Miscellaneous Intelligence. 331 



meagre habits, to the enjoyment of the warmth and luxuries of the human 

 stomach ; for these facts, though not personally conversant with them, I have 

 the authority of a medical gentleman of unquestionable veracity, to vouch for 

 their rigid truth. In reply to my request to be informed of the habits, food, 

 drink, enjoyment, &c. of the patient, I received the following account: — " On my 

 arrival I found that she (the patient) had puked up two ground puppies, and was 

 labouring under a violent sick stomach, with pain, and syncope : the first was 

 dead when ejected, the second was alive when I arrived, and ran about the 

 room ; they were about three inches long. She informed me, that on the road 

 that morning she had thrown up two others. The case occurred in the summer, 

 and had made gradual progress, from the first of April, and as she described it, 

 with a peculiar sickness, and frequent sensation of something moving in her 

 stomach ; with slight pain and loss of appetite, which increased till her illness. 

 She was about twenty years of age, and had enjoyed good health. Her employ- 

 ment had confined her in the swamp, during the winter and spring, and she had 

 from necessity, constantly drunk swamp water.'' The physician administered 

 an emetic in quest of more puppies, but, being disappointed, he gave an opiate; 

 she was relieved, finally, and has been since in health. 



These animals have since been shown to me : they are not the ground puppy, 

 (gecko,) as they are vulgarly called. They resemble it very much, but are easily 

 distinguished from it. They belong to the same genns, (laceita or lizard,) but 

 are of the species "salamander;" their habitudes too, are essentially different. 

 The gecko is found in houses and warm places; the salamander in cold 

 damp places, and shaded swamps, and by the streams of meadows; these ani- 

 mals, though oviparous, hatch their eggs iu the belly like the vipour, and pro- 

 duce about fitly young at a birth. The inference is irresistible, that the patient 

 had, in her frequent draughts of swamp water, swallowed, perhaps thousands of 

 these animals in their nascent, or most diminutive state of existence, and a few 

 only survived the shock ; but it is matter of astonishment, that from the icy 

 element in which they had commenced their being, and for which they were 

 constituted by nature, they should bear this sudden transportation to a situation 

 so opposite in its character, and grow into vigorous maturity, unannoyed by the 

 active chemical and mechanical powers to whose operations they were subjected. 

 — SUlimati's Journal, vol. xvi. No. I. p. 41. 



A singularly brilliant golden green Light.— When making' a tour in Corn- 

 wall in the year 1815, I was struck by a " singularly brilliant golden green 

 light," similar to that described in our Magazine (Vol. II. p. 406.) On 

 looking into a small cavern by the roadside, near Penryn, I observed in its 

 recesses a small moss (apparently minute plants of Dicranum taxifoliuin), 

 which, when seen in some particular positions, appeared of a most beauti- 

 ful emerald-green colour with a phosphorescent brilliancy. Iu De Luc's 

 Geological Travels, vol. iii. p. 131., is the following 1 account of a similar 

 phenomenon: "Passing, by Botter Rock, Mr. Hill led me to a part of the 

 foot of that Tor, where there are hollows like small. caverns; and in these 

 he showed me a vegetable phenomenon, which I had never seen but in the 

 granitic mountains separating the country of Bay reuth from Bohemia. The 

 innermost part of these cavities is lined with a very pretty moss, which 

 reflects the light in the same manner as the eyes of a cat. So little light 

 reaches these remote recesses, that, on looking in from without, they appear 

 quite dark ; but, when viewed form a particular point, the part of the rock 

 which is covered with this moss in suddenly seen to shine with a fine 

 emerald green." 



Medicine. — We see how much advantage may be derived in the illustra- 

 tion of human pathology from the study of the diseases of animals ; and how 

 wrong it is to neglect or despise them. 



The experiments which we have described show that we may form, as it 

 were, morbid phenomena of all kinds, and at pleasure, and that we may 

 stop them when we please after they are formed. 



We may therefore excite and develope in animals the different maladies 

 which arc observed in man, and, wbat we cannot do upon him, we can study 

 them upon them in all their actions, in all their phases, and in all their de- 

 grees, under the comparative action of medicines the most violent and the 

 most diversified. 



