To give other references would be superfluous. As to the cause that impels a main spring to rise from a depth of from two to four hundred feet below, and to such a height a bove the surface, I believe there can "be no doubt that it is owing to a connexion with springs in other lands of higer elevation than our own. Should you deem these few remarks useful or satisfactory to the inquirer, I shall be gratified by your inserting them in your useful Magazine. Mitcham, Surrey. Sir.-In looking over your Magazine I observed a question asked under the head of "Boring for Water,' viz Whether there is any other spring or reservior of water in the bowels of the earth, exclusive of what may be termed temporal or perennial? As it respects springs of water, I am not aware what may be termed lemporal or perennial. knowing but few that give a constant yearly supply. As a real deprivation of water in wells of that description too often occurs, I beg leave to observe, that in my practice of boring for water, I have frequently found another, or mainspring of water, that did not seem to have the least connexion with those termed land springs, or springs arising from frequent rains. Such springs are usually found from ten to fifty feet below the surface Although to the well borers these springs generally prove annoying (for they can seldom be brought to flow over,) yet in many instances I have bored past them to a depth of from two to four hundred feet. In evidence of this, I can show to any person wells bored twelve months ago, that cast up from ten to fifty gallons of excellent and remarkably pure water, invariably soft, which, without the use of engine or pump, will rise from twenty to thirty feet above the surface, up a tube put on to the guidepipe, or top of the well. To instance a few wells thus bored-There is one on the coach road side at Tooting, five miles from Westminster bridge, bored at the expense of the parish, and another at the same place, on the premises of Mr. Rolason, nurseryman, both abundant springs; there are three wells on the estate of the Rev. R. Cranmer Mitcham, Surrey, and one on the premises of Messrs. I am, Sir, your obliged There can be no doubt whatever, that the same laws must govern the gravitation of water below as above the earth, and that of course the jet of any stream can never, unthan its source. It is but in a few cases posless through artificial causes, ascend higher sible to point with certainty to the feeders of particular springs: but there is one thing still more difficult to authenticate, namely, the fact of flowing water having been ever obtained by boring land higher than all the land around it.-ED. PFRPETUAL MOTION. GENTLEMEN: Pimlico. In your valuable work I observe a paragraph respecting the various attempts that have been made to obtain perpetual motion, but which, in my humble opinion, can never be accomplished I have witnessed, however, a nearer approach to a method of obtaining perpetual motion than is set forth by your Correspondent, which, if I comprehend it rightly, only shows one pump for raising the water over the wheel, but which is not sufficient to carry the wheel round In the case I witnessed there were two pumps, which moved successively after each other, by which means the wheel, if it were possible to overcome the friction, would be kept in constant mo tion; whereas, after the contents of a single pump are discharged on the wheel, it would immediately stop. But however an engine of this description may be made, it is utterly impossible to overcome the friction of the bearings. couplings, levers, &c. A constant reader, THE CHAIN WHEEL. 1. B. tions he received a medal and a premium from the Agricultural Society of Scotland. Still he thought that more might be done with this wheel; he accordingly set about applying it to the better propelling of steam boats; and having fixed his chains with paddles on them, to the sides of a large rowboat, he tried how things might succeed on a lake in his neighbourhood; the paddle heels were turned by the hands of men, and the engineer was astonished at the velocity with which This is an invention of the Chinese, the boat ploughed the fluid: having and used by that ingenious and indus- noted this, as to the time it took in trious people in the mechanism they sailing a certain distance he took off make use of in irrigating their fertile the paddle wheels, and affixed on the fields drawings and descriptions of common sort; but the boat with which are to be met with in almost every book of modern geography, and have evidently given the idea of the tread mill (that base engine of cruel ty now at work in the neighbourhood of London) to some mean-soul'd mechanic. these on, though the same power was same By the aid of a friend a patent was taken out, but no proprietor of steam boats could be found willing enough Wheels of this plan were first introduced into Europe by wandering French Jesuits, and were used in raising water out of the river Seine, t exchange the old plan for the new. for the benefit of the inhabitan s of Paris Afterwards they were brought to Britain, and used under various modifications, as in mines with slant ing shifts, deepening of harbours, and dock works So the thing rests: an invention that would be of the greatest benefit is here laid aside; an invention equally secure with the other, one which makes far less noise when going, can be made with less expense, and answers the purpose three times better, MACTAGGART. DARKENING MAHOGANY. About ten or fifteen years ago, a humble millwright in Scotland, of is considered nonsense! the name of Gladstone, who had never heard of the chainwheel, or of any of its modifications, gave to the arts a variety of it, of great value; this was that well known article in thrashing machines called the travelling shaker," which not only conveys the straw away to a house, from the place it is thrashed, but also shakes out any grain that may be among it, thereby saving much labour to the husband man. · December 30, 1823. Your Correspondent T. L. has given a method of darkening mahogany with lime water, which is the quickest method that can be found, and the best; but he has forgotten to mention how a person is to proceed after the mahogany has been washed with lime water. The ine When he found this answer its end so well, he applied the chain wheel to another purpose, the "bucket- thod is simply this after the wood wheel," thus furnishing an outer has dried, take a hard brush, and rub wheel to mills, which required less it quite clean; then polish it with water to drive or turn it, than the turpentine and bees'-wax, or linseed one which it displaced, the common oil, circle wheel; for these useful inven T. T. SIMPSON. MUSICAL FISH-CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. MUSICAL FISH. (From the London Chemist.) The following account of a musical phenomenon, supposed to be produced by fish, may not be unacceptable to our readers. It is taken from lieutenant White's History of a Voyage to the China Sea, and occurred to him at a spacious estuary on the Douai river, in Cochin China :-" Our ears were saluted by a variety of sounds resembling the deep bass of an organ, accompanied by the hollow guttural chant of the bull frog, the heavy chime of a bell, and the tones which imagination would give to an enormous Jew's-harp. This