PHYSICS OF THE GLOBE. 195 



effect of altitude, lie states that his own experience has been 

 that he has never detected any quickening or other disturb- 

 ance of respiration, and that at the greatest altitudes as yet 

 attained by man it is evident that there is an abundance of 

 oxygen to supply the needs of the blood at every inspira- 

 tion, while at low altitudes there is great excess of oxygen. 

 This consideration deprives of its force the argument of those 

 who say that the quickened respiration and pulse experienced 

 by most observers is an involuntary effort of the system un- 

 der the control of the sympathetic nerve to furnish a suffi- 

 cient supply of oxygen to the blood. He considers that the 

 human race degenerates by dwelling in low and unhealthy 

 places, and that in such places it is decimated by such pesti- 

 lences as the cholera, yellow fever, remittent fever, and plague. 



Mr. Buchand has commuuicated to the Philosophical Soci- 

 ety of Glasgow some more recent deductions with reference 

 to the relations of meteorology to public health, as deduced 

 from the study of weekly mortality and weather returns for 

 all the large towns in the British islands. He shows that 

 diarrhoea and British cholera on the one hand, and dysentery 

 and Asiatic cholera on the other, form themselves into two 

 distinct groups. The prominent phases in the annual prog- 

 ress of whooping-cough and scarlet fever agree even to mi- 

 nute details year after year for thirty years. He infers that 

 there is something connected with the weather of spring 

 which tends to reduce the mortality from scarlet fever, but 

 something connected with late autumn weather under which 

 this disease attains its maximum fatality. In the case of 

 whooping-cough, its maximum severity occurs in early spring, 

 and its minimum severity in autumn. 



In commenting on Mr. Buchand's paper on the Relations 

 of Meteorology to Public Health, Mr. E. M. Dixon stated 

 that, according to the analyses that had been made daily at 

 six points in Glasgow, it appeared that a steady increase in 

 the amount of organic matter in the atmosphere took place 

 along with the increase of temperature in the spring and 

 summer, but that the amount of organic dust decreased as 

 the temperature fell in the autumn. 



In the Journal of the Franklin Institute for January, Feb- 

 ruary, and March will be found a rather lengthy article, by 

 Professor Brio-o-s, on the Relation of Moisture in Air to Health 



