Scientific Intelligence. Meteorology. 



posed, offers no exception to the law ; and if the circumstances 

 of the case are such as to preclude the generation copiously of 

 animal heat, the consequences are very serious ; persons who 

 incautiously sleep, sentries on duty, &c. become occasionally 

 even victims. When attentively examined in this state, they 

 seem like icicles, cold and wet, shrunk and livid ; all the blood 

 has 'left the superficial vessels, and become engorged in the 

 large venous trunks ; congestion takes place in the brain, pro- 

 ducing a state precisely similar to that form of apoplexy which 

 occurs in persons perishing in snow-storms, and I have known 

 cases when this apoplectic condition has terminated in paralysis 

 either of the face or of the limbs, and in one instance in death. 

 When interrogated, those who have suffered slightly from it, 

 state the consciousness of extreme cold against which they could 

 not make head, then insensibility to cold, and afterwards a 

 drowsiness which gradually overpowered them ; a description 

 which tallies exactly with that of Banks and Solanderin relation 

 to their suffering from excessive cold in South America, and to 

 which the latter nearly fell a victim. The means, also, of reco- 

 vering them is precisely similar, a gradual approach to natural 

 temperature, with a cautious use of stimulants. Officers on 

 night duty in India, leaving their warm quarters, on pickets, 

 have sometimes suffered similarly from the carrying power of 

 the damp air, in which they have been forced to remain for 

 some time, serious illnesses having been entailed on them. May 

 this be looked upon as a primary, or at least an auxiliary agent 

 in the production of agues, from its tendency to lower the ani 

 mal powers ? 



ANIMAL ELECTRICITY. 



9. Experiments of M. Mattered upon the Torpedo. M. 

 Donne has sent to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, the ex- 

 tract of a letter, in which M. Matteucci gives the conclusions to 

 which he has come from experiments upon thirty-six torpedoes. 

 \st 9 The electrical discharge of the torpedo is obtained, although 

 the skin covering the organ has been removed, and although 

 slices of the electrical apparatus itself have been cut out. &J, 

 When the torpedo does not of its own will emit a discharge, it is 

 impossible to obtain, in the interior of the organ, try what part 



VOL. XXII. NO, XLIH. JANUARY 1837. N 



