56 NATURE AND TKEATMENT OP" 



sort of cases evacuations take place from time to time of muco- 

 purulent matters, which occasion remarkable sounds, caused by 

 the, presence of gases found mixed with them, and in which we 

 very distinctly detect air-globules after their escape. 

 *'(E.) Of Gases furnished by the Skin. 



" The skin is also the seat of the continual exhalation of gas. 

 With some animals, the frog especially, it is so abundant, ac- 

 cording to Edwards, that it exceeds that which proceeds in the 

 same animal from the surface of the lungs. We may be con- 

 vinced of this by placing the living animal in water underneath 

 the glass of an air-pump. As soon as exhaustion is effected, 

 there escapes a certain quantity of aeriform fluid. 



" The body of a man placed in a bath and exposed to the 

 solar light, becomes covered with a multitude of aerial bubbles, 

 as do the leaves of vegetables under certain circumstances. 



*' But M. de Blainville has remarked that we must not con- 

 found the gases of the skin with the matter of perspiration re- 

 duced to the state of vapor by the heat either of the body or 

 of the atmosphere. Neither must we confound them with the 

 atmospheric air, of which a thin layer reposes upon, adherent 

 to the surface of the skin, disengaging itself in the form of bub- 

 bles whenever the body is plunged into water. 



" However it may be, gases exhaled from the skin are never 

 retained upon its surface, like those of the intestines. We have 

 no means of obtaining them save through artificial means." 



MURRAIN. 



The husbandmen in this country have great reason to re- 

 joice that their flocks and herds have, up to the present period, 

 enjoyed comparative immunity from the awful and devastating 

 pest, or pests, simulating or known as murrain, which, since 

 the period of the almost total destruction of the Egyptian cat- 

 tle, as recorded in the " good hook,'' has to a certain extent pi-e- 

 vailed, more or less, among the bovines ; the property of the 

 husbandmen of the old world. 



During my residence in this country I have never seen a 



