294 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



afford the means of transporting the disease on the air, in a manner 

 quite agreeing with the facts of its propagation. The hint, thus af- 

 forded by the keen-scented buzzards, may have value in assisting to 

 comprehend the mode of conveying and diffusing this fatal malady, 

 and the particles scented may indeed be the actual fomites so much 

 talked of and so little understood, in discussing the controverted ques- 

 tions of contagion and communication." 



A proposed Plan for prolonging Life. - - M. Robin, an eminent 

 French chemist, in a memoir recently presented to the French Academy, 

 expresses a belief that the period of human life may be greatly pro- 

 longed, and enters into an argument to show that his opinion is based 

 upon sound reasoning. He also gives the result of his personal obser- 

 vations on this subject, and proposes to demonstrate the' truthfulness of 

 his position by actual experiments upon animals whose lives are of 

 phort duration. His argument is, that the mineral matter which con- 

 stitutes an ingredient in most of our food, after the combustion, is left 

 in our systems to incrust and stiffen the different parts of the body, and 

 to render imperfect many of the vital processes. He compares human 

 beings to furnaces which are always kindled ; life exists only in com- 

 bustion, but the combustion which occurs in our bodies, like that which 

 takes place in our chimneys, leaves a detritus or residue which is fatal 

 to life. To remove this, he would administer lactic acid with ordinary 

 food. This acid is known to possess the power of removing or dissolv- 

 ing the incrustations which form on the arteries, cartilages and valves 

 of the heart. As buttermilk abounds in this acid, and is, moreover, 

 an agreeable kind of food, its habitual use, it is urged, will free the 

 system from these causes, which inevitably cause death between the 

 seventy-fifth and one hundredth year. 



Abnormal Lactation. - - Dr. J. Adamson stated, at the British As- 

 sociation, 1859, that a female greyhound which had never had offspring 

 suckled a kitten until it had grown to a considerable size. If the kit- 

 ten was removed, the greyhound was as disconsolate as the kitten's own 

 parent would have been, under similar circumstances, and her equa- 

 nimity was only restored when the kitten was given back to her. 



Dr. Ogilvie said the occurrence is not uncommon in the human fe- 

 male, and that lactation has often been carried on successfully by the 

 human male. He remarked also, that it is common in Western Africa 

 for young females who have never had children to be regularly em- 

 ployed in nursing the children of others, a secretion of milk being ex- 

 cited by stimulating the breast to secrete milk by the application of 

 the juice of one of the Euphorbiace'ee. 



Peculiarities of Ants. At a recent meeting of the British Entomo- 

 logical Society, Mr. Saunders called attention to a statement, in 

 Froelel's Travels in Central America, that certain species of ants in 

 New Mexico construct their nests exclusively of small stones, of the 

 same material, chosen by the insects from the various components of the 

 sand of the steppes and deserts ; in one part of the Colorado Desert, 

 their heaps were formed of small fragments of crystallized feldspar, and 

 in another, imperfect crystals of red, transparent garnets were the ma- 

 terials of which the ant-hills were built, and any quantity of them might 

 there be obtained. 



Vivisections. - - A committee was' some time since appointed by the 



