Book 5 — Record of Scientific Discovery.

Professor S. F. B. Morse has written an interesting letter to the National Intelligencer respecting the Hillotype, an improvement upon the daguerreotype which appears to be genuine and very important. The improvement by Baird exhibited lately in London, is spoken of as a great advance upon the silvered plate, as it cannot but be: it is making a surface of porcelain susceptible to the sun's rays. And now, in the very depths of our forests, a discovery has been perfected which leaves nothing to be desired by daguerreotypists. France, England, and America, have thus each contributed to the perfection of the photogenic art, our country supplying the crowning improvement:

"You perhaps have seen it announced," says Mr. Morse, "that a Mr. Hill, of this state, formerly a Baptist clergyman, was under the necessity, from ill health, of abandoning the ministry, and for a support practised the daguerreotype art, and has made the discovery of photographing in colors, or chromotography. The magnificence of this discovery is as remarkable as the original discovery of photography by Daguerre. Many affect to doubt the fact of this discovery by Mr. Hill, but I have every reason to believe it strictly true. A week or two since I received a most interesting letter from him, in consequence of his learning that I had expressed a hope that he would not think of attempting to secure his property in his discovery by a patent. I determined to visit him, and save him, if possible, from the evils I had experienced. So last week I went up to Kingston, and, hiring a gig, I set forth in a northwesterly direction in search of Westkill, in Greene county, some thirty-six miles in the interior, and after seven hours' drive through a wild region of the Western Catskill mountains, passing into the very outskirts of civilization, through a deep gorge of mountain precipices that rose on each side of the road more than a thousand feet, at an angle of forty-five degrees, I at length found the little village of some three hundred inhabitants of which I was in search, embosomed in the deep valley of the Westkill creek. I had no difficulty in finding Mr. Hill. He is unquestionably a man of genius, intelligence, and piety, retiring and sensitive; and his simple description of the effect upon him when the result of his discovery stood revealed before him, was true to nature, and, among other things, demonstrated to me that his discovery was a fact. I have not time to give you the details of the conversation; but I succeeded in dissuading him from thinking of a patent as a security, and in this I am rejoiced. He shall not be plagued by lawsuits, have his life shortened and made miserable, and his just right in the property of his discovery snatched from him, if I can prevent it. His discovery, fortunately for him, is one that can be kept secret, and his case furnishes a capital example of the reality and nature of property in invention or discovery. It can be seen at a glance in this stage of the matter that Mr. Hill now has that property absolutely in his own possession, and no one has a right to demand it of him, nor request it, without paying him such a price as he may affix to his property. I have a plan which pleased him, and which I think, will secure the object aimed at, to wit, ample remuneration to him, and in such a shape as to leave him the use of his powers the remainder of his life (unlike my own case) for further research and scientific pursuits, without fear of fraud, of attacks on his character, and endless litigation. More of this another time. I must now stop, simply remarking on the strangeness of the circumstances of this discovery as contrasted with Daguerre's discovery; the latter surrounded by every facility for experiment in the metropolis of refinement and science, the former surrounded by no facilities whatever for experiment, excepting such as were transported by him at great trouble and comparative expense, with limited pecuniary means, into the primeval forest, with scarcely an individual to consult with except his wife, and literally surrounded by wild beasts—the deer, the bears, the wolves, the wild-cats, and the panthers too, still inhabiting the wild mountain forests that inclose the village."

Professor Blume, of Leyden, has been elected a member of the French Academy, to fill a vacancy in the section of botany. Among the candidates were Professor John Torrey, of New-York, and Professor Gray of Harvard College. Professor Blume presented on the occasion his splendid new work on botany: a Flora, in four volumes, folio, of the peninsula of India, the islands of the Sonde, and of the Indian Archipelago; the title is Rumphia, the contents being collected from the seven folios of the botanist Everard Rumph, published in the middle of the last century. Professor Blume resided many years in Batavia, and added the results of his own scientific and extensive research throughout Java and the Archipelago. On the 24th ult. M. de Juissen submitted to the Academy an interesting report on the work, in which he says, "A poisonous tree, the Upas-Antiar, has been the subject of numerous fictions, by which it has acquired great celebrity. It has therefore attracted the attention of many travellers, who have dissipated the stories, as Mr. Blume does, with piquant details." He explains a part of the terrible reputation of the tree, by the fact that the volcanic soil emits, on different spots, deleterious gases, which have a fatal effect on animal life—an effect erroneously imputed to the adjacent trees. Their juice, indeed, possesses highly energetic properties. The birds often take refuge on their elevated tops, without the least injury. [A specimen of the Upas tree has been recently brought to the United States by an officer of the navy, and it is alleged that while it does not poison the atmosphere, its sap is quite as fatal to life as its effluvia has been represented to be.] The natives poison their arms with the juice of another Upas, Strychnos tieute. Mr. Blume visited a mangrove tree—ficus India—of gigantic dimensions and remote antiquity, which is regarded and preserved as a sort of religious monument. The branches spread a shade over a vast area, and form themselves for the parasite growth of a multitude of other plants on their surface. The professor obtained license to herborize on the top. He collected thirty-seven species, without reckoning lichens and mosses, but being restricted as to time, did not inspect half of the display. The plants were fully developed, with rich foliage and graceful and brilliant flowers.