.6 President's Address 



able for containing a large per centage of chloride of potas- 

 sium, as well as of the Ballan springs, the latter found to 

 contain a large per centage of carbonate of soda, with car- 

 bonate of lime and magnesia, with 416 cubic inches per 

 gallon of free carbonic acid. This water, as you are aware, 

 has now come into extensive use under the name of 

 " Ballan Seltzer Water ; " it forms a very refreshing and 

 pleasant beverage, and may, no doubt, be medicinally useful 

 in some cases. 



At the June meeting, Professor Halford brought before us 

 his paper " On the Appearances of the Blood after Death by 

 Snake Poisoning." At the October meeting also, he contri- 

 buted some further observations on the same subject. 



You will remember that in April last, a gentleman died in 

 Melbourne from the bite of a cobra-di-capella, which he had 

 brought from India, and thought to be fangless. At the post 

 mortem examination, Professor Halford, remarking the great 

 fluidity of the blood, examined some under the microscope, 

 when it appeared to him to contain a great number of 

 colourless cells of a larger size than any usually seen in blood. 

 Further examination corroborated this fact ; he observed 

 numerous cells much larger than blood corpuscles, with deli- 

 cate translucent cell- walls, each cell containing one, two, or 

 more nuclei, and also noted a peculiar macula or nipple on 

 the cell wall after the application of magenta dye. He 

 killed a dog with poison taken from the glands of the same 

 cobra, and other animals with poison taken from Australian 

 snakes, and after death in every case the blood was found 

 fluid and full of these cells. By later observations he was 

 led to believe that the growth ' of these cells commences im- 

 mediately the poison gets into the blood, and continues to 

 grow even after death ; so that twelve hours after death 

 blood taken from an animal that died from the poison in ten 

 minutes, will be in the same stage as regards the cell growth 



