miles travel will often take one to a much warmer or colder climate. This we experienced very sensibly in going from the valley of Jonathan's Creek to that of the Soco River. The former has a mean elevation of about three thousand feet and the latter near two thousand. The Chinese sugar-cane (Sorghum) is extensively grown, and may be regarded as a decided success. There are few portions of the Union where such a production is more needed. The absence of railroads and the cost of transportation render sugar and molasses dear; hence the introduction of the Chinese sugar-cane in that section is a great blessing, and will enable many a poor family to have sweet coffee.

In no section of the United States have we seen finer apples, and they are mostly from seedlings originally planted by the Indians. Silas McDowell of Franklin, in Macon Co., has devoted more than twenty years to the selection and grafting of those best native apples, and he now has an orchard of more than 600 apple trees, which bear fruit equal if not superior to the best northern kinds. There is said to be a line or belt on the mountain sides about three hundred feet above the adjoining plain or valley, and extending upwards several hundred feet, where fruit trees always bear, because the belt is free from frost. If this be true,-and we believe its truth has been pretty well tested by experiment,-the mountains of North Carolina might supply the South with an abundance of the choicest fruit, if the means of transportation were good. By the cultivation of more grass, and the introduction of the improved breeds of cattle into those mountain valleys, butter and cheese might also be made for the southern market. One great drawback to the raising of sheep is that they are destroyed by wild animals, and also killed by the

SECOND SERIES, VOL. XXVII, No. 80.—MARCH, 1859.

dogs. Still we think it would even pay well to keep sheep, herd them at night, and have a shepherd with his dog to guard them by day, and thus revive old Arcadian times among those delightful mountains.

2. On some Modified Results attending the Decomposition of Bituminous Coals by Heat; by Dr. A. A. HAYES.-When bituminous coal is exposed in proper vessels to a gradually increasing temperature, at a certain point decomposition commences and continues, while heavy hydrocarbon vapors, mixed with the vapors of water and salts of ammonia, escape, and may be condensed.

The proportion of permanent gases formed is small in comparison with the weight of the liquids produced, when the decomposition of the coal is carefully regulated.

In the ordinary rapid breaking up of the composition of coal by heat suddenly applied in the manufacture of illuminating gas, the proportion of permanent gases is increased, but the heavy fluid hydrocarbons are also formed. This mode of decomposition is evidently a mixed one, partaking of the characters of a regulated distillation, while at the same moment a more complete destruction of the coal is proceeding in some parts of the mass.

A further decomposition of the fluid products, condensed from either or both of these modes of operating, takes place when we again subject them to the influence of heat; and this well-known fact is the basis on which improvements in the manufacture of illuminating gas have been founded, a secondary destruction of vapors being effected in appropriate apparatus, heated to a high temperature.

This character, which all the bituminous coals exhibit, of passing into carbon nearly free from vapors only when heavy fluid hydrocarbons are also formed, has, in a chemical view, been the strongest fact adduced in opposition to the generally received opinion that the anthracites and semi-anthracites have resulted from chemical changes of bituminous coal, through the agency of the heat of igneons rocks which have disturbed their beds. The heavy hydrocarbons, represented by ordinary coal tar, are the most indestructible bodies known; and wherever anthracites exist, we should expect to find near by those products of the chemical changes effected in the coal. Such is the delicacy of the balance existing between the elements of the heavy hydrocarbons, that no second distillation of them can be effected; they always undergo decomposition by heat, with the separation of carbon, which under any known natural conditions, would remain to attest their previous presence.

Considerations of this kind have led me to experiment on the changes which coals undergo by heat, where the influencing conditions were not the same as those usually seen; and the results of extended trials demonstrate that the bituminous coals may be broken up into permanent gases, vapors of water, and ammoniacal salts, while carbon remains as a fixed product.

If we substitute, for the ordinary forms of apparatus used in decomposing coal by heat suddenly applied, any modification of form which compels the gas, as it forms, to escape from the more highly heated part of the mass of coal, through a small opening, or, better, a small eduction pipe, the heavy hydrocarbons do not form part of the products which

escape. Generally the light, nearly colorless, oils of the benzole series, appear with the aqueous solutions of the ammoniacal salts, while only an accidental quantity of carbon is deposited in the eduction-pipe. The carbon left is more than usually compact and hard; and such coals as ordinarily produce much water, when they form heavy hydrocarbons, afford less than half the usual amount, when thus decomposed, under the influence of the constant presence of an atmosphere of permanent gases. In following the observations at the earlier stage, it was found that the size of the eduction-tube leading the gas from the hotter part of the mass of coal undergoing changes, exerted a most marked effect on the composition of the products. It was established as a fact, that in an ordinary coal-gas retort, the size of the conduit might be varied so as to allow the tar like bodies to form, or to prevent their appearance at pleasure.

But a more remarkable result was obtained, when, after having prevented the production of heavy hydrocarbon fluids, the influence of reduced size of tube was studied in its relation to the composition of the gas afforded by a particular kind of coal. To a certain extent, the chemical constitution of the gas formed was found to be under control, and the conclusion reached was, that dissimilar permanent gases may be thus obtained from the same parcel of coal without a modification of temperature.

Any explanation of the change of composition induced in the volatile parts of bituminous coals under the above-described conditions should not include mechanical pressure, which is no greater than often exists in ordinary cases.

It seems probable that the presence of an atmosphere of nearly permanent gases in the decomposing vessel, and the regular continuous flow of them from the coal, prevent the formation of heavy vapors at the instant of change in the coal. In support of this point, we find the temperature necessary to convert coal into gas without the presence of heavy hydrocarbons much less high than when they are produced.

We may therefore observe the decomposition of coal without the simultaneous formation of tar, and beds of coal may be converted under existing natural conditions to anthracite, without secondary products being formed.

3. Museum of Comparative Zoology in Harvard University.-Since the connection of Professor Agassiz with the scientific department of Harvard University, he has been actively devoted, as is well known, to collecting zoological specimens and laying the foundation of a great museum. The collections already made by him or through his agency, and in great part at his own expense, are very large. The interest felt in this movement has been general through the country, and has recently taken a fresh start which is destined to lead to the most important results. The late Francis C. Gray of Boston-a gentleman extensively known for the depth and variety of his knowledge in many departments of literature, and for his liberal spirit in promoting schemes for the public good-was strongly attached to the study of the natural sciences, during the last years of his life, and was in habits of intimate and cordial association with Prof. Agassiz.