Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial & Political

Important Discovery.—An intelligent and respectable correspondent, says the New-York Commercial Advertiser, informs us, that there has lately been found in the northern part of this state, a singular kind of clay, which by the heat of fire, is converted into pure, fine, transparent glass.

The peculiar properties of this clay were thus accidentally discovered. Last summer; while Mr. George Scriba was building a grist mill at Rotterdam, on the Oneida Lake, in digging a canal for the flume, the workmen came to a bed of clay; of which, however, no notice was then taken. In the month of November, a stove was put up in the mill, for the benefit of the men who were employed in finishing the interior of the building. Finding the house soon filled with smoke, the workmen applied this clay to the crevices of the stove and pipe. In the course of a few hours, the clay had disappeared; and on examining the inside of the stove, they found that the clay had been converted into fine and pure glass. Since that discovery, several experiments have been made, to ascertain the quality of this new kind of earth. Two letters have been received briefly stating the result.

One of them says—"The melted clay, as it was poured out of the crucible, appeared of the consistence of molasses: and when it had cooled, it proved to be clear and beautiful glass, of a green tinge, and so strong what it was with some difficulty broken with the hands."

The other letter says—"I prepared a letter furnace, before a blacksmith's bellows and blew one hour, when I found the clay well melted, and in a fluid state, so that it run out of the crucible in strings as thick as a straw, and produced a solid glass, which could be thus drawn from three to four feet long."

As this is an entire new discovery, it will doubtless receive the attention of the chymists and mineralogists of our country.