428 FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 



chine, though that menaber was excellent for every other function. The 

 "dancer's cramp"' is only another form of the same effect. An enthusiastic 

 clergyman, in order to lead the singing in his church, learned to play the 

 ophicleide ; he exhibited so great a passion for the instrument that when he 

 performed he executed such serpentine contortions as to provoke laughter 

 in his flock. Duchenne was of the opinion that the disease is produced by 

 an excessive excitement, or the exhaustive exertion of certain muscular 

 functions, producing a too considerable nerve discharge, and hence, con- 

 tractions. Professor Bouilland is of the opinion that the malady has its 

 starting point from the nervous centre of the brain, Avhich commands, as is 

 well known, many movements, as those of the eye, speech, and writing. 

 The "cramp" is then simply a paralysis; it is sometimes accompanied by 

 the loss of speech and the power to read. The Professor quotes the case of 

 a civil engineer, who lost the power of speech and writing, yet could read 

 mentally. As physiological, man is in duplicate, if the left hemishphere of 

 the brain refuses to act with the movements of written language, the right 

 hemisphere will be found generally intact and capable of commanding the 

 left hand to function. 



M. Blanchard explains the apparent anomaly why an insect, after under- 

 going all its metamorphoses, becomes, on reaching the adult or leaving stage, 

 enormously larger than the chrysalis in which it was contained. It is not 

 the air introduced into the breathing tubes, as De Belleyne believes, but the 

 insect breathes the air by its mouth, filling its digestive tube with this gas, 

 which sends the blood towards the circumference of the body, obtaining 

 thus mechanically the unplaiting of its wings and the normal swelling of 

 its body. 



The discovery of an ante-diluvian elephant by some Siberian fishermen, 

 who were able to eat some of its flesh, draws attention to the question "how 

 did these mammoths come there?" The general idea is that at onetime 

 the northern regions enjoyed a tropical temperature, which some cataclysm 

 changed. M. Boyle is of a different opinion ; the elephants thus found from 

 time to time in Siberia, have neither lived nor died in that region. At the 

 epoch of the great cataclysms they were transported by strong currents of 

 water from the Hijnalaya as far as Siberia, "where they were stopped and 

 imbedded in the ice. This transport would not have been of long duration. 

 The elephants were very numerous at that period; all were not carried 

 northward, as many remained en route, as their bones and tusks testify. In 

 China the ivory employed is that of the fossilized tusks of extinct mam- 

 moths, excellent for sculpturing purposes, and English and American fisher- 

 men who go far north, haul up with their nets many of these tusks, which 

 are known in corhmerce as "fossilized ivor3\" 



M. Daubree has made, since some years, meteoric stoiies his special study. 

 What has produced upon the fragments those erosions and fissures which 



