136 REPORT — 1860. 



only by a thin corneous epiderm, pierce through the fur like prickles. They are 

 those of the fifth to the last cervical, and of the first two dorsal vertebra?. 



Observations on the Teredo navalis, and the Mischief caused by it in Holland. 

 By Professor van der Hoeven. 



It is well known that the Teredo has been greatly destroying the piles which 

 were employed in the construction of the dykes of Holland in the beginning of the 

 preceding century, chiefly in the years from 1730 tol783. Since that period it is 

 scarcely recorded that any mischief has been produced by that bivalve till the year 

 1827, when in the province of Sealand it again became noxious. But it was chiefly 

 in the years 1858 and 1859 that the species increased very much, and the destruction 

 produced by it was the cause of a committee of members of the Royal Academy 

 of Science being formed, with the view of inquiring concerning the damages in 

 different localities, and as to the best means of protecting timber against their ravages. 

 I have the pleasure to place the Report of those gentlemen, published some weeks 

 before I left Leyden, in the hands of the gentleman who has given such an elaborate 

 dissertation on the Ship-worm to this meeting of the British Association. He will 

 I hope make known hereafter the chief contents to the English naturalist. From 

 the comparison of different records, it seems to result that the species, which it is 

 well known now was not imported from foreign and warmer seas, exists always on 

 our coasts, but that there are some periods of greater occurrence, produced as it 

 seems by high temperature of the year and by dry summers. 



Different experiments have proved that some proposed means of preserving tim- 

 ber against the ship-worm are only useful for a short time, or even not useful at all ; 

 such are mixtures of fine fragments of broken glass and fat, different oil-paintings 

 and the like ; such is also the imbibition with different solutions of salts, sulphate 

 of copper, acetate of lead, and others. The best success, on the contrary, yet 

 obtained was by creosoting timber, a result also obtained in this country, as is 

 stated in the 'Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers.' I think myself 

 fortunate in having the opportunity of placing the book I have brought -with me in 

 the hands of a Member of this Association who has such a great knowledge of a 

 subject, to the elucidation of which, in a practical point of view, the Committee of 

 the Academy of Amsterdam has given its conscientious and laborious consider- 

 ation. 



On the Development o/'Pyrosoma. By Professor Huxley, F.R.S. 



On the Nature of Death from the Administration of Anesthetics, especially 

 Chloroform and Ether, as observed in Hospitals. By Charles Kidd, M.D. 



The author having collected and tabulated 109 deaths from chloroform, 22 from 

 ether, and 2 from amylene, believes himself to be in a position to offer some ex- 

 planation of these accidents. 



Of these 133 deaths, 90 occurred in male patients, and 43, or less than half that 

 number, in females, though anaesthetics have been largely used in midwifery practice. 

 Such occurrences are very rare in children. 



From 250,000 to 300,000 operations of all kinds have been performed under the 

 influence of anaesthetics, and chiefly of chloroform, and in some hundreds of severe 

 cases the patient has been more than an hour in a state of deep anaesthesia. In all 

 these latter cases not a single well-attested instance is on record in which death 

 has taken place from simple stoppage of the functions of life, or narcotism of the 

 system by the chloroform. Fully 80 per cent, of all the deaths, and nearly all 

 those from chloroform, have occurred from trivial operations, from very small doses, 

 and suddenly before the anaesthetic had produced its full effect. The author does 

 not contend that death cannot occur in the human subject from long-con- 

 tinued inhalation of chloroform, but only that it has not been observed to do so 

 in hospital practice. It seems probable that when anassthesia is once established in 

 a favourable surgical subject, respiratory action is diminished, and the breathing 

 for a definite interval proceeds on a diminished scale, almost as it does in the case 



