106 Notices of Books. (January, 
food, in place of flavour and nutritive power. A certain amount 
of starch is doubtlessly needed to dilute the gluten, and facilitate. 
the process of bread making, but the latter is the blood-forming 
constituent. 
The author’s condemnation of the Kuhlman process for the de- 
tection of alum in bread is perfectly just. But if it ever has been 
‘cin the highest esteem” among chemists, it certainly is not so at 
present. To turn to alumina and sulphuric acid possibly present 
in salt as a means of explaining the occurrence of alum in bread, 
seems to us rather far-fetched. 
We share the author’s regrets that any baker should have 
been—as it is intimated—convicted wrongfully ; but still more 
do we regret that hundreds should have used alum and other 
sophistications all their lives, and should have escaped. 
Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria. Vol. X., February, 
1874. Melbourne: Stilwell and Knight. 
Ir is satisfactory to see that the cultivation of science is not entirely 
overlooked by the “Greater Britains” of the southern ocean. 
The present volume makes its appearance under peculiar auspices. 
A certain Government grant had been withdrawn in 1868, and 
since that time there had been no funds to issue any transactions, 
or even to pay for the printing of the volume which had last 
appeared. 
We are not quite satisfied with this explanation. We certainly 
hold that it is good policy on the part of Governments—as those 
of Germany are, and have long been, doing—to give every facility 
for the cultivation of science. We believe that museums, libraries, 
observatories, laboratories, founded and upheld at the national 
expense, will prove an excellent investment. But, in default of 
Government aid, great things may be accomplished by private 
munificence, as we see in the United States. It is scarcely 
creditable that so flourishing, energetic, and wealthy a com- 
munity as Victoria should allow the transactions of its chief 
learned society to le unpublished for want of funds ! 
The local administration has, it seems, repented at last of its 
mistaken parsimony, and the present volume has been prepared 
—under difficulties. Some of the papers, we are told, are alto- 
gether wanting; several have been returned to their authors: 
and some are not‘recoverable. We are happy to learn that there 
is ‘a prospect of greater regularity in the;issue of the trans- 
actions for the future.” 
Sanitary regulations, or rather their necessity, appear to be 
engaging much attention at Melbourne. In addition to a paper 
on the “ Decay of Gaspipes in Certain Soils,” one on ‘ Street 
