1846.] JYotes on JYatural History, ^c. 219 



the emotion of the passions on the body ought to be understood by 

 all. The excitation of hope and the consoling power of faith 

 are often the surest grounds of success to the physician in many 

 of the severest ills of his patients. The patient laboring under 

 organic lesions, may be sustained and cured when supported by 

 hope and faith. The hypochondriac and hysterical are cured 

 when these emotions find a place in their hearts, whether they 

 have been touched by the Mesmerist, swallowed the little pill of 

 homoeopathy, or wrapped in the wxt sheet of Priessnitz. Some- 

 thing done upon which to hang a hope, even though it is only a 

 thermometer under the tongue, and the heart's strength and the 

 nervous spark gives new life to the pallid frame. 



NOTES ON NATURAL HISTORY. 



BY JAMES EIGHTS, M. D. 



" Water, entering into its solid state, expands, as is well known ; 

 therefore all those portions of rock which thus become heaved 

 out of their original places by the formation of ice during the 

 night, will if their centres of gravity permit, fall when the heat 

 of the succeeding day liquifies the ice." — De la Beche on Degra- 

 dation of Mountains. 



Repeatedly have I, in the spring and fall seasons of the year, 

 while leisurely sailing along the palisadoes on the Hudson river, 

 had my attention attracted to the destructive eflfects produced by 

 this powerful agent, upon the trap rocks, of which they are com- 

 posed : and oft-times, during the greater part of a long southern 

 summer, which I spent among the numerous islands, and lands 

 situated in the arctic sea, did I have occasion to remark the rapid 

 destruction of the heavy clusters of basalt columns which here 

 and there arose from amid the everlasting snows by which they 

 were surrounded. From these masses of basalt the falling frag- 

 ments were to be heard at rapidly repeated intervals, throughout 

 the course of the long summer day, a fact most readily to be ac- 

 counted for, when we take into consideration the ever-changing 



