appear to him to take place only in the lowest third of it, where it is chiefly excited by the nerves of the eighth pair. The contraction increases much, and continues a long time, when the stomach is full. When the oesophagus is cut and detached from the diaphragm, the injection of tartar emetic into the veins does not produce vomiting its introduction into the stomach becomes necessary.

:

M. Delpech, Professor of Surgery at Montpellier, has sent a memoir to the Class on the hospital sore, a kind of gangrene which affects the sores when the wounded patients are too numerous. He has ascertained that this dreadful malady, of which few practitioners have spoken, is produced by a local contagion. It is propagated by the linen, the charpee, and the instruments. Its progress is slower when the patients can be exposed to a current of air. The most minute attention to cleanliness is necessary to prevent it from spreading. But the only true remedy, according to M. Delpech, is the application of the actual cautery to the parts affected with it.

Some years ago M. Maunoir, surgeon in Geneva, sent a memoir on the advantages of the method of amputation invented in England, and which consists in cutting the skin lower down than the bone and the muscles, so as to preserve a sufficient quantity to cover the stump, by bringing it immediately in contact.

M. Roux, surgeon at Paris, has presented a memoir on the same subject, in which he has shown from his own experiments that this method diminishes the sufferings of the patient, that it prevents hæmorrhages and suppuration, that it greatly accelerates the cure of the sore, and that it leaves the stump in a more convenient state, and subject to fewer accidents. He points out the precautions necessary to avoid some inconveniences ascribed to it by those who performed it ill, and particularly to afford the blood and pus, if any be formed, a sufficient passage. M. Percy, our associate, who employed it since his youth, and who, as he informs us himself, has had the melancholy advantage of amputating more limbs than perhaps any surgeon that ever existed, expresses strongly in his report his wish that the memoir of M. Roux may soon render so useful a process general.

Two young surgeons of Paris, MM. Lisfrand and Champenne, have made known their method of amputating the arm at its upper joint, one of the most difficult operations in the surgical art. By making the instrument penetrate under the two eminences of the omoplate, called acromion and coracoid process, they reach directly the capsule of the joint, and terminate the operation more quickly than by any of the methods employed before them.

M. de Saissy, surgeon at Lyons, has cured several deaf people by injections into the cavity of the tympanum, through the tube of Eustachius. He has sent to the Class an account of his method, and the history of the cures which he has performed.

The treatise on poisons by M. Orfila, of which we announced the first volume in our last year's report, has been continued, and the second volume submitted to the Class in manuscript. It treats of

the deleterious effects of preparations of tin, zinc, silver, gold, of the concentrated mineral acids, the caustic alkalies, phosphorus, cantharides, lead, and iodine; together with an appendix on the antidotes of corrosive sublimate and arsenic. The author explains with care, and from new and exact experiments, the physiological effects of these substances, whether swallowed, or injected into the veins.

Milk, according to M. Orfila, is the antidote to muriate of tin; common salt, to nitrate of silver or lunar caustic; calcined magnesia, to the acids, provided it be administered very quickly; the sulphates of soda and magnesia, when taken in great quantity and repeatedly, stop the effects of the salts of lead and barytes; and acetic acid is the remedy against the action of the alkalies.

M. Orfila shows that charcoal, which had been recommended against corrosive sublimate and arsenic, has no effect. It is of great importance to know the inefficacy of a remedy against evils so rapid that there is no time to bestow upon t them any thing useless.

M. Huzard has carefully informed the Class of the progress and termination of that terrible disease which has destroyed most of the horned cattle in those provinces into which the war brought its ravages. It is a bilious and putrid fever, very contagious, which, though it does not exist in Hungary, is always produced when the cattle of that country are carried to a distance in the train of armies. The total interruption of communication was the only efficacious preservative; but no remedy was capable of saving the individuals attacked. Fortunately their flesh was not unhealthy, which dimi nished a little the ruin of their proprietors.

