Sciences. This certificate shall be consigned to the register hereinafter to be mentioned.

ART. 12. Persons who, by right of succession, might become proprietors of a patent, previous to their enjoying its privileges, shall be bound to enroll, with the Registrar of their province, a document stating the same, upon which a certificate will be drawn up, which shall be immediately transmitted to the CommissaryGeneral of Instruction, and of the Arts and Sciences. This certificate shall be consigned to the register hereinafter to be spoken of.

ART. 13. On the expiration of any patents for inventions, or on any patent being declared null from any one of the causes specified in Art. 8 of the law of the 25th of January, the Commissary-General shall take proper measures for giving publicity to the discoveries and inventions which may have been patented.

ART. 14. If on the expiration of a patent, or by virtue of any of the causes specified in Art. 8, the Commissary-General of Instruction should not consider it advisable, from political or commercial reasons, to make the discovery or invention public, he shall give in his report to the King, who will decide upon it.

ART. 15. The Commissary-General of Instruction shall send the patents for inventions, importations, or improvements, granted and signed by the King, to the Governor of the province in which the petitioner dwells, pointing out to him the sum to be paid for the brevets. The Governor will transmit them to the petitioners, when the latter have proved that the duties, determined by the tariff, have been lodged with the appointed receiver.

ART. 16. The tariff of the duties to be paid for obtaining patents, is regulated in the following manner :

For a patent for 5 years, 150 florins.

For a patent for 10 years, 300 or 400 florins, according to the importance of the invention or improvement.

For a patent for 15 years, 600 or 750 florins, according to the importance of the invention or improvement.

*

For an assignment or acquisition of a patent, by right of succession, 9 florins.

ART. 17. When any patent is pronounced null, for either of the causes mentioned in Art. 8, of the law of the 25th of January, the duties that were paid on this patent shall be returned in proportion to the time it still had to run.

Since the separation of the two Kingdoms, this table of fees can only be correctly applied to Holland. In Belgium the government tax is fixed at a certain sum, according to the duration of the privilege, and does not vary as in Holland, according to the importance of the invention.

The tax in Belgium on a patent for 5 years is, francs 317.46....for 10 years, 634.92....and for 15 years, 1587.30.

ART. 18. The Minister of the Finances shall annually furnish the Commissary-General of Instruction with an exact account of the sums arising from the duties paid for obtaining patents for inventions, importations, or improvements. The CommissaryGeneral shall propose to the King the employment of this fund, agreeably to the 9th Article of the law of 25th January.

ART. 19. There shall be a register kept open at the office of the Commissary-General of Instruction, in which all the patents that are granted shall be inserted, as well as the certificates of assignment, or transfer of rights. This register may be consulted by persons purposing to solicit a patent.

ART. 20. Mention shall be made, in the official schedules, of the patents which are granted, and of the names of those who have obtained them.

Copy of the Decree of 17th August, 1827.

WE, WILLIAM, &c. &c.

In reference to the report of our Minister of the Interior, dated last June, relative to the steps to be taken to correct the negligence of persons who obtain brevets of invention, and who neglect to pay the tax upon these brevets and take them away,-We, adopting the the suggestions contained in the said report, and with the advice of the Privy Council, have thought proper to authorize and do hereby authorize our Minister of the Interior,-1st: To demand and obtain from the applicant (when he deposits his petition and the other necessary documents to obtain a patent) a declaration, by which he binds himself to take away the brevet, if it be granted, and pay the fees or tax within three months from the date thereof, in default of which, the brevet will be annulled, and the invention, for which it was granted, will be published and become public property.-2nd: To require every one, who shall have obtained a brevet, to put the invention to work, in the time stated by the law, under penalty of seeing the brevet annulled, and the invention become public property. A copy of the present, as well as the before-mentioned report, shall be sent to our Minister of the Interior, to be put in execution.

Laacken, Aug. 17th, 1827.

WILLIAM,

By the King,-STREEFKERK.

J. G. DE MEY VAN STREEFKERK.

Scientific Notices.

REPORT OF TRANSACTIONS OF THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS.

(Continued from page 409, Vol. XXII.)

Mr. Farey observed, that the result arrived at by the experiments, appeared to correspond nearly with those recorded by Smeaton, who had experimented upon, and used practically both kinds of wheels. The buckets of the model wheels, used in the experiments, did not appear to be of the best form, and they were entirely filled with water; hence an apparent advantage had been obtained, by the use of the circular conduit, to retain the water in the buckets. But that would not be realized in practice, for as the form of the bucket regulated the point at which the water quitted it, and it was the practice of the modern millwrights to make the wheels very broad, in order that the buckets should not be filled to more than one-third of their depth, the circular conduits became less useful, and in fact were now seldom used. Smeaton's practice was to entirely fill the buckets with water, but he never adhered to the slow velocity of revolution which he recommended, theoretically, in his Paper to the Royal Society.

