380 Scientific Intelligence — Zoology. 



known, which seem to him calculated to open up a branch of industry 

 long forgotten in France, and to enrich agriculture with an entirely 

 new manure. These facts are derived principally from the unpub- 

 lished documents which M. Noel de la Moriniere, late General In- 

 spector of Fisheries, had collected for a General History of Fishes 

 among the Ancients and Moderns ; but he died after publishino- only 

 the first volume. His papers, first submitted to Cuvier, passed into 

 the hands of M. Valenciennes, who communicated them to M. de 

 Quatrefages. 



A very simple process is employed to extract the oil of herrings. 

 The fish are boiled in fresh water for five or six hours, and con- 

 stantly stirred. When the herrings are reduced to a pulp, the mass 

 is allowed to cool ; the oil swimming on the surface is then collected, 

 and clarified by filtering, or simply by pouiing it several times from 

 one vessel into another, and it is then put in barrels. It thus ap- 

 pears that the expression to hum herrings., which is used to express 

 this process, is far from giving an exact idea of it. 



The preparation of herring-oil, known in the thirteenth century, 

 and practised in France under Colbert, was carried on on a large 

 scale in Sweden in the last century. At first, only the gills and in- 

 testines of the fish, the parts removed before salting, were used ; 

 but afterwards the entire herrings were employed as the manufac- 

 ture became more lucrative. Places for carrying on the process 

 were formed on almost all the rocks along the sea-coast. The 

 burners had thus the means of transporting the fish to their esta- 

 blishments almost without expense, and likewise of easily getting 

 quit of the matter which remained in the bottom of the boilers after 

 the oil was extracted. This residuum, called tangrum, was thrown 

 into the sea. M, de Quatrefages proposes to make use of it as a 

 manure. — (VInstitut, No. 780, p. 382.) 



7. M. Pouchet on the Digestive and Circulating Organs of In- 

 fusory Animals. — Naturalists are not yet agreed with respect to the 

 degree of organisation which the greater part of the microzoary ani- 

 mals attain. Some deny them interior organs; others, on the con- 

 trary, think that they possess a somewhat complex vital apparatus. 

 M. Pouchet is of opinion that the imperfection of our knowledge, 

 relatively to the organisation of these animals, has been owing to 

 this, that, with the exception of the Vorticelli, which are ill fitted for 

 the study of the vital phenomena, the same individual has not been long 

 enough subjected to observation, as they suddenly disappear from the 

 field of the microscope. He has succeeded in making longer and 

 more accurate observations, by placing Microzpa on very fine lawn, 

 and pressing the latter slightly with the compressor. Meshes or in- 

 tervals were thus obtained from 0*10 to 0*12 of a millimetre, in 

 each of which he could usually retain only one of these animals of a 

 pretty considerable volume. There, without disabling them, one 

 could follow successively the mode of introducing the alimentary sub- 

 stances, the process by which these were divided in the stomachic 



