632 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



bean, used by the natives of Upper Guinea for testing the guilt of prison- 

 ers. They have succeeded in obtaining from the bean very minute quanti- 

 ties of an alkaloid which they call phytodigmin, in which the poisonous 

 qualify resides. It may be interesting to the medical jurist to know that 

 two drops of this substance introduced into the eye of a rabbit, which was 

 not killed by poison, caused the pupil to contract one-fourth, while the eye 

 of the rabbit poisoned by this alkaloid was not perceptibly affected. The 

 eye of one poisoned by cyanide of potassium is scarcely contracted at all. * 



New Species of Animals. 



Among the thirty-eight species of mammals collected by captain Speke 

 in eastern Africa, is a new antelope, and of sixty-one varieties of birds — five 

 are new. 



The Pure Arabian Horse. 



Mr. Gifibrd Palgrave has lately given before the Geographical society of 

 London, an account of his travels in Oman, a kingdom in the southeast 

 corner of Arabia, through which he traveled in the guise of a wandering 

 doctor. He had been absent from England eighteen years. The fame of 

 a cure, by an infinitesimal dose of strj^chnine, brought him before the 

 king at the Wahabite capital, and he there had two opportunities of ex- 

 amining the royal stud, which consists of the purest breed of the Arabian 

 horse, the celebrated Nujji breed, none of which had ever been or would 

 be sent to Europe. They were never sold by any chance whatever. They 

 could only be got either in war or as a present, or as a heritage from father 

 to son. Whatever we can imagine of perfect beauty in a horse is said to 

 be outdone by them. They are a small breed, rarely exceeding 15 hands 

 high. The prevailing color is gray. Not a single bay could be seen. 

 Chestnut was occasionally seen. Some were mottled, a few were white, 

 but none were perfectly black. The beauty of the race was in the exces- 

 sive cleanness of the legs, which resembled those of the stag more than 

 the horse, in the extraordinary delicacy of the muscle, the graceful sweep 

 of the haunches, the beautiful set-on of the tail, and in the extreme slope 

 of the shoulder-blade, which gives these horses a pliancy such as he had 

 never seen in any other breed. There were 130 horses in the royal stables 



On THE Limits of Perpetual Snow. 



Mr. E. Renon has announced to the French academy of sciences his dis- 

 covery of the following law. In all countries in the world the limit of per- 

 petual snow is the height at which the hottest half of the year has a mean 

 temperature equal to that of melting ice. From observations made, the 

 author does not completely verify the law, but he shows there is an agree- 

 ment as satisfactory as possible in the present state of our knowledge. 



Dreaming and Somnambulism. 



W. S. Savory, F. R. S., in a lecture on dreaming and somnambulism, in 

 relation to the functions of certain nerve centers, thus summarily contrasts 

 the several states. In profound sleep, there are no acts beyond cxcito- 

 motor ones, and even these are reduced. In somnambulism, there are, be- 