The same member has read a notice on a disease which had broken out among the cattle in the village of Rosny, and which different circumstances led the people to consider as hydrophobia. He ascertained that it was only a gangrenous quincy.

M. le Marquis de Cubieres, correspondent, has composed a work, the manuscript of which he has submitted to the Class. It treats of the culture of those gardens which we call improperly English gardens, though the celebrated comic actor Dufresny passes for having presented the first model of them to France towards the end of the seventeenth century. The author collects all the aids of botany and natural philosophy to an art, which has long amused his leisure hours, and explains them in the elegant style naturally inspired by his subject, and suitable to those to whom chiefly he destines his book.

M. Tollard, farmer and merchant at Paris, has proposed some compositions of artificial meadows, formed of certain plants which he associates in consequence of the habit that they have of growing together,, and with a view to the different soils, and to the qualities which these plants communicate to the hay. These groupes re quire to be tried for some years before they can be recommended for practice.

The same author has presented a history of the useful vegetables,

which have been introduced within these ten years into French agriculture; and a particular memoir on the dahlia, a plant newly spread over our gardens. Its flower constitutes a fine ornament, and its roots are larger, and almost as good for food as those of the potatoe.

Among the buds of trees there are some which do not spread out with the others, and which are called dead eyes, but which should rather be called sleeping eyes; for they may be brought out of that lethargy even after it has continued for several years. It is generally owing to the tendency of the sap to go to the superior buds, and to elongate them into great branches. The lower buds by this means are deprived of the nourishing fluid. This is no inconvenience in the trees destined merely to produce wood or to furnish shade, But in fruit-trees in which we wish to dispose of the branches in a certain order, we are sometimes obliged to put grafts in the places which the dead eyes occupy, a method both tedious and uncertain. M. Marion de la Martiniere has practised a simpler and more successful method. It is to make a small cut above the dead eye in form of a V reversed, and as deep as the alburnum. By thus stopping the progress of the ascending sap, it is obliged to develope the bud, or to produce others.

We may likewise reckon among the labours of the Class in agriculture the memoirs on the Spanish sheep called merinos, by MM, Tessier and Yvard; the description of the practical school of agriculture, by M. Thouin; and the essay of a rural code, by M. de la Bergerie, correspondent. But as these books have been published for several months, it is only necessary to mention their vitles.

A contrary reason induces us to make some observations on a considerable work which M. de Lasteyrie du Saillant has presented to the Class, on all the branches of agriculture, and of the rural and domestic economy of the Chinese. It is collected from all the authors who have written on China, and embellished by a great number of figures drawn in China, and by Chinese, in which are represented all the proceedings of their industry, and all the instru ments which they employ. This great empire, in which an immense population is entirely supported by agriculture, and in which this art has been uninterruptedly honoured and protected since the first establishment of the monarchy, cannot but have made great progress in it and in fact M. de Lasteyrie makes us acquainted with different instruments, more simple and commodious than those which we employ for the same purposes, and points out to us processes which might be advantageously followed here, principally in the culture of fruit-trees. We might even imitate the Chinese in their dyeing processes. Thus they prepare a blue with some species of renouées, very common here, which, if adopted by us, might diminish the consumption of indigo.

M. Yvard, become lately an associate, had presented while a correspondent a large treatise on the plants injurious to corn, and on the method of keeping cultivated land free from them. What

are usually called weeds, are children of nature, wild plants whose territory is daily invaded by cultivated plants, but which endeavour by all the means in their power to maintain their ground. They soon recover their soil if man neglect them. The wind, water, and animals, transport their seeds; the earth conceals them for a long time, and they vegetate when the favourable moment comes. imprudent farmer often sows them himself in the manure which he lays on the fields. M. Yvard, who mentions more than 300 species, describes all the care and all the stratagems which must be employed in the kind of war which the farmer must carry on against them, and he treats his subject from actual experience.

