232 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



as much yet remains to be done for its proper elucidation. 

 12 A, May 18,50. 



CATTLE-PLAGUE ENTOZOA IN CEYLON. 



In the course of an examination of the muscles- of animals 

 dying at Ceylon of the cattle-plague disease of that country, 

 Mr. Boyd Morse discovered certain remarkable organisms, of 

 which he has lately published an account in the London Mi- 

 croscopical Journal. He suggests the inquiry as to their re- 

 lationship to the entozoa, described by Dr. Lionel Beale as 

 found in the muscles of animals dying of the same disease, 

 and thinks they may be their ova. They lie loose among the 

 muscular fibres of the heart, sometimes in great numbers and 

 at other times singly. There are several characteristic forms, 

 all well figured in the article referred to. Quart. Jour. Mic. 

 Soc, December 1 , 1 870, 312. 



RICHARDSON'S HYPOTHESIS OF A NERVOUS ETHER. 



In a late number of the Popular Science Review Dr. Rich- 

 ardson again brings forward his favorite theory in regard to 

 a nervous ether, namely, that between the molecules of the 

 animal matter, solid or fluid, of which the nervous organisms, 

 and, indeed, of which all the organic parts of the body are 

 composed, there exists a fine, subtile medium, vaporous or 

 gaseous, which holds the molecules in a condition for motion 

 upon each other, and for arrangement and rearrangement of 

 form ; a medium by and through which all motion is convey- 

 ed, and by and through which the one organ or part of the 

 body is held in communion with the other parts, and by and 

 through which the outer living world communicates with the 

 living man ; a medium which, being present, enables the phe- 

 nomena of life to be demonstrated, and which, being univer- 

 sally absent, leaves the body dead that is, in such condition 

 that it can not, by any phenomenon of motion, prove itself to 

 be alive. 



According to the doctor, the evidence in favor of the exist- 

 ence of an elastic medium pervading the nervous matter, and 

 capable of being influenced by simple pressure, is perfectly sat- 

 isfactory. Numerous experimental facts suggest that thero 

 exists in the nerves an actual material mobile acrent a some- 

 thins more than the solid matter which the eve can see and 



