392 Professor Owen's Address. 



verting electric into magnetic force have dreamt of the applica- 

 tion of such discovery to the rapid interchange of ideas now dai- 

 ly practised between individuals in distant cities, countries, and 

 continents ! Some medical contemporaries of John Hunter, when 

 they saw him, as they thought, wasting as much time in study- 

 ing the growth of a deer's horn as they would have bestowed upon 

 the symptoms of their best patient, compassionated, it is said, the 

 singularity of his pursuits. But by the insight so gained into 

 the rapid enlargement of arteries, Hunter learned a property of 

 those vessels which emboldened him to experiment on a man 

 with aneurism, and so to introduce a new operation which has 

 rescued from a lingering and painful death thousands of his fel- 

 low-creatures. Our great inductive physiologist, in his dissections 

 and experiments on the lower animals, was " taking light what 

 may be wrought upon the body of man." The production of 

 Chloroform is amongst the more subtle experimental results of 

 modern Chemistry. The blessed effects of its proper exhibition 

 in the diminution of the sum of human agony are indescribable. 

 But that divine-like application was not present to the mind of 

 the scientific chemist who discovered the anaesthetic product, any 

 more than was the gas-lit town to the mind ot Priestley, or the 

 condensing engine to that of Black. 



REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



PAMPHLETS ON BRITISH AMERICA. 



Nova Britannia. — A. Morris, M.A. Nova Scotia as a field for 

 Emigration. — P. S. Hamilton. Report of Messrs. Childe, 

 Mc Alpine and KirJcwood on the Harbour of Montreal. 



Nothing more enlarges men's minds than the belief that they 

 form units, however small, in a great nationality. Nothing more 

 dwarfs them than exclusive devotion to the interests of a class, a 

 coterie, or a limited locality. Hence it is to every philosophical 

 mind a cheering feature of our British American literature, that 

 it dwells so much on union of separate provinces, and establish- 

 ment of friendly and profitable intercourse between them. 



Physically considered, British America is a noble territory^ 

 grand in its natural features, rich in its varied resources. Politi- 

 cally, it is a loosely united aggregate of petty states, separated 



