British Association for the Advancement of Science. 51 
as to render them unfit for their functions, and this disease ex- 
tended throughout the whole series of vessels, until it terminated 
in a kind of gelatinous pulp. Would this state of the vessels 
have considerable influence? and how far would it be concerned 
in producing that state of blood, always observed in cholera,— 
when the serum passes off, the blood becoming thick and black ? 
Many of the French, and some English, thought the nerves in 
cholera, on its appearance, were comparatively not so vascular, 
and not much diseased otherwise ; the par vagum, as it passes the 
subclavian artery, was enlarged like a ganglion. Even animals 
were seized with cholera, and preseted the same morbid appear- 
ance asin the human subject. 
Dr. Clanny could fully confirm all the observations of Dr. | 
Mackintosh. Dr. Holland inquired, what name he would give 
to the affection of the bowels ushering in the cholera, and what 
was the nature of cholera? Dr. Mackintosh replied, watery diar- 
rhea ; and he would have entered into the nature of the disease, 
if ‘fame could have been afforded him. 
Bust of Mecenas.—« It was long a cause of wonder and re- 
gret that no gem, medal, or statue of a man so illustrious, had ever 
been discovered. At length the Duke of Orleans, Regent of 
France, early in the last century, by a happy conjecture, fixed on 
one of the gems in his collection, an amethyst of small size, 
marked with the name of the engraver, Dioscorides, as being 
the representation of the head of Mecenas. Another gem, bear- 
ing the name of Solon, the engraver, evidently representing the 
same person, was afterwards found in the Farnesian Museum ; 
and a third of the same, a sardonyx, also engraved by Solon, has 
since been discovered in the collection of the Prince Ludovisi. 
The features given in these gems agree so well with all that has 
been ed down in the Roman classics, concerning the per- 
sonal appearance and habits of Mecenas, that the suggestion of 
the Duke of Orleans has been adopted by all subsequent anti- 
quaries. A few years after the recognition of the head of Mece- 
oa on the gems of Dioscorides and Solon, both artists coeval 
Augustus, an antique fresco painting was discovered in the 
er the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill at Rome. 
This painting represents Augustus surrounded by his courticrs, 
conferring a crown on the Persian king Phraates, an event spoken 
of by Horace. In the front rank of the courtiers stands one, evi- 
