132 REPORT—1850. 
Greater accuracy is the result of cultivation. An artist can detect errors in the pro- 
portions of a figure, which will escape an uneducated eye. From these considera- 
tions it appears, that whilst the ear is learning to judge of successive sounds with 
the same facility with which the eye judges of successive spaces, the eye, again, is 
acquiring the power of the estimation of spaces in combination, with that extreme 
accuracy with which the ear estimates a combination of sounds. And it is reason- 
able to conclude with our author, that simplicity of proportion, which is so necessary 
an element to the satisfaction of the one sense, should be an essential element to the 
complete gratification of the other. The next position laid down by Mr. Hay is, 
that the eye is guided in its estimate by direction rather than by distance, just as 
the ear is guided by number of vibrations rather than by magnitude. The architect 
well knows that one elevation of a simple building is more agreeable than another ; 
but, on the application of numerical ratios to its measurement, he finds them to fail 
altogether. Artists, from the time of Albert Durer downwards, have measured the 
relative proportions of the human figure; but neither architects nor artists have, as 
yet, arrived at anything beyond the most vague and unsatisfactory inferences. This 
has arisen from their having taken length, and not direction, as their standard of 
comparison—from their having endeavoured to apply simplicity of linear, not of an- 
gular proportion. A picture frame, in which one side is half the other, is not of 
nearly so pleasing a shape as another in which one side is half the diagonal, or the 
angle which the diagonal makes with one side is half that which it makes with the 
other. 
The basis, then, of Mr. Hay’s theory is this, that a figure is pleasing to the eye 
in the same degree as its fundamental angles bear to each other the same propor- 
tions that the vibrations bear to one another in the common chord of music. Now, 
in music, the simplest divisions are by 2, 4, &c., which produce tonics; the next 
are divisions by 3, 6, &c., which produce dominants, and so on; and the chord is 
pleasing in proportion to the simplicity of the numbers which represent the vibra- 
tions of its constituent notes ; and the same thing is true of the fundamental angles 
of a figure, &c. 
On the use of the Bofareira (Ricinus communis of Botanists) as a means 
adopted by the Natives of the Cape de Verd Islands to excite Lactation. 
By J.O. M°WiiuiaM, U.D., R.N., RS, Surgeon to the Hon. the Board 
of Customs. 
The author, while engaged in an official investigation into the nature and history of 
a yellow fever epidemy prevailing on the island of Boa Vista in the Cape de Verds, 
had his attention drawn to a remedy commonly had recourse to there and in the 
other islands of the group, to accelerate and increase the flow of milk from the breasts 
of child-bearing women, in cases where that secretion was tardy in appearing, or 
deficient in quantity when it did appear. He also learnt, that on occasions of emer- 
gency this remedy could be successfully applied to a more important use, naniely, to 
cause the secretion of milk in the breasts of women who are not child-bearing, or who 
have not given birth to or suckled a child for many years, 
The leaves of a plant called in the language of the country Bofareira, but which 
in reality is the Ricinus communis of botanists, and occasionally the leaves of the 
Latropha curcas, both belonging to the natural family Euphorbiaceae, are the means 
by which these interesting, if not extraordinary results are produced. 
In cases where the appearance of milk is slow, the breasts are fomented at short 
intervals, during two or three hours, with a decoction made from the fresh leaves of 
the Ricinus. ‘Ihe boiled leaves are also spread over the breast, and allowed to remain 
until milk flows upon the application of a child to the nipple. When it is required 
to produce milk in the breasts of women who have not given birth to or suckled-a 
child for many years, in other words, when a ready-made nurse is suddenly wanted, 
the mode of treatment is somewhat more complicated. 
The author, in giving the results of his own experiments with the Bofareira while 
at Boa Vista, among other cases alludes to one in which, according to Consul-General 
Rendall, a woman who had not borne a child for ten years, was on an emergency ren- 
dered capable of doing the duty of a nurse in the course of three days. He was also 
