SCIENCE.

Evening Star, Issue 3776, 1 April 1875, Page 3

SCIENCE.

{From our own correspondent.)

Paris, December 26. Dr Magnan, as medical officer of the chief lunatic asylum of Paris, has conducted a series of experiments to test the effects of alcohol on the animal economy. He administered cognac to dogs; the animals became excited, afterwards stupid, dropping into an insensible sleep, the body became cold, and the hind legs paralysed. 1o these effects, only ephemeral, suceed, in the course of a fortnight, intense nervousness, fear, hallucination, and trembling; if the brandy be suppressed after a month’s dosing, the animal becomes stupefied and dies. Absinthe, a preparation of alcohol and wormwood, produces convulsions, and, something like strychnine, twitches of the body. In brandy innking. hallucinations occur at the last stage; but, ; n the case of absinthe, during the first, in addi: ion to convulsions or epilepsy. Chronic intoxication is not to be confounded with occasional bard dr.nking; in the former, madness or paralysis invariably ensues, 'ihe medical statistics of the French nrmy for 1872 are very interesting, and reveal an improved state of health as compared with former years. The number of hospital admissions was 2“)2 per 1,000. In point of sanitary superiority the engineers are first, tbe transport corps and hospital attendants last. Nearly 94 per cent, of the soldiers are vaccinated, and only 253 cases of small pox occurred in an effective army of 430,000 ; of these 200 had been vaccinated ; there were 214 cases of insanity, 35 being officers, and there is no proof that the war, as generally was supposed, has led to any increase of insanity. The deaths were on an average 9fc per 1,000, less than during previous years; there were 147 suicides, 12 being officers, and se’f-destruction is most common among the light infantry; 75 shot themselves; 41 adopted strangulation, and 19 selected drowning. Consumption is the most fatal ma’ady. affecting over 2 per 1,000 of the men and forming nearly 22 per cent, of the total deaths. Typhus fever comes next. Whatever may be the differences of opinion as to the contagious nature of phthisis, the French report attributes the large increase in deaths from consumption among the hospital students to contagion. There were six deaths by hydrophobia, of which three took place in Althus constituting a phenomenon, m hydrophobia is almost unknown among Orientals. Pulmonary consumption is on the increase in the French army, and more than 4 A per thousand represents the annual number of men definitely discharged from the army from this cause.

A machine, perhaps more ingenious than practical, has been invented for recording the votes of deputies. Before each deputy is placed two buttons, as in the system of electric bells, one communicating with a box containing blue balls, and the other one containing white balls, representing the yes and no; by pressing a button, a ball is liberated, and runs into an urn; now as the balls aie of equal weight, it is only neceessary to ascertain the votes recorded; on the other hand, the bails remaining in the boxes, when similarly treated, will record the abstentionists and tbe absent.

J Fbe eucalyptus has proved a great success since it has been introduced into Southern I'rance and Algeria; it* marvelous rapid growth is only equalled by its utility both as timber, a medicament, and a powerSul sanitary igent in marshy districts. It i 8 in addition very oimamental. It is as a purifier of an atmosphere filled with malaria, that its great importance is due; its odour is very penetrating, and recalls something of the laurel; either from the intensity of its perfume or its property of absorbing deleterious gases in lands where malaria hous a home, and which is so propitious to its growth fever disappears. Its leaves and bark make such an excellent febrifuge that they are now prescribed by French doctors as an economical succadaneum for cinchona, ihe tree unfortunately cannot resist a continued low temperature of 41deg. Farh. hence why it has only succeeded on the shores of the Mediterranean. There is a beautiful avenue of these trees at the station of Nice, and several pretty clumps of them at Cannes. In Algeria its cultivation has made wonderful progress, and companies are being formed to plant the marshy districts of Corsica and Algeria with the “eucalyptus.” At three miles from the famous chapel of St. Paul outside Rome, the Trappists nave at present luxurious plantations of this tree, and the experiment thus on the border of the lugubrious Roman Campagna is full of promise for the reclamafcion of that waste. M. Adanson, in his voyage through Tunis, has discovered in the plain of Thala a forest of gum acacias, twenty by eight miles in extent. The trees are about 24ft high and 12ft in circumference, and the gum freely exudes from the trunk and the branches. Steps are being taken to collect the gum for exportation, and the Arab* have in the meantime been prohibited from cutting down the trees for firewood, as well as to make charcoal fer the preparation of gun powder. v M. Kastner has succeeded in producing ‘ singing flames” by burning purified coal gas so as to obtain the hydrogen as free as possible ; the “feather” flames, so long as they are kept separate in the same tube, will generate a series of detonations corres ponding to musical sounds. Gombo belongs te the mellow order of plants, and is common in Egypt and Syria, where r fruit is in much request Its fibie oan be woven into tissue, and can be separated from the plant by crus ling the latter, and washing the mass in a running stream. No chemical agents are required. The wbito paste thus resulting, has been manufaetiired into excellent paper by Messrs Bonia. Gombo yields 66 per cent, of fibre for industrial purposes. The oil contained in the seed can bo extracted for the inanufacure of soaps. In a cloth-cleansing factory at Puteaux, outside Paris, a fire broke out, caused by the development of electricity in the rubbing of the which had been previously dipped in a benzine bath; tbe iparks of electricity flratkled as if they had emanated from an electrical machine. M. Claude Bernardis’s recent experiments demonstrate the oont stmt presence of sugar in the blood, and that sugar is produced in 'he ororganism, disappears therein, and undergoes incessant mutations; that arterial bleed guard*

sensibly its quantity of sugar, which quantity is lessened as the blood circulates; but the return of the fluid, as venous blood, to the right cavity of the heart, is richer in sugar than the same blood found at the extremities of the body. Where then does the venous blood find its new supply of sugar on its return passage? In the liver. Under no circumstance, then, is sugar absent from the blood. The subject of the transit of Venus has been exhausted; all that we have to do is to wait for the result of the calculations to demonstrate the measurements. M. Camille Flammarion puts us on our guard not to be over sanguine, the difficulties of the details being so great and so numerous. If the “contacts" between Venus and the Sun are fixed for less than five seconds, we shall only have a repetition of what we already know; if they result in one er two seconds nearer, astronomers will have the reward they labored for, and deserve in any case.