232 REPORT—1868. 
mercurials for hepatic diseases has greatly diminished, their employment is 
still very general, and in India almost universal. Recent cases demonstrate 
that long-continued salivation and great loss of health have been produced 
in the attempt to remove old abscesses or other chronic diseases of this organ, 
and there are few of its lesions in which it is still not thought advisable to 
try small or full doses of the drug. 
On this subject, however, it is unnecessary to dwell at present; the real 
question is, whether the evidence is satisfactory, or whether further re- 
searches are necessary. On this and many other topics connected with 
therapeutics, what we require are not unfounded assumptions and vague spe- 
culations, but positive knowledge based on unquestionable data; these we 
have furnished, and consider them amply sufficient to demonstrate the fallacy 
of the opinions everywhere prevalent as to the cholagogue action of mercury. 
It would be vain attempting to convey an adequate idea of the great la- 
bour, wearisome repetition of observations, numerous disappointments, and 
loathsome manipulations which have tested the zeal, endurance, and courage 
of Drs. Rutherford and Gamgee, on whom the entire labour of the experi- 
ments devolved. 
The difficulties and expense have been greatly increased by the want of a 
proper locality for carrying on such investigations, and by the necessity of 
combating the well-meaning but, we humbly think, mistaken notions of those 
who maintain that physiologists are not justified in experimenting on animals, 
even with the objects of determining more accurately the use of poisonous 
drugs and of preserving the life of man. A very different doctrine might 
have been expected to exist in a great University like that of Edinburgh ; but 
its Senatus, led astray by the reasoning, we regret to say, of an influential 
member of the Medical Faculty, unquestionably, by its resolutions, greatly 
added to the toil and annoyance of the Committee’s proceedings. On the 
other hand our warmest thanks are due to Mr. Nunneley of Leeds, to Dr. Kel- 
burne King of Hull, and Dr. Andrew Buchanan of Glasgow, for their kind 
assistance in forwarding animals to us. 
Last Report on Dredging among the Shetland Isles. 
By J. Gwyn Jerrreys, FR.S. 
Tus was my eighth expedition to the northern extremity of our seas, and 
occupied the whole of the summer. It was not so successful as those in some 
previous years, owing to the stormy state of the weather. While my friends 
in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland were enjoying calm sunshine, our 
climate was exactly the reverse ; and the persevering course of the wind 
(from north-west to south-west) prevented our doing much at sea. This 
part of the North Atlantic is notoriously subject to broken weather, it being 
the point where the warm air induced by the Gulf-stream and westerly 
winds meets the cold air brought down by the arctic current. The fauna of 
the Shetland waters, however, is by no means exhausted. Every expedition 
has produced novelties, not only in the Mollusca, but in all other depart- 
ments of marine zoology. 
On the present occasion I obtained, at a depth of 120 fathoms, a living 
specimen and a larger dead one of a fine species of Plewrotoma, P. carmata 
of Bivona. It was originally described as a Calabrian fossil; Jan and Bel- 
lardi have given it from the Upper Tertiaries of North Italy, the former un- 
der the name of Fusus modiolus; and Searles Wood records a single specimen 
