572 Chronicles of Science. [ Oct., 
“immersed in boiling water” to stop this growing propensity before 
submitting to the drying process, and yet more than a year and a 
half afterwards it showed symptoms of vitality, and in May, 1868, 
it produced its beautiful flowers in the Royal Gardens at Kew. 
This plant is figured in ‘Curtis’s Botanical Magazine’ for 
August, 1863. 
Brietum.—The Cryptogamic Origin of Intermittent or Marsh 
Fevers.— The writings of Dr. Salisbury on this subject have induced 
Dr. Hannon, Professor of Botany in the University of Brussels, to 
send to the ‘Journal de Médecine de Bruxelles, Avril, 1866, a very 
interesting letter on the same topic, from which it appears that Dr. 
Hannon entertains precisely the same views as Dr. Salisbury, on 
the influence which the spores of the alge which grow in the 
marshes exercise in the genesis of these fevers, but he assures us 
that the facts contended for by the distinguished English physician 
have been long known in Belgium. “In 1843,” says Dr. H., “I 
studied at the University of Liege. Professor Charles Morren had 
created in me such an amount of enthusiasm in the study of the 
physiology of the fresh-water algze, that the windows and mantel- 
piece of my chamber were encumbered with plates filled with 
Vaucheria, Oscillatoria and Conferve. My preceptor conversed 
with pleasure on my observations on these algze, and each time he 
said to me, ‘ Take care, at the period of their fructification the spores 
of the alge give intermittent fever. I have had it every time that 
I have studed them too closely.’ As I cultivated my alge in pure 
water and not in the water of the marsh where I had gathered them, I 
did not attach any importance to his remark. I suffered for my 
carelessness. A month later, at the period of their fructification, 
I was taken with a shivering; my teeth chattered ; I had the fever, 
which lasted six weeks. I removed from Liege to Brussels and 
recovered under the treatment of Dr. Alphonse Leclercq. I related 
to Professor Morren what had happened to me. ‘ You see,’ said he, 
‘that I was right ; and you are not the only one that I have known 
become fevered through a similar cause.’ ” 
Avustria.—Professor Unger has communicated to the Imperial 
Academy of Sciences at Vienna, a paper on the vegetable and 
animal remains and relics of manufacturing art, contained in a 
brick taken from one of the Egyptian pyramids. He examined a 
brick from the pyramid of Dashour, which dates back from between 
3400 and 3300 B.c., and found imbedded in the Nile mud or 
slime of which it is composed, animal and vegetable remains so 
perfectly preserved that he had no difficulty whatever in identifying 
them. Besides two sorts of grain he found the following familiar 
plants, Pisum arvense, Linum usitatissimum, Raphanus raphan- 
istrum, Chrysanthemum segetum, Euphorbia helioscopia, Chenopo- 
