378 Notes and Comments. 
every meal, so that the total daily dose may be appreciable 
and not without effect on a sensitive system. Starting the 
day with bleached bread, borated bacon and butter, and jam 
or marmalade cum salicylic acid, not to mention the silicated 
egg, which doesn’t count, we plough bravely through formalized 
meat, coppered peas, talc-faced rice pudding, and later engage 
with shrimps, or sausage, or meat pie of even deeper dye, 
and more butter, bread, cream, and cheese of the same failing 
as above, not forgetting wine, beer, or other liquid scarcely 
innocent of a like indictment. It is difficult, nay impossible, 
to steer clear of the enemy. The marvel is that we are not 
mummified in the course of time, as indeed we should be if 
the effects were even moderately cumulative. It is easy to 
see that on a particularly unlucky day a person may have 
good cause for not feeling quite fit. The only comfort to be 
derived from it is in the reflection that the microbes are having 
an even worse time of it than we are.” 
SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF NATURE RESERVES. 
In view of the dangers which at present seriously threaten 
our indigenous fauna and flora with extinction, the above Society 
has been formed with the following objects :—I. To collect 
and collate information as to areas of land in the United 
Kingdom, which retain their primitive conditions and contain 
rare and local species liable to extinction owing to building, 
drainage and disafforestation, or in consequence of the cupidity 
of collectors. All such information to be treated as strictly 
confidential. II. To prepare a scheme showing which areas 
should be secured. III. To obtain these areas and hand them 
over to the National Trust under such conditions as may be 
necessary. IV. To preserve for posterity as a national pos- 
session some part at least of our native land, its fauna, flora, and 
geological features. V. To encourage the love of nature and 
to educate public opinion to a better knowledge of the value of 
Nature Study. -These objects are to be attained by means of 
the Press, by personal efforts, and by correspondence with 
local Secretaries and individuals. The Rt. Hon. J. W. Lowther, 
M.P. is the president, and the Hon. Secretaries are W. R. 
Ogilvie Grant, Esq., and the Hon. F. R. Henley. 
A CONNECTING LINK WITH WILLIAM SMITH. 
The Yorkshire Observer recently gives the following extract 
from the ‘ Observer’ of September 6th, 1838 :— STONE FOR 
THE NEw Houses OF PARLIAMENT.—We understand that Mr. 
Barry, the architect, and Mr. de la Beche have set out from 
London, under the authority of the Treasury, to examine the 
‘quarries in the North, in search of stone for the new Houses of 
Parliament. They will avail themselves on the way of the aid 
Naturalist, 
