4G0 THIRD REPORT 1833. 



a considerable share of organic life, as it is known that muscles, 

 whose vitality is quite extinct, have no power of contraction. 

 In the experiment in which respiration was artificially main- 

 tained, the left side of the heart continued to beat for an hour, 

 the sustained function of the lungs affording to it a motive for 

 prolonged action ; but having been deprived of the influence 

 which the central parts of the nervous system extend to organs 

 in vital connexion with them, its powers of life were exhausted 

 by the long continuance of its motions, and when these ceased, 

 it was quite dead, and incapable of a vital contraction. The 

 right side of the heart in the last exioeriment seems to have 

 participated in the exhausted state of the left side, because its 

 motions had been performed with much more energy dui'ing 

 their continuance than would have been the case had not re- 

 spiration been artificially maintained. 



On the Mechanism and Physiology of the Urethra. By 

 Henry Earle, F.R.S., Professor of Anatomy and Surgery 

 to the Royal College of Surgeons. 



The author, having been lately engaged in delivering a course 

 of lectures on the anatomy and diseases of the urinary organs, 

 was led to prosecute his inquiries into the minute structure of 

 the urethra, and to avail himself of the aid of comparative ana- 

 tomy to elucidate the subject. The results of this inquiry he 

 related briefly to the Section, with a view of reconciling some 

 of the discordances of opinion at present existing, and of ex- 

 plaining the double functions of the organ. 



On the Nomenclature of Clouds. By Burt. 



In the course of some meteorological observations, Mr. Burt 

 found the variations in the forms of clouds to be so numerous, 

 that it was difl[icult, by the use of Mr. Howard's nomenclature, 

 to describe them with suflScient accuracy. 



In consequence, he suggests the propriety of defining the 

 leading sections of clouds by peculiarities of their external con- 

 stitution, and of characterizing the minor divisions by the ex- 

 ternal forms of the masses. 



