390 Proceedings of Philosophical Societies. [May, 
fibre. Residents in the West Indies avail themselves of this pro- 
petty, to intenerate .their butcher’s-meat and poultry. For this 
purpose it has been found that even the exhalation from the stem 
and leaves is sufficient, and the meat is accordingly hung for about 
half an hour ona bough of the papaw-tree. The wholesomeness of 
the meat is not affected by this process. Vauquelin examined the 
papaw juice, but found nothing remarkable in it; but the subject 
of its intenerating effects requires to be further inquired into. At 
present we do not know what share the tropical temperature may 
have in these results, nor how long after the animal is killed these 
effects may be produced. 
March 2.—There was read the first part of a paper by Mr. Ste- 
venson, civil engineer, on the probability of a change gradually 
taking place on the level of the German Ocean. In this first part 
Mr. Stevenson treated only of the wasting effects of the tides upon 
our shores. He mentioned that in the course of making profes- 
sional inquiries regarding the impression which the tidal waters of 
the Frith of Forth are making upon some of the most valuable pro- 
perties situated upon its banks, he was led to compare these with 
other observations that have occurred to him in his extensive inter- 
course with the shores of about one half of Ireland, and the whole 
coast of Great Britain from Shetland to the Scilly Islands. In 
doing this he began with the shores of the Frith of Forth, and 
then proceeded northward along the eastern coast to the Moray 
Frith, Caithness, and the Orkney and Shetland Islands; next 
slightly noticed the Lewis, and the western parts of Scotland; then 
the eastern shores of England, and the British and St. George’s 
Channels. All these places afford many striking examples of the 
wasting operations of the sea upon the land. ; 
hese effects of the sea are not confined to the shores of the 
German Ocean and the British Channel ; for the wasting of the 
land is no less remarkable in St. George’s Channel and the Irish 
Sea, including the coast of Ireland on the one side, and on the 
other the shores of Wales, Lancashire, Westmoreland, and the 
counties of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Galloway, where neither 
the rocky coasts, and exposed situations of the Islands of Anglesea, 
Man, Copland, Craig of Ailsa, and the Islands of Cumbrae, nor the 
sheltered and alluvial shores of the British Channel, are exempted : 
even the indentations of the coast at Dublin Bay, Liverpool, and 
Lancaster, and the more extensive Friths of the Solway and the 
Clyde, are subject to the unvarying destructive effects of the sea 
upon the land. He concluded that the disintegrating and wearing 
effects of the waters of the ocean are general. Whether we con- 
template its effects upon the land by the immediate and powerful 
impulse of the waves at the base of a rocky shore, or, with the 
elegant and profotinnd illustrator of the Huttonian theory, traee it in 
the form of rain, rills, and torrents, in the higher regions, we find 
its effects all tending to one unvarying principle, the degradation of 
the land, and consequent tendency to filling up at the bottom of 
