Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 1 75 



can (even approximately) be ascertained from the observations of one 

 night. 



"5. If the first night's observations are not sufiicient to determine 

 all these points with sufficient accuracy, the discoverer must, as soon 

 as he gets a second observation, send another communication as 

 above directed, together with a statement of the longitude of the 

 place, if it should not be a known observatory : but the hope of get- 

 ting a second observation will not be admitted as an excuse for de- 

 laying the communication of the first. 



" 6. The medal is to be adjudged twelve months after the disco- 

 very of the comet, and no claim can be admitted after that period 

 has elapsed. 



" 7. Professor Schumacher and Mr. Airy are to determine wliether 

 a discovery is to be considered as established or not : but should 

 they diifer in opinion, Professor Gauss, of Gottingen, is to decide 

 between them." 



The President then announced that, iu pursuance of a resolution 

 of the Council, which had been duly intimated to the Fellows, as re- 

 quired by the Bye-Laws, the business of the Ordinary Meeting would 

 now be concluded, and that a Special General Meeting would be 

 held immediately, for the purpose of hearing read a Memoir of the 

 late President, which Sir John Herschel, upon the request of the 

 Council, had undertaken to prepare, and which will be found in the 

 last Number, p. 38. 



XIX. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Ai'ticles. 



M. MATTEUCCI ON ELECTRO-PHYSIOLOGY. 



THE following are some of the most important of the experiments 

 detailed in M. Matteucci's recently published work on Electro- 

 Physiology, which were shown by him to several members of the 

 British Association at York in September last : — 



1st. The Muscular Current. — If the sciatic nerve of the limb of a 

 prepared frog be made to touch at the same time the external and 

 internal muscle of a living or recently-killed animal, the limb is con- 

 vulsed. By forming a series of external and internal muscles, for 

 instance, severing the lower halves of the thighs of a certain number 

 of frogs, and inserting the knee of the one into the central muscle of 

 the second, and so on, a voltaic pile will be formed, six or eight ele- 

 ments of which M. Matteucci showed M'ere capable of deflecting a 

 galvanometer, or producing convulsions in an electroscopic fi-og. 



The direction of the voltaic current is from the interior to the ex- 

 terior of the muscle, and the current is more feeble in proportion as 

 the animal is higher in the scale of creation. 



2nd. M. Matteucci explained the specific voltaic current (courant 

 propre) of the frog as being a current which is detected only in the 

 frog, and which is directed from the feet to the head of the animal. 



3rd. M. Matteucci showed an experiment by which it appeared 

 that a muscle whilst undergoing contraction is capable of exciting 

 the nerve of another recently-killed animal, so as to produce muscu- 



