340 ANNUAL OP SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



Upon placing the animal, after the experiment, in a temperature 

 elevated considerably above the normal temperature of the body, 

 Bernard found that the side already warmed did not appear to 

 exhibit any effect of the increased heat, like the rest of the body, so 

 that finally, both sides of the face exhibited the same temperature. 

 The opposite happened upon placing the animal in a medium consider- 

 ably cooler than the normal temperature, the cut side retained its 

 heat, while the other side and the rest of the body became cooler, 

 until finally there was a difference of 3 or 4 Centigrade as already 

 mentioned. 



This singular phenomenon of resistance to cold, appears connected 

 with an exhaltation of the vitality of the part. Thus, upon causing 

 death to happen in a manner that should not affect the nerves of 

 sense, poisoning in a certain manner, for example, or by section of the 

 pneumogastric nerve, in proportion as the end of the animal approach- 

 ed, the temperature of the body became lower and lower, though the 

 cut side still remained sensibly warmer, and at last, when the normal 

 side of the face presented the cold and immobility of death, the other 

 half, that on which the sympathetic nerve was cut, was still sensibly 

 warm, and repeatedly exhibited that species of involuntary movements, 

 dependant upon sensation without will, and to which we give the 

 name of reflected motions. 



ON THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF MARINE LIFE. 



AMONG the most important and novel communications brought 

 before the last meeting of the British Association, that which combined 

 the most elaborate research into details with the broadest generaliza- 

 tion, and which must be considered to be the first attempt to reduce 

 all the facts of the distribution of living creatures upon the surface of 

 the earth to general laws, was the explanation of "A New Map of the 

 Geographical Distribution of Marine Life," by Prof. Edward Forbes. 

 Two modes of classifying facts of distribution have been hitherto 

 adopted ; either the geographical areas to which peculiar assemblages 

 of animals and plants are confined have been marked out as " prov- 

 inces," the classification in this case being natural, but purely biologi- 

 cal ; or certain parallels of latitude, or certain isothermals, being taken 

 as boundary lines, animals and plants have been considered to be dis- 

 tributed according to the " zones" thus marked out, a convenient, 

 but hitherto an artificial arrangement, though, since the distribution of 

 life must greatly depend upon the climatal conditions indicated by 

 latitudinal and isothermal lines, it had a certain broad and loose corres- 

 pondence with nature. 



The great problem has been to unite these two methods, to ascer- 

 tain what is the common condition by which the limits both of the 

 " provinces" and of the " zones" arc governed ; for since the distribu- 

 tion of life in provinces is governed by climatal conditions, and since 

 the climatal phenomena of any one portion of the earth's surface are 



