456 Zoology, 



Melissa officinalis, or common balm, he says, it is observable that its green 

 leaves, which yield a muscadine red to water, give a pure and perfect 

 green to spirit of wine, which no other plant that he had tried would yield. 

 He infused both the leaves and flowers of plants in various menstruums, for 

 the purpose of discovering the true combination and attraction of the con- 

 stituents of their colouring matter. He observed that oil received a green 

 from plants by infusion, but not a perfect blue, neither would spirit of wine ; 

 but water received all colours except a perfect green. 



The theory of Grew was built on the supposition, that there exists a set 

 of vessels, or, as he terms them, lymphaeducts, that abound in a compound 

 of sulphur and acid, which is favourable to the production of blues, reds, 

 and purples ; whilst another set, which he terms air-vessels, contain a sub- 

 alkaline salt, that mixes with the essential oil of the vegetable, and pro- 

 duces a green colour. The predominance of the lymphaeducts, charged 

 with their own compound in various proportions, or in various combina- 

 tions with the air-vessels, gives, he argues, all the beautiful variety of 

 colours exhibited in the vegetable creation. 



The production of the different colours in vegetables by the predomi- 

 nance of acids or alkalies, we have found to be prettily shown by the follow- 

 ing experiment : — 



Make an infusion, by pouring hot water on the dried petals of red roses 

 (JBosa centifolia) usually kept by druggists ; it will have but little colour till 

 a small quantity of liquor potassae be added, when the infusion will become 

 perfectly green ; add sulphuric acid, and it will become red ; and the colour 

 may be alternately changed by the predominance of the acid or alkali. If 

 the infusion be made of alcohol in lieu of water, it will at first be colour- 

 less, but the result will be the same. {Maund's Botanic Garden^ vol. ij. 

 part i. No. 146.) 



Art. II. Zoology. 



A South American Variety or Species of the Genus Yibmo. — If the 

 education of the first animal, man, be a subject suited to a Magazine of Natu- 

 ral History, surely occasional notices of any new species or varieties of that 

 extensive genus Homo, would well comport with the design and execution 

 of this work. Mr. Deville exhibited, a short time since, some skulls of a 

 South American tribe of the human race, of which drawings would be de- 

 sirable. It is said that this race is, or is supposed to be, extinct ; but what- 

 ever tends to elucidate the natural history of ourselves, must be preemi- 

 nently useful towards the completion of our knowledge, and the correction 

 of our judgment. — J. R. 



A Spotted Child. — There is now exhibiting in a travelling caravan, a fine 

 healthy boy between two and three years old, who was born at Rochester, 

 Kent, of healthy English parents. This child is in several parts of the 

 body covered with considerable patches of brown hair of close texture, 

 and soft and silky to the touch. The patches, in fact, are nothing more, so 

 far as I could perceive by a cursory examination, than very large hairy moles 

 or birth-marks, uncommon when occurring so large as in this instance, but 

 otherwise by no means uncommon. Birth-marks, it may be observed, are 

 sometimes dangerous as forming the beginnings of cancer, &c., but this does 

 not occur, perhaps, so frequently with the hairy as with the livid sorts. — 

 J.R. 



Inferior Bextenty of the Left Hand. — M. Le Comte refers the inferior 

 power of the left arm to the {position of the foetus during the last months 

 of gestation, the left side being usually pressed against the bones of the 



