A GIGANTIC FOSSIL BIRD. 467 



The vital resistance of certain germs to heat is strikingly illustrated in 

 the third essay, one infusion being there proved to maintain its poten- 

 tiality of life intact after eight hours' continuous exposure to the tem- 

 perature of boiling water. Under the plain guidance of the germ 

 theory, it is, however, shown that an infusion of this stubborn character 

 may be infallibly sterilized by discontinuous heating, in one hundredth 

 part of the time requisite when the boiling is continuous. Another 

 question, to my mind of fundamental importance, is also disposed of in 

 Essay III, where it is shown that the germs which exhibited the fore- 

 going resistance are neither contained in the air, nor attached to the 

 surface of the vessel, above the liquid, but that they manifest their 

 extraordinary vitality in the body of the liquid itself. 



On public sympathy the sanitary physician has mainly to rely for 

 support, in a country where sanitary matters are left so much in the 

 hands of the public itself as they are in England. But sympathy 

 without cause that is to say, without some basis of knowledge is 

 hardly to be expected. It is as a contribution to such knowledge that 

 these essays have been collected, and thrown into their present handy 

 form. 



Koyal Ihbtitutioh, Avgust, 1881. 



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A GIGANTIC FOSSIL BIRD. 



By STANISLAS METXNIEE. 



THERE are really privileged persons within the scientific domain. 

 M. Gaston Plante, whose name is associated with a most im- 

 portant advance in electrical knowledge, enjoyed the opportunity, in 

 1855, of making, in a wholly different direction, a discovery in paleon- 

 tology that was of great interest. In a very curious bed of loam of 

 the Eocene tertiary formation, called the ossiferous conglomerate of 

 Men don, and which has now nearly disappeared, he found a bird's 

 tibia, which measured, though it was not whole, forty-five centimetres 

 in length. At first sight this great bone appeared to exhibit consider- 

 able analogies with the corresponding part of the swan, and differed 

 from it only by the presence of the subtrochlean groove, and by the 

 relatively high situation of the osseous arch, and the outer muscular 

 attachment. But what a contrast in the size ! An idea of it may be 

 gained from Fig. 2, A and B, which represent the tibia of the Meudon 

 bird to which Constant Prevost fittingly gave the name of Gastornis 

 (Gaston's bird) and the tibia of the common swan, on the same scale. 

 After M. Plante's discovery, a geological formation corresponding 

 exactly with the conglomerate of Meudon was found at Reims. Quite 

 recently, Dr. Lemoine has established the connection between the beds 



