glass-bells with and without stop-cocks and bladders: receivers of all sizes ; porcelain tubes : leaden retorts and bottles for the fluoric acid gas: weights, and scales to turn with the least difference of weights: graduated glass measures: evaporating vessels and filtering paper : glass rods and funnels: iron ladles, and lutes of various kinds. The preparations necessary to the experiments of the young chemist are ; Metals in a state of purity. Alkaline and earthy salts. The following, wbich, as well as the above, may be had at any chemists, will serve for the purposes of amusement and instruction. Preparations which take fire under the surface of water. Oxyde of Phosphorus, for procuring light instantly, without flint, steel, or tinder. Yellow Sympathetic Ink, which disappears and re-appears alternately. Phosphuret of Lime, for causing fire to rise out of water. Spoons which melt in boiling water. Solution of Silver, for forming the arbor Dianæ, or silver tree. Freezing Mixtures for producing cold. Fluids which produce solids, and solids which produce fluids, by a mere mixture. a a LABRADOR, a country on the east side of Hud. son's bay, in North America. The climate is ex. cessively cold in winter : but the ice begins to disa appear in the month of May, and in June the sun is scorching hot. Mock suns, halos, and the aurora boreales are very common. In summer there is a great variety of colour in the skins of animals, but in winter they all change to wbite. Dogs, cats, &c. carried from this country to Hudson's Bay change their appearance on the approach of winter, and are furnished with a softer and much thicker coat of hair than they originally had. LACCA, LAC, or GUM-LAC, a wax of which a species of insects, of the cochincal kind, forms its cells. Some of the dead insects, remaining in the combs, give the whole a red colour. That sort of lac which is called LAC-STICK, is the wax adhering to small sticks or branches, and which is unprepared. This lac, when separated from the sticks, grossly powdered, and deprived of iis colour, for the sake of the dyes, and other purposes, is called LAC-SEED; when the stick-lac is freed from its impurities by melting it over a gentle 'fire, and formed into cakes, it is called Lamp-lac. Lace, in commerce, a work composed of threads of gold, silver, silk, or linen, interwoven the one with the other, and worked upon a pillow with spindles, according to the pattern designed. The open work being formed with pins, which are placed and displaced as the spindles are moved. LACE-bone, à lace made of fine linen thread, nearly in the same manner as that of gold and silver. The pattern of the lace is fixed upon a large round pillow; and, pins being stuck into the holes or openings in the pattern, the threads are interwoven by means of a number of bones, or bobbins, each of which contains a small quantity of fine thread, in such a manner as to make the lace exactly resemble the pattern. There are several towns in England, and particularly in Buckinghamishire, that carry on this manufacture; but great quantities of the finest laces are made in Flanders. LACERTA, the lizard, a genus of amphibia of the réptile order, of which there are upwards of eighty species. The following claims principal attention. Lacerta Crocodilus, or the crocodile, is a native both in Africa and Asia, but is most frequently found in the former, inhabiting its vast rivers, and particularly the Niger and the Nile. It has occasionally been šeen of the length of even thirty feet, and instances of its attaining that of twenty are by no means uncommon. It principally subsists on fish, but such is its voracity, that it stizes almost every thing within its reach. The upper part of its body is covered with a species of armour, so thick and firm, as to be scarcely penetrable by a musket ball, and the whole body exhibits the appearance of an elaborate covering of carved work. It is an oviparous animal, and its eggs scarcely exceed in size those of a goose. These eggs are regarded as luxuries by the natives of some countries of Africa, who will also with great relish partake of the flesh of the Crocodile itself, On its native climate its power and propensity for destruction are unquestionably great, and excites in the inhabitants of the territories near its |