9]# PJaOC£EDIN6S OF PROVINCIAL SOCIETIES. 



recent applications of botany in forwarding the progress of agricul- 

 ture and commerce, the lecturer concluded with an exposition of the 

 successful enteri)rise of the distinguised continental engineer, M. 

 Bremontier, in reclaiming, from utter barrenness, dunes, or shifting 

 sand-hills, along the sea-coast, by planting vegetables having pecu- 

 liar roots, and afterwards sowing broom, mixed with the seeds of 

 the sea- pine, &c. Every few years, such reclaimed wildernesses 

 now actually yield a profitable harvest to the cultivators of these 

 previously sterile tracts, by supplying the materials for an extensive 

 manufacture of tar and resin to meet the various demands for pur- 

 poses of general commerce, navigation, and agriculture. This suc- 

 cessful enterprise of Bremontier's has been justly characterized as 

 the most splendid agricultural undertaking of any age. 



WORCESTER LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTION. 



jLECTURE ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM OF MAN AND THE INFERIOR 

 ANIMALS, BY E. A. TURLEY, ESQ. 



This gentleman delivered last year, in the Athenaeum, a course 

 of four lectures, shewing the effect produced on society by the pro- 

 pensities of attachment, combativeness, destructiveness, and secre- 

 tiveness. The present lecture is a continuation of that course. 



After some very apposite proemial observations, the lecturer said 

 that, being moved by daily witnessing the distress and misery occa- 

 sioned by neglect of the first principles of health, he meant to devote 

 three lectures in the ensuing year to the moral and physical educa- 

 tion of the body. He had, in his former lectures, endeavoured to 

 «hew that a nerve, or analogous structure, formed the link which 

 united together animate and inanimate bodies, figuratively, termed 

 the two great kingdoms of the earth. Bone is chiefly lime ; blood 

 chiefly water, with salts, carbon, and other admixtures ; muscles are 

 but carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen : yet these, when united in one 

 organized body, endowed with a nervous system, and put in action, 

 become a living animal, gifted with sensations, instinct, mind^ and 

 capabilities, proportioned to its organization. As living creatures 

 differ in their kind and in their instincts, so does a knowledge of 

 their nervous system exhibit the laws regulating their instincts or 

 different economies ; and it is found that those animals which are 

 formed v/ith a more elaborate nervous system are, also, endowed 

 with more complicated instincts, and exhibit, in their action, more 

 evidence of their approach to reason. Mr. Turley had, also, in his 

 former lectures, explained that the simplest nervous system consists 

 of a few globules of whitish matter, endowed vvdth sensation and 

 motion ; which globules ^re sometimes formed into a roundish knot, 

 germed a ganglion. These ganglia are placed in different parts of 