The

This skilful farmer has done a still greater favour to agriculture by publishing last spring, through the medium of the journals, the methods which his experience has suggested as the most proper to repair the losses occasioned by the events of war among the corn and the grass. He has had the happiness to see his counsels fructify. It could not be perceived by the price of corn that our finest provinces have been the fields of battle. It is by such applications of agriculture and art, perfected by the spirit of the sciences, that France has for twenty years contended with the disasters always renewed of a cruel war, and that she has been able to bear without sinking the painful operation on which depended the end of her ills. (To be continued.)

ARTICLE XI.

SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE; AND NOTICES OF SUBJECTS
CONNECTED WITH SCIENCE.

I. Lectures.

A Course of Lectures on the Elements of Electrical Science, comprehending Galvanism and Electro-Chemistry, will be commenced by Mr. Singer, on Monday, Nov. 6, at No. 3, Princesstreet, Cavendish-square.

II. Largest Diamond.

The largest diamond hitherto found is in the possession of the Rajah of Mattan, in the Island of Borneo, in which island it was found about 80 years ago. It is shaped like an egg, with an indented hollow near the smaller end. It is said to be of the finest water. It weighs 367 carats. Now as 156 carats are equal to 1 oz. Troy, it is obvious that this diamond weighs 2 oz. 169-87 gr. Troy. Many years ago the Governor of Batavia tried to purchase this diamond. He sent a Mr. Stuvart to the Rajah, who offered 150,000 dollars, two large war brigs with their guns and ammunition, together with a certain number of great guns, and a quantity of powder

and shot. The Rajah, however, refused to deprive his family of so valuable an hereditary possession, to which the Malays attach the miraculous power of curing all kinds of diseases, by means of the water in which it is dipped, and with which they imagine that the fortune of the family is connected.-See Dr. Leyden's account of Borneo, in the seventh volume of the Transactions of the Batavian Society.

III. Voyage of Discovery to Africa.

The gentlemen appointed by Government to prosecute the discoveries of the late unfortunate Mungo Park have at last sailed from England for the coast of Africa. They are Major John Peddie, Capt. T. Campbell, and Mr. Cowdery, staff surgeon. They are said to be very well qualified for the task which they have undertaken. They are to be attended by a company of Negroes. The object of the expedition is to trace the Niger from the place at which Mungo Park left it to the sea, and to determine whether or not it be the same with the Zayr.

IV. Death of Gehlen.

Adolph Ferdinand Gehlen, whose name has occurred repeatedly in the Annals, died at Munich last summer; or perhaps it would be more proper to say that he destroyed himself, since he persisted in a set of experiments in which he was daily exposed to the fumes of arsenic, though warned by his friends of the fatal consequences that would ensue. He became first generally known to the chemical world in 1803 by the publication of a new monthly chemical work, which he entitled, Neues Allgemeines Journal der Chemie (New Universal Journal of Chemistry). Of this journal he published six volumes, which contain a great deal of valuable and original matter. In 1806 he changed the title to Journal fur die Chemie und Physik (Journal of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy). About this time he was chosen a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of Munich, to which capital he repaired. Yet he still continued to publish his journal at Berlin. But it was infinitely inferior to what it had been, consisting chiefly of translations from foreign journals, and of long papers by Ritter, often highly absurd and ridiculous. He continued it, however, till 1810, when he stopped: no doubt because the sale. had diminished so much as not to be equivalent to the expenses of the publication. His principal discovery was the mode of precipitating red oxide of iron by succinate of soda or of ammonia. This discovery has been of considerable use in the chemical analysis of minerals.

V. Confirmation of Mr. Rose's Discovery of the Absence of Urea from the Urine in Hepatitis: being an Extract of a Letter from Dr. Henry, of Manchester.

་

Soon after the publication of Mr. Rose's paper, in your number for June, a medical friend (Dr. Holme) gave me a specimen of the