372 Scientific Intelligence.— Zoology. 



of the heart and bloodvessels in a gannet {Sula alba). In the 

 ganuet, which nearly equals in size the diver, there is not that 

 inordinate dilatation of the great veins leading to the heart, so 

 remarkable in that bird. Although the gannet lives on fish, its 

 food is taken by a mode different from that adopted by the diver. 

 Like the eagle, it pounces suddenly on its prey from a height, 

 when discovered near the surface of the water, and then carries 

 it up to some dry spot, impaled in its strong sharp bill. It is 

 not habituated, like the diver, to lengthened stoppages under 

 water, and stands not in need of those provisions, so amply 

 given that bird by nature, to obviate the derangements which its 

 circulatory and respiratory organs might be exposed to, during 

 repeated efforts of submersion. — J. H."" — " Our admiration of 

 this beautiful provision will be increased, when we reflect on the 

 consequences of its absence in man, a being never intended for 

 long submersion. But when, from disease, the circulation, ei- 

 ther in the lung or the right side of the heart becomes inter- 

 rupted, we then find that the condition of the venae cavae hepa- 

 ticae represents, to a certain degree, their natural state in these 

 animals duriitg submersion. They become turgid, enlarged, 

 and the congestion extends to the liver; but as no provision has 

 been made for such an occurrence, this organ swells by conges- 

 tion, and the vessels relieve themselves by pouring out their se- 

 rum. Dropsy results, and continues until the obstruction is re- 

 moved, when it disappears, but certainly to return on every renewal 

 of the central obstruction. Here the effect of disease is exactly 

 that of a prolonged diving ; and as there is no apparatus for the 

 reception of the blood, its accumulation becomes a source of evil. 

 Before leaving this subject, we may remark, that those physio- 

 loofists who are disposed to adopt the doctrine of Serres, namely, 

 that in many cases disease in man only represents or reproduces 

 the normal state of organs in lower animals, might find, in the 

 state of the hepatic circulation in cases of obstruction of the pul- 

 monary heart, some analogy to the venous development of the 

 amphibia and cetacea." — Dublin Journal of Med. and Chem. 

 Science, No. xviii. vol. vi. p. 435. 



18. Introduction of Frogs into Ireland. — It is not generally 

 known that the introduction of frogs into Ireland is of compa- 

 ratively recent date. In the seventeenth number of the Dublin 



