308 Antidote for Vegetable Potsons.—Preparation of Coal. 
by the movements of the ribs, during inspiration, and its con- 
traction during exspiration, were fully explained, and partly il- 
lustrated by a machine, which exemplified the effects of the mo- 
tion of the diaphragm. This part of the subject was concluded 
by an account of the peculiar mechanism of respiration in birds, 
by which the same air is made to pass twice through the lungs, 
before it is finally ejected from the system; being received into 
large cells, which inclose all the principal organs, and even per- 
vade the muscles, and subcutaneous membrane. 
Dr. Roget next gave a brief account of the chemical changes 
effected in the blood, which is exposed to the action of the air 
during respiration. Our knowledge of these changes, he re- 
marked, was not so much derived from the direct analysis of 
that fluid in its different states of venous and arterial, as from 
the inferences necessarily to be drawn from the changes found 
to have occurred in the air by its passage through the lungs. 
These changes consist in the disappearance of a quantity of oxy- 
gen, and the addition of a corresponding quantity of carbonic 
acid, and of watery vapour. The redundant carbonaceous prin- 
ciple which accumulates in venous blood in the course of the cir- 
culation, is thus discharged in the lungs by its combination with 
oxygen, and the blood is restored to the ‘vivifying arterial qua- 
lities. The analogies between this process, and that of slow com- 
bustion, were pointed out, and extended to the phenomena of 
the high temperature which so many animals maintain above 
the surrounding media, and which establishes so striking a di- 
stinction between warm- and cold-blooded animals, more espe- 
cially remarkable among the larger inhabitants of the ocean. 
ANTIDOTE FOR VEGETABLE POISONS. 
M. Drapiez has ascertained by numerous experiments, that 
the fruit of Feuillea cordifolia is a powerful antidote against 
vegetable poisons. He poisoned dogs by the Rhus Toxicoden- 
dron (Swamp Sumac), Hemlock, and Nux Vomica. All those 
that were left to the poison died; but those to which the Feu- 
illea was administered recovered completely, after a short illness. 
— American Paper. 
IMPROVED PREPARATION OF COAL FOR FUEL. 
Mr. Peter Davey, of Old Swan Wharf, Chelsea, has obtained 
a patent for an improved preparation of coal for fuel. It is called 
‘* gaseous coke,” and consists of ‘¢ very small coal mixed with 
coal tar, either in a pure state, which is the best, or combined 
with naphtha, and those other ingredients with which it is gene- 
rally 
