CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 235 



dency to death from these brain diseases in persons above fifteen years 

 of age was greater in the female than the male. The only conclusion, 

 therefore, which seems deducible from these facts appears to be that, 

 in so far as the statistics of these deaths go, there is no evidence to 

 prove that the consumption of alcoholic liquors (including every form, 

 wine, beer, spirits, &c.) or of tobacco, injures the general health of 

 the population. On the other hand, the evidence seem rather to favor 

 the idea that the moderate use of these articles by the mass of the 

 people so improves their health as to act as a counterpoise to the un- 

 doubtedly injurious and i'atal effects to which the abuse leads in the 

 few." 



MIGRATIONS OF PHOSPHORUS. 



" Large masses of phosphorus arc, in the course of geological rev- 

 olutions, extending over vast periods of time, restored from the or- 

 ganic realm of nature to the mineral kingdom by the slow process of 

 fossilization ; whereby vegetable tissues are gradually transformed 

 into peat, lignite, and coal, and animal tissues are petrified into cop- 

 rolites, which in course of time yield crystalline apatite. After lying 

 locked up and motionless in these forms for indefinite periods, phos- 

 phorus, by further geological movements, becomes again exposed to the 

 action of its natural solvents, water and carbonic acid, and is thus 

 restored to active service in the organisms of plants and lower ani- 

 mals, through which it passes to complete the mighty cycle of its 

 movements into the blood and tissues of the human frame. 



While circulating thus, age after age through the three kingdoms of 

 nature, phosphorus is never for a moment free. It is throughout re- 

 tained in combination with oxygen, and with the earthy or alkaline, 

 metals, for which its attraction is intense. ' Dr. Hoffmann" 1 s Report on 

 tlie Exhibition of 1862. 



MEASUREMENT OF THE CHEMICAL ACTION OF LIGHT. 



Prof. H. E. Roscoe has reported to ihe Royal Society a method of 

 measuring the chemical action of to al daylight adapted for regular 

 meteorological registration, and based upon a method described by Prof. 

 Bunsen and himself in their paper on " Photometrical Measurements." 

 It depends upon the law that equal products of the intensity of the acting 

 light, in the times of insolation correspond, within very wide li.hits, to 

 equal shades of dark tints produced upon chloride of silver of uniform 

 sensitiveness, measured by means of a pendulum photometer. In the 

 Society's Proceedings, No. 70, will be found the method of procedure, and 

 specimens of the results obtained, and a diagram exhibiting the curves of 

 daily chemical intensity, at Manchester, in spring, summer, autumn, and 

 winter. 



PETRIFACTION OF AXIMAL SUBSTANCES. 



About 25 years ago the scientific world was surprised by an an- 

 nouncement of the fact that a Venetian, named Girolama Segato, had dis- 

 covered a means of reducing dead bodies to a state of hardness closely 

 approaching to that of stone, except tit the joints, where he had succeeded in 

 maintaining a certain degree of pliancy. The results obtained by Mr. 

 Segato in this direction were altogether wonderful, and many strangers 

 used to visit his collection at Florence, where he had settled. Nevertheless 



