Foreign Literature mid Science. 199 



Limax and other moUusces very abundant in the polar seas, 

 whilst these in their turn, are devoured by the various spe- 

 cies of whales that inhabit the same regions. 



8. Abbeville department of Somme France. — Fossil re- 

 mains, — There have just been found in several sand pits in 

 the neighbourhood of this town, the bones of Elephants and 

 Rhinoceros, Stagg's horns, and teeth of a carnivorous animal 

 which M. Traule of that town regards as those of the Lion. 

 These remains have been found at the depth of twenty-five 

 feet detached and mutilated. They consist of an elephant's 

 tusk, an atlas and a metatarsus of the Rhinoceros. The en- 

 closure of these fossils is a bed of sharp grained sand. 



9. Singular disease. — The workmen of a cotton manufacto- 

 ry at Argues, near Dieppe, were attacked in the beginning of 

 February last with nausea, vertigo and convulsions, which 

 so much affected their imaginations, that they thought they 

 saw spectres and other fantastic objects flying at them and 

 seizing them by the throats The Doctor not being able in 

 time to calm their troubled brains, the villagers and country 

 people did not fail to declare according to custom that it was 

 owing to a spell that had been cast upon them at the manufactory/. 

 A thousand ridiculous ceremonies were performed to make 

 them believe that the spell was taken off, in order to calm 

 the imaginations of the affected. But this remedy served 

 to confirm an extravagant prejudice and produced only a 

 temporary effect. It became necessary to have recourse to 

 threats, and the fear of being dismissed and thereby losing 

 their means of subsistence, tended at length to restore them 

 to reason. 



A memoir on the causes of this malady has been pre- 

 sented to the medical society of Dieppe by M. Nicolle, an 

 apothecary of that town, which contains a very exact and 

 curious recital of the distinguishing traits of these spasmodic 

 affections. The author attributes them to the gaseous oxide 

 of carbon, resulting from the decomposition of the oil by the 

 heat of a cast iron stove on which they were in the habit of 

 placing their vessels of that fluid. This gaseous product as 

 it is well known, is lighter than the atmosphere, and in this 

 way the author accounts for the fact, that it was in the upper 

 stories of the manufactory that the people were first affected 



