ZOOLOGY. 331 



" Thus, if this fact is confirmed, we must admit that these animated 

 corpuscles are elementary globules possessing- life, which leave the 

 globules of blood to reproduce them. In a diseased state of the worm 

 they either die and become decomposed, constituting the diseases 

 which produce the liquefaction of the worms, or else they are chano-ed 

 into the rudiments of plants, whose development causes filaments to 

 penetrate into all the organs, and thus to produce the hardening, the 

 absorption of the fluids, and all the phenomena of muscardine. If a 

 drop of the blood infected with muscardine is left before the micro- 

 scope, and exposed to moisture, these rudiments are seen to grow and 

 to ramify, so as finally to produce the Botrylis muscardinique, as men- 

 tioned above. 



" From these facts it results that we can, by examining the blood 

 of silk-worms, know at once whether they are in a healthy state 

 or not, and this, too, long before it could be known by any external 

 signs." 



THE EFFECT OF CHLOROFORM WHEN INJECTED INTO THE AR- 

 TERIES. 



M. COZE, in a memoir read to the French Academy, on April 23d, 

 says : " Chloroform, when injected into the arteries, produces in the 

 muscles to which these vessels are distributed a great increase of con- 

 tractibility. Thus, when chloroform is injected into the artery in the 

 leg of a rabbit, there is at once a muscular contraction so powerful, 

 that the flesh seems to have acquired the hardness of wood. The 

 chloroform does not seem to act in a direct manner upon the blood, by 

 decomposing or coagulating it, nor does it seem any more to act di- 

 rectly upon the nerves, but the contraction is an entirely local phenom- 

 enon, which takes place only where the chloroform comes in actual 

 contact." However it may act, it is certain that the hardening of the 

 muscles caused by it even lasts a long time after death, and in one 

 case the body of an animal thus injected was kept for a week with- 

 out exhibiting the least signs of putrefaction. 



CAUTERIZATION IN THE CASE OF POISONOUS BITES. 



IN the Comptes Rendus for Jan. 8th, we find an article by M. Par- 

 chappe, containing the result of his observations on the question, 

 whether the spread of poison produced by a bite can be prevented by 

 cauterizing. He was induced to examine into this subject, because M. 

 Renard had stated that cauterization was found to have no effect when 

 applied even within five minutes after the bite in the case of one sort 

 of virus, and within one hour in that of another. These results, he 

 was aware, though derived from experiments upon animals, would 

 weaken the confidence of physicians and patients in the only mode 

 that medicine possesses of preventing the bad effect of a bite from any 

 poisonous animal, where, as is generally the case, some considerable 

 time must elapse before the remedy can be applied. M. Parchappe 

 accordingly made several experiments upon dogs with an extract of 



