386 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC NOTES. 
is immediately set up, passing from the wire in the central part of 
the flame, to that placed in contact with the outer envelope of this 
or with the atmospheric air. It is well known that gas or vapours 
heated to a certain temperature become conductors, and hence, there 
is an analogy between the conditions of this experiment and those 
of the one mentioned above, in which two strips of platinum are 
plunged into water, after having been in contact, the one with hy= 
drogen, and the other with oxygen. This analogy appears to me to 
be sustained by the following experiment. After the platinum wires 
are removed frum the flame, as described above, they are allowed to 
cool in the air, and are then, after the lapse of several minutes, 
plunged into distilled water. A current is manifested of much 
greater intensity -than that which originates in the flame; but the 
direction is similar—id est, from the wire that was placed in the 
centre of the flame to that which was in contact with the flame’s 
outer surface. This fact may be verified by changing the positions 
of the wires. Finally, the wires which have been thus in contact 
with the flame, produce no current if plunged into mercury, whilst 
a current is obtained immediately on plunging them into water. 
This experiment, I must repeat therefore, appears to me to prove 
the existence of a certain analogy between the electrical phenomena 
of flame and those of the oxy-hydrogen battery. E. J.C. 
SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES. 
CANADIAN CAVERNS.—BY GEORGE D. GIBB, M.D., ETC. 
Dr. Gibb has dedicated to the Canadian Institute an interesting memoir on 
Canadian Caverns, read by him before the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science at Aberdeen, and subsequently published in the pages of the 
Geologist. In its present garb, this memoir forms an octavo pamphlet of some 
thirty pages, with eight lithographed plates. The caverns described—including 
a few beyond the confines of the Province—are arranged in two series, as in the 
following tabular view :— 
A.—Caverns, Arched Rocks, etc., washed by the waters of existing seas, lakes, 
or rivers. 
. Caverns on the shores of the Magdalen Islands. 
. Caverns and arched rocks at Percé, Gaspé. 
. Gothic arched recesses, Gaspé Bay. 
. The “Old Woman” or flower-pot rock at Cape Gaspé. 
. Little River caverns, Bay of Chaleur. 
. Arched and flower-pot rocks of the Mingan Islands. 
aon P OD 
