ZOOLOGY, 



ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF THEORIES IN PHYSIOLOGY. 



THE facility with which theories are extemporized by many who have 

 little or no knowledge of the nervous structure, is only surpassed by the 

 facility and confidence with which men attribute phenomena to electricity. 

 It may be well, therefore, to state that our knowledge of the nervous system 

 is at present in its infancy; we have not even established a secure basis; we 

 have not established the primary data. To quote the emphatic language of 

 one who has given his life to the subject, " Our knowledge even of the 

 coarser framework of the nervous system is still too much in its infancy to 

 permit us to venture, with any success, on the construction of theories 

 respecting the functions of its various elements." STILLING, Ueber den 

 Ban der Nerven-primitivfaser. 



ON THE SO-CALLED CHOLERA CORPUSCLES, OR FUNGI. 



Dr. Lander Lindsay, of England, in a recent publication, makes the folio w- 

 ing remarks on the fungus origin of cholera : 



"The isolated or disintegrated individual cells of the tissues probably 

 include many, if not most, of the 'annular bodies/ 'cholera corpuscles/ or 

 'fungi/ which so startled the histological and medical world during the 

 cholera epidemic of 1848-9. At least the ultimate elements of these tissues 

 or substances, as obsex^ved by myself, correspond in their character to those 

 published as delineative of the bodies in question by their original discover- 

 ers. I believe that potatoes, oatmeal, bread, and the vegetables of common 

 broth, will furnish most of the forms of the once famed 'annular bodies;' 

 that they are not, therefore, fungoid in their nature or origin ; and that they 

 have no essential or causative relation to cholera. I have found them 

 equally in other diseases as in the stools of diarrhoea and dysentery. * * 

 It will be evident, then, that I can see no satisfactory groundwork for the 

 fungus-theory of cholera, which, I am not a little surprised to find, still pos- 

 sesses powerful advocates." 



CURIOUS INSECT DEPREDATIONS. 



At a recent sitting of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, Marshal Valliant 

 drew attention to the fact that a number of balls in the cartridges brought 

 from the Crimea had been pierced partly or entirely through by an insect, be- 

 longing apparently to the tribe ffymenoptera. As the piercings are evidently 

 not made for the purpose of shelter, and as no fragments from them could be 

 found, the inference is that the insect eats the lead and yet French ento- 



