acid in the lagoons are greater. Increased vapors indicate unfavorable change of weather, and the lagoons are infallible barometers to the neighborhood, even at a great distance, serving to regulate the proceedings of the peasantry in their agricultural pursuits. As the quantity of boracic acid originally contained in the water of the lagoons is so very small as we now know it to be, we can no longer wonder at the opinion formerly entertained, that it did not exist at all. After five or six successive impregnations we see it does not exceed half per cent., which, estimating the quantity of borax at 7500 pounds a day, will give 1,500,000 Tuscan pounds, or 500 tons, of water for the same period. By the construction of immense cisterns for the catching of rain water, by the employment of steam-engines for raising it from below, and probably by creating artificial vents for the soffioni, the quantity of borax produced might be almost indefinitely increased, since the range of country through which the vapor ascends is far too great for us to suppose it to be exhausted by the production of 7000 pounds of borax a day. Science in all likelihood will bring about a revolution in this as in so many other manufactures, and our descendants will look back with a smile on our hasty and unphilosophical decision. We are without information on many points connected with the population of those districts, to throw light on which it would be necessary to institute fresh investigations on the spot. The lagoons are usually excavated by laborers from Lombardy, who wander southward in search of employment in those months of the year during which the Apennines are covered with snow. They do not, however, remain to be employed in the business of manufacture. This is carried on by native Tuscan laborers, who occupy houses, often spacious and well built, in the neighborhood of the evaporating pans. They are in nearly all cases married men, and are enabled to maintain themselves and their families on the comparatively humble wages of a Tuscan lira a day. It would have been satisfactory to know the number of the Lombard navigators from time to time employed in excavating the lagoons, as well as of the native laborers, who carry on operations after their departure; but we may with certainty infer the successive appearance of fresh soffioni on the sides of the mountains from the perpetually-recurring necessity of excavating new lagoons. Again, from the immense increase of borax produced in former times we may safely infer its increase in future. The quantity obtained was quadrupled in four years by superior methods of extraction, by economy of water and vapor, and other improvements suggested by experience. There can, therefore, be no doubt in our minds that similar improvements will produce similar results. In 1832, about 650,000 Tuscan pounds were obtained; in 1836, 2,500,000.