298 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



sions to an exclusive rank among animals. That we should unite a 

 conscience and a spiritual nature with a bodily framework inferior in 

 strength and little superior (if it be so) in delicacy to some other 

 mammalia, would be the strongest possible confirmation of our title to 

 this rank. Nor would this title be the least affected by any theory 

 about the mode of our creation, gratuitous and worthless as such a 

 theory must ever be. There would be nothing more derogatory to 

 Omnipotence, or even to human nature, in the conjecture that man 

 did not become a living soul till he had passed through several lower 

 stages of animal life, than in the doctrine that he was formed imme- 

 diately out of the dust of the ground ; nor would he cease to be a 

 little lower than the angels if the elements of his body could be 

 analyzed into an original monad. The difference between the two 

 views is that we have the highest authority known for the one, while 

 the other has no basis but a set of disputed facts which cannot possi- 

 bly prove more than that something which was not human once ex- 

 isted in human shape. It is one thing to show that a brute may have 

 organs as perfect as a man ; it is another thing to prove that man is 



nothing but a highly-educated brute. 



s 



ZOOLOGICAL SUMMARY. 



Absorbing Power of the Human Skin. Dr. Murray Thomson, 

 lecturer on chemistry at the Edinburgh School of Medicine, relates 

 some experiments which he tried on his own person to ascertain the 

 truth of the statements made as to the curative power of mineral 

 water baths, depending on the absorption by the skin of certain salts 

 and other substances which they hold in solution ; and, further, to as- 

 certain whether certain substances applied in the form of ointments, 

 etc., pass through the skin and reach the blood before they produce 

 any beneficial effect. His conclusions are: "Not only has absorp- 

 tion by the skin been greatly exaggerated, but in the case of sub- 

 stances in aqueous solution it seems to be the exception, not the rule, 

 for absorption to take place ; and, in the case of ointments, etc., some 

 substances so applied seem to be absorbed and others not." Mercury 

 is absorbed by the skin, but Dr. Thomson's experiments have led him 

 to conclude that the iodide of potassium, which is in very common 

 use by doctors, is not absorbed, and its applications maybe abandoned. 



Value of Pisciculture. At the meeting of the British Association, 

 1862, Mr. Thomas Ashworth, as an illustration of what may be ac- 

 complished by attending to the improvement of fisheries, stated that 

 at Galway, Ireland, the salmon-fisheries had, within ten years, been 

 rendered ten times more productive. This great improvement has 

 been chiefly owing to the great care taken in preserving the streams 

 during the breeding season, at an expenditure of five hundred pounds, 

 and by introducing young salmon, artificially bred, into streams fitted 

 for them, but from which the fish had before been excluded, owing to 

 impediments preventing access from the sea. These impediments 

 have either been removed or avoided by means of ladders so con- 

 structed as to render the passage to and from the sea easy. A striking 

 example was given of a river, in the county of Sligo, Ireland, which 

 had been made productive by means of ladders, which are placed 



