Manufacture of Catgut Strings. 269 



the failure must be attributed to the want of mercantile energy 

 in the person to whom it was recommended. Sufficient proof 

 has been afforded that the general principle is correct ; but 

 it would be too much to expect from a Highlander the activity 

 or perseverance, required for the establishment of such a manu- 

 facture in his own country. 



I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 



J. Mac Culloch. 



Art. V. Observations on the Theory which ascribes Secre- 

 tioit and Animal Heat to the Agency of Nerves. By 

 W. P. Alison, M.D., F.R.S.E., <?rc. 



As Dr. Wilson Philip has done me the honour to reply to 

 some of the objections I stated to that part of his physiological 

 doctrines which asserts the dependence of secretion on nervous 

 influence, I must beg permission to say a few words in defence 

 of my former paper, before proceeding to the proper object of 

 this. 



1. Dr. Philip speaks of the disadvantage under which I 

 labour in this inquiry, in consequence of not being an expe- 

 rimenter. This consideration might have been urged with 

 perfect justice, if I had taken upon^me to put my readers in 

 possession of any new facts in regard to the physiology of the 

 nervous system, or of secretion ; but as I have assigned myself, 

 in these papers, the humbler office of correcting what appear 

 to me to be unwarrantable inferences, that have been deduced 

 from facts already recorded, I thought the fairest way of proceed- 

 ing was to take the facts exactly as I find them stated by those 

 who have observed them. If I have in any place misunderstood 

 him, or any other author, or omitted any particulars which may 

 be thought important, I shall most willingly take his corrected 

 statements of the facts, as the basis of my reasonings ; and I 

 admit, without hesitation, that if these reasonings shall not hold, 

 ^n reference to those corrected statements^ they are of no value. 

 My object is merely to determine what inferences in regard to 



