Kieselghur dynamite.  No. 1. | 197 — 200 Explosive gelatin. | 203 — 209 Explosive gelatin, camphorated. | 174 — 182 Mercury fulminate. | 175 — 181 Gunpowder. | 278 — 287 Hill’s picric powder. | 273 — 283 " " " | 273 — 290 Forcite, No. 1. | 184 — 200 Atlas powder, 75 per cent. | 175 — 185 Emmensite, No. 1. | 167 — 184 Emmensite, No. 2. | 165 — 177 Emmensite, No. 5. | 205 — 217 --------------------------------+----------------------- _—­C.E.  Munroe, J. Amer.  Chem.  Soc._

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STATION FOR TESTING AGRICULTURAL MACHINES.

The minister of agriculture has recently established a special laboratory for testing agricultural materiel.  This establishment, which is as yet but little known, is destined to render the greatest services to manufacturers and cultivators.

In fact, agriculture now has recourse to physics and mechanics as well as to chemistry.  Now, although there were agricultural laboratories whose mission it was to fix the choice of the cultivator upon such or such a seed or fertilizer, there was no official establishment designed to inform him as to the value of machines, the models of which are often very numerous. Chemical advice was to be had, but mechanical advice was wanting.  It is such a want that has just been supplied.  Upon the report presented by Mr. Tisserand, director of agriculture, a ministerial decree of the 24th of January, 1888, ordered the establishment of an experimental station.  Mr. Ringelmann, professor of rural engineering at the school of Grignon, was put in charge of the installation of it, and was appointed its director.  He immediately began to look around for a site, and on the 17th of December, 1888, the Municipal Council of Paris, taking into consideration the value of such an establishment to the city’s industries, decided that a plot of ground of an area of 3,309 square meters, situated on Jenner Street, should be put at the disposal of the minister of agriculture for fifteen years for the establishment thereon of a trial station.  This land, bordering on a very wide street and easy of access, opposite the municipal buildings, offers, through its area, its situation, and its neigborhood, indisputable advantages.  A fence 70 meters in extent surrounds the station.  An iron gate opens upon a paved path that ends at the station.

The year 1889 was devoted to the installation, and the station is now in full operation.  The tests that can be made here are many, and concern all kinds of apparatus, even those connected with the electric lighting that the agriculturist may employ to facilitate his exploitation.  However, the tests that are oftenest made are (1) of rotary apparatus, such as mills, thrashing machines, etc.; (2) of traction machines, such as wagons, carts, plows, etc.; and (3) of lifting apparatus.  It is possible, also, to make experiments on the resistance of materials.