752 Meeting of the British Association. [Oct., 
He then showed that the coarse foods, once so largely employed by 
the labouring classes, had gone out of use because the labourer had 
now better wages, the taste was not so agreeable as the finer foods, and 
they could only be used intermittingly. The nature of the diet em- 
ployed in various districts of the country was discussed, and the 
question of the digestibility of food was considered under the various 
heads of kind, quantity, and conditions under which it acts. An 
interesting discussion followed, in which Professors Acland and Rol- 
leston, Sir John Richardson, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and other 
gentlemen took a part. 
“On a Supplementary System of Nutrient Arteries for the Lungs.” 
By Wm. Turner, M.B., F.R.S.E. An arterial plexus was described on 
the side of the pericardium beneath the mediastinal pleura. It was 
formed by the junction of the pericardiac, mediastinal, and phrenic 
branches of the internal mammary artery with each other and with 
numerous fine branches from the trunks of the intercostal arteries. 
From it a number of slender thread-like arteries passed to the lung, 
some in front of its root, others behind, and others between the layers 
of the ligamentum latum pulmonis. Some of these arteries were dis- 
tributed in the substance of the lung; others, on its surface beneath 
the pulmonic pleura. Through the agency of this plexus, an arterial 
communication is established between the blood vessels of the lung 
and the arteries which supply the wall of the chest with blood. 
Report by Dr. Foster, “On Muscular Irritability.” The conclu- 
sions drawn from the statements made by numerous experimenters 
were as follow :—That the urari experiments are inconclusive, because 
it is not proved that the ultimate nerve branches are affected like the 
penultimate. That Eckhard’s anelectronic experiment is inconclusive, 
because irritability is by it only lowered, not entirely suspended. That 
the series of chemical stimuli experiments by Wittich, Kihne, &e., are 
inconclusive, for the same reason as the urari series; but that the fact 
that chemical stimulation will take place during the anelectronic effect 
of the constant current shows, either the contractile tissue is of itself 
irritable, or that no confidence can be placed in Eckhard’s arguments, 
and that one experiment of Kuhne’s on that point is almost an experi- 
mentum crucis. That, on the whole, the evidence of the above series 
is decidedly in favour of the existence of muscular irritability. That 
the experiments and observations of Kihne, Auerbach, and Aeby show 
that the idio-muscular contractions of Schiff are in reality ordinary 
contractions in an abortive state and not a special form of contraction ; 
and that the same observations offer connecting links between the 
oscillatory contractions witnessed by Mr. Bowman, and shown by him 
to be clearly not due to nervous action, and so afford proof that in a 
muscular contraction there are two things to be considered — the 
putting certain molecules in movement, and the communication of that 
movement from those molecules with greater or less rapidity to all the 
rest of the fibre; and that since the first movement may commence 
anywhere, the whole fibre must be called irritable. 
“On the Presence of Indigo in Purulent Discharges.” Dr. Hera- 
