Miscellaneous.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IX, Issue 581, 29 May 1858, Page 5

Miscellaneous.

Bebangkee.-—With Beranger's death, all his intimates began to ransack their' memories for his hon mots. One is now current, made in reply to a speech of the Dupin, whose recent apostacy is the latest ','nine days' wonder" of French society. Dupin's avarice, it must be premised, is notorious in his own country, and is in itself sufficient to explain the apostacy which so many theories have been started to account for. One day, Dupih ,was showing boastfully to his friends a coat which he had worn for 10 years uninterruptedly. "Yes," said Beranger, "but, how often during the time you must have had new pockets I"—The Statesman. ,! f , .

Why Smokers abe not Poisoned.—Nicotine is a very violent poison—one of the most violent known. Let but a few drops of it fall upon the eye of an animal, arid, death instantaneously, ensues. This nicotine is an extract of tobacco. Do you smoke, reader? If you smoke, you consume with, each cigari., a pertain portion of this violent poison, and if your cigars follow each other in quick succession, the end of the day will find you a consumer of a pretty amount of poison—and yet you are not poisoned J How is this? It would be inexplicable if the ordinary idea of poisons, as substances essentially poisonous, were not replaced by the idea of their quantitative action. Dr. Carpenter, : indeed, argues that whatever is true of a large dose 'must be true, in a minor degree, of a small dose; and, according to such a conception, the smoker at the end of the day ought to be in the same condition as a man having, taken an equivalent amount of nicotine in one dose. The facts deeply contradict such a notion. The smoker has taken his poison in small doses; and these small doses have been spread over a number of hours. Now, experience of poisonings proves that the effect of small doses is totally different in kind from the effect of large doses; and, owing to the eliminating process incessantly, going on, that quantity is innocuous when spi'ead over a certain period which would be fatal if administered at o.nce. We have said that the effect is different in kind, and nicotine shall furnish us with an example. The fumes of tobacco contain nicotine, and this nicotine, acting on tbe salivary glands, determines an increased secretion, as all smokers know. But, by a law of economy, all the secretions of the intestinal canal are in intimate sympathy, so thatto stimulate one is to stimulate another, and, the secretion of the salivary glands being stimulated to increased activity, the gastric secretion instantly pours into the stomach. Tlrts the action of nicotine on the salivary glands increases the flow of gastric Juice; and a cigar after dinner assists digestion by its nicotine, which said nicotine we know to be a violent poison.— JßevieiO of Mr. Bernard's Toxicologic Studies.' Teavel and Dinners. — You meet nice people at table d'hotes sometimes, and make pleasant acquaintances. Shall I forget the old clergyman, with the pretty daughter at Naples, who quoted Horace, and the "nunc est bibendwni," as he sipped his Falernain, and looked out at Vesuvius shaking- its .white plume of hot smoke over the glittering bay where his moving shadow wavers f- Shall I be oblivious" to the pleasant dinner at Eome, in the hotel, out of the " long, narrow Corso, and its prison-looking palaces and grated windows. If you come to pleasant dinners, when the hope and imagination of travelling burn at the heart, commend me to Venice, where redcapped men, strong against blue skies, make perpetual impromptu Titians at every bridge end, where black arches are pierced through by black gondolas, and fish and melons are thrown out. for sale, beneath the porphyry state of crumbling palaces. I like to dino at the Mocenigo, and hear from the window the splash of the" mellow wave in the courtyard, or the jangle of the idle fishermen on the quays below. '— The Tramping Artist.