622 Analysis of Books. [Sept. 



periment be not repeated too soon or too frequently, the worms 

 retain their reviviscent quiUity much longer ; the lonj^est period 

 of recovery, after a second suspension, 1 have hitherto ascer- 

 tained, was eight months. 



" If the worms are kept alive in water for a week or ten days, 

 the experiment cannot be repeated so often, but the intervals 

 of suspension may be prolonged considerably. I made the ex- 

 periment very recently with grains which were three years and ten 

 days old, and dry. After extracting the worms from the grains, 

 I kept them in water 35 days, and after they had again been 15 

 days perfectly dry, I supplied them with water, and in less 

 than twelve hours' soaking they were again, almost every indi- 

 vidual, in as lively motion as if they had just been taken 

 from fresh grains of the growing plant. I had the pleasure of 

 showing these worms, in that state, to several Members of the 

 Society, on the 29th of September last ; after that day, I pre- 

 served the same specimens 18 days, perfectly dry ; when, sup- 

 plying them with water, I found, in less than three hours, at 

 least one-third of them in lively motion ; but the next morn- 

 ing, after they had just been 16 hours in water, they were all 

 dead. If these worms are kept in a large glass, where the 

 water cannot evaporate, they remain alive more than three 

 months, but then they gradually die, and become as straight as 

 needles." The glutinous substance in which the worms are 

 preserved must be secreted by them, " since in grains in which 

 the worms and the fungi or smutballs exist, that portion of the 

 cellular tissue of the young germens, where a worm has 

 formed its nest and laid its eggs, is entirely preserved ; whilst 

 in those portions of the grains which are immediately in con- 

 tact with the fungi, the cellular tissue entirely disappears, and 

 the fungi are only enveloped by the external tunic of the young 

 gennen." 



This lecture is illustrated with two engravings from microsco- 

 pical drawings by the author; one representing the diseased 

 wheat, and the other the woims themselves. 



II. On Metallic Titanium. By W. H. Wollaston, MD. 

 VPRS.— (See Annals, v. 67.) 



" My attention," Dr. Wollaston remarks, " has been directed, 

 by various friends, especially by Professor Buckland, who 

 gave me the subject of my experiments, to certain very small 

 cubes, having the lustre of burnished copper, that occasionally 

 are found in the slag of the great iron-works at Merthyr Tydvil, 

 in Wales, which, from their hue, have, by some persons, been 

 imagined to be pyritical. Their colour, however, is not truly 

 that of any sulphuret of iron that I have seen ; and though 

 the form be cubic, it is not the striated cube of common iron- 

 pyrites, which so often passes into the pentagonal dodecahe- 

 dron, but similar to that of common salt ; for any marks, that 

 are to be discerned on their surfaces, appear as indented 

 squares instead of striae. 