Mr. Fairbairn had adopted broad wheels, with an improved form of bucket partially filled, and had obtained a more regular motion, particularly at high velocities.

Mr. Farey promised to present to the Institution a copy of the method of calculation, adopted by Smeaton, for water-wheels.

Mr. Taylor corroborated Mr. Farey's statement of the advantage of using broad wheels, with the buckets of a fine pitch and partially filled; circular conduits then became unnecessary: this was practised among the millwrights in North Wales with eminent success, and a velocity of 6 feet per second was given to the wheel.

Mr. Homersham believed, that in Smeaton's latter works, he increased the velocity of his wheels to 6 feet per second.

Mr. Rennie gave great credit to the author for the ingenuity of the apparatus with which the experiments were tried, and for the clearness of the tabulated results; but, owing to the necessary limited size of the model wheels, he feared the results could not

be relied upon for application in practice to large wheels. The experiments of Borda, Bossut, Smeaton, Banks, and others, were all liable to the same objection.

The best modern experiments were those by the Franklin Institute, by Poncelet, and by Morin.

The result of these might be taken thus :—

Undershot wheels, the ratio power to

The velocity of the old English water-wheels was generally about 3 feet per second, the American wheels 4 feet, and the French 6 feet; this latter speed was now adopted by the best millwrights in England. Mr. Hughes (at Mr. Gott's factory at Leeds) and Mr. Fairbairn, had found advantage from it; the latter also had a particular contrivance for carrying off the air freely from the buckets.

It was important to regulate the thickness of the sheet of water running over the shuttle upon the wheel. The best maximum depth was found, in practice, to be from 4 to 5 inches.

The object being to utilize the greatest height of fall, and the greatest available quantity of water, by means of properly constructed openings and such sluice-gates as were first introduced by the late Mr. Rennie for the breast-wheels constructed by him, instead of penning up the water in a trough, it was made to flow, in a sheet of regular thickness, over the top of the shuttle, and, by a self-regulating apparatus, to adjust itself, at all times, to the height of the water. Thus obtaining the advantage of the full height of the fall at its surface, and obviating the necessity for the apparatus proposed by Mr. Mallet.

Mr. Mallet begged to dissent from the validity of the objections which had been made to the practical value of his experiments. With respect to the form of the bucket,-that used by him could not, he contended, be called a bad form, although it might be susceptible of improvement; but as the experiments were altogether comparative, it was foreign to the question whether the form was bad or good, the same having been used in both wheels.

As it was shown, that a certain relation subsisted between two water-wheels, with the same total descent, but with different diameters, as to their co-efficient of labouring force, a proportional

relation would exist with any worse or better form of bucket. The results, considered as absolute measures of effect, being obtained with a form of bucket which approached nearer to the best forms now in use, than did those of Smeaton or any other experimenter, were more applicable to modern practice, and therefore he must consider his results as not without utility.

With regard to the custom of only partially filling the buckets, it must be remarked, that buckets of the best forms begin to spill their contents before arriving at the lowest point of the loaded arc; the partial filling could therefore only palliate the evil which the circular conduit was designed to remedy. He must, however, argue, that a positive disadvantage attended a partial filling. A permanent loss of fall was produced, equal to the distance between the centres of gravity of the fall and of the empty portion of the top bucket, at the moment it had passed the sluice; this distance could be but little varied by the fineness of pitch of the bucket, and depended more upon the depth of the shrouding. That there was a constant loss of labouring force, by a practical diminution of the effective leverage, or a reduction in the moment" of the loaded arc; that as the wheel revolved, the centre of gravity of the fluid contained in each bucket, as it approached the lower portion of the loaded arc, was transferred to a greater distance from the centre of motion even before the contents commenced spilling; but the angular motion, of the centre of gravity of any one bucket, was at first that due to its distance from the centre of motion of the wheel, or to its radius; and as the radius increased, a greater angular velocity would be acquired by the water which had changed its position on approaching the lower point of the wheel; but this increased velocity was given at the expense of the power of the wheel, and hence a partially filled bucket would, he believed, be always attended with a loss of labouring force. To the last objection, a full bucket was not liable.

From these reasons he felt justified in concluding, that the use of the circular conduit was more advantageous than the practice of partially filling the buckets.

With respect to the shuttle delivering the water over the top,where the head of water and the fall were constant, no advantage could be obtained by the use of a wheel greater in diameter than the total descent; it was assumed, that this form of shuttle would be used, in order always to deliver the water as high as possible 3 с

VOL. XXII.