combination produced a thrilling sensation on the nerves, and, as we fancied, a tremulous motion in the vessel The excitement of great curiosity was visible on every face on board, and many were the sage speculations of the sailors on this occasion. Anxious to discover the cause of this gratuitous concert, I went below, where I found the noise, which I soon ascertained proceeded from the bottom of the vessel, increased to a full and uninterrupted chorus. The perceptions which occurred to me on this occasion were similar to those produced by the torpedo or electric eel, which I had before felt; but whether these feelings were caused by the concussions of sound or by actual vibrations in the body of the vessel 1 could neither then nor since determine. In a few moments the sounds. which had commenced near the stern of the vessel, became gener 1 throughout the whole length of the bottom. Our linguist informed us that our admiration was caused by a fish of a flat, oval form, like a flounder, which, by a certain conformation of the mouth, possesses the power of adhesion to other objects in a wonderful degree, and that they were peculiar to the Seven Mouths (the part of the river where we then were;) but whether the noises we then heard were produced by any particular construction of the sonorific organs, or by spasmodic vibrations of the body, he was ignorant. Very shortly after leaving the basin, and entering the branch through which our course lay, a sensible diminution was perceived in the 207 number of our fellow-travellers, and before we had proceeded a mile they were no more heard. On the ship's return down the river, the same submarine serenade again saluted the ears of the crew at the same spot." CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. (From the London Chemist.) The following eloquent description of the circulation of the blood, by Dr. Palev, may not be unacceptable to the youthful readers of The Chemist, particularly as its pages have lately contained a dry, but we hope correct account of the process of respiration and animal heat. "There is provided in the central part of the body a hollow muscle, (the heart) invested with spiral tubes, running in both directions By the contaction of these fibres, the sides of the muscular cavities are necessarily squeezed together, so as to force out from them any fluid which they may at that time contain: by the relaxation of the same fibres, the cavities are in their turn dilated; and, of course, prepared to dmit every fluid which may be poured into them. Into these cavities are inserted the great trunks. both of the arteries which carry out the blood, and of the veins which bring it back 1 his is a general account of the apparatus; and the simplest idea of its action is that by each contraction a portion of blood is forced as by a syringe into the arteries; and at cach dilation an equal portion is received from the veins This produces, at each pulse, a motion and change in the mass of blood to the amount of what the cavity contains, which in a full-grown human heart is about an ounce, or two table spoons full. Each ventricle will at least contain one ounce of blood. The heart contracts four thousand times in one hour; from which it follows, that there pass through the heart every hour four thousand ounces, or 350lbs. of blood, troy weight. Now the whole mass of blood is about 25lbs. so that a quantity of blood equal to the whole blood within the body passes through the heart fourteen times in one hour; which is about once every four minutes. Only consider what this is in very large 208 WATCHES-SKY-LIGHTS. animals. The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than a main pipe of the water works at London Bridge; and the water roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gushing from the whale's heart." According to Dr. Hunter, ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart of a whale at a stroke, with an immense velocity, through a tube of a foot diameter. The whole idea fills the mind with wonder. See Dr. Hunter's account of the dissection of a whale, in the Philosophical Transactions. "It was necessary that the blood should be successively brought in contact or proximity with the air; therefore, as soon as the blood is received by the heart from the veins of the body, and before that it is sent out again into its arteries, it is carried by the force of the contraction of the heart, and by means of a supplementary artery, to the lungs; from which, after it has undergone the proper change, it is brought back by a large vein once more to the heart, in order, when thus prepared, to be from thence distributed anew into the system. "An anatomist, who understood the structure of the heart, might say beforehand, that it would play, but he would expect, I think, from the complexity of its mechanism, and the delicacy of many of its parts, that it would always be liable to de ange ment; or that it would soon work itself out. Yet shall this wonderful machine go, night and day for eighty years together, at the rate of a hundred thousand strokes every twentyfour hours, having at every stroke a great resistance to overcome; and shall continue this action for this length of time without disorder and without weariness.' ble to be affected by the different changes of temperature is a pocket chronometer. It is so constructed as to keep the same rate of time in the extremes of heat and cold; this is obtained partly by its having a balance of two metals united, so as to have the contrary effect, in respect to expansion and contraction, which all other bodies of one metal only have, and partly by great nicety in the shape of the pendulum or balance spring In fact, the whole of the chronometer is made on a principle to ensure better performance than any other sort of timepiece. The next on the list is a duplex watch, with a compound balance; for these balances may be applied to timepiecss having different escapements from the chronometer. The next I take to be the watch with the detached lever escapement, and after that the horizontal watch; then come the watches on the common vertical principle, which are very good, if made well. There are also two or three other escapements, but they are not of general use, and I do not consider them as possessing any advantages over those already mentioned. Yours respectfully, SKY-LIGHTS. H. T vation or two to those of your CorSIR,-I beg leave to add an obserrespondent E. R. on Sky-Lights. Unless a good coat of oil-colour is perfectly dry, any sky light you may previously laid on, and has become construct will prove a leaky one; because the wood will draw the oil from the putty, and cause it to shrink. I differ in opinion as to having a deep rabbet; I think three-eighths of an inchufficient The deeper the rabNow it is well known that putty has a bet is, the more putty it will require. tendency to become solid, and will shrink from the sides (of wood and glass) and form openings to admit December 24 1823. water. A small fillet of putty will of course not shrink so much as one وو Paley's Natural Theology. WATCHES. GENTLEMEN: Agreeably to the request of your Correspondent "Ignoramus," I send a short description of the different kinds of watches or timepieces for the pocket. The first and least lia four times the size, simply because R. J. |