120 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [March 



the best absorbent of foetid matter. The patent consists in an 

 easy mode of dropping dry earth on excreta and carrying it off, 

 charged with plaut-food, in pans. It is now being tried, with 

 excellent results, in the Kingston Penitentiary and other public 

 institutions. How far it can be adapted to the ordiniiry require- 

 mentsof city or of country life, during our severe winters, remains 

 to be seen. All who have the opportunity will do well to try experi- 

 ments in it, and communicate their results to the editor of this 

 department, who is also the Honorary Secretary of the Montreal 

 Sanitary Association. The experiment in the English camp 

 during the last unusually hot summer was marvellously satis- 

 factory ; all previous experiments, even with good closets and 

 drains, hadng more or less failed. 



The edls of the old system, even with a fiiir amount of sewering, 

 and a large average of closets, are terribly apparent in the con- 

 tinued, and even increased, mortality of Montreal, in spite of 

 increased vigilance on the part of the sanitary police. The death- 

 rate for 1868 amounts to within a fraction of forty per thousand, 

 or one in every twenty-five. The details will be discussed in the 

 ensuing number. 



p. P. c. 



Physiological. — At a recent meeting of the Royal Society 

 a paper was read by Mr. W. S. Savory, "On the Structure of the 

 Red Blood Corpuscle of Oviparous Vertebrata," which goes far to 

 overturn the conclusions accepted and held by many physiologists. 

 They have maintained that between the red blood corpuscle of 

 mammalia and that of other vertebrate classes a fundamental 

 distinction existed; the distinction being a nucleus in the red 

 corpuscle of the oviparous vertebrata. Mr. Savory shows, 

 according to the Athenanim, that this nucleus has no existence, 

 that the appciu-ance which has been mistaken for a nucleus is 

 merely a change which the blood undergoes after death, and by 

 being kept too long before it is put under the microscope for 

 examination. And he describes a method by which the formation 

 of the so-called nuclei can be observed and their fictitious 

 character detected. Assuming that tliis view is well founded, it 

 follows, to quote Mr. Savory's words, " that the red corpuscle of 

 all vetrebrata is in its natural state structureless." 



