SCIENCE LETTER FROM PARIS. 275 



practitioners, and with success, to treat melancholy and several forms of hypo- 

 chondria. From the horror of the vide to the horror of space is but a step. Dr. 

 Raggi, of Bologna, has been attending a young artist who threw himself off a 

 roof. It is customary in Italian cities, when a prize or sizarship is to be won for 

 painting, to shut the candidates up in the Academy and then give them the sub- 

 ject for competition. The young artist in question had nearly completed his re- 

 markable picture, when, seized with the horror of being confined, he dropped 

 from a window to a roof, and jumped thence into the street. 



M. Saudry, Professor of Palaeontology, has discovered an enormous fossil 

 animal, belonging neither to the crocodile nor exactly to the plesiosaurus families. 

 He names the animal " Eurysaurus," on account of largeness of its head. There- 

 mains were found in the lower oolithic formation near Veroul. The enormous 

 reptile had large conical teeth protruding outside the head. 



M. Toussaint, has expounded before the Academy of Science, a study on the 

 process of rumination. He states thgt it is not a ball of the half masticated food 

 which returns to the mouth, but a mouthful of liquid holding the aliments in sus- 

 pension, the ascension being due to the vise relatively existing in the thoracic 

 space. 



Dr. Dunant deplores the social phenomena which tends more and more to 

 attract the rural population to live in cities, a fact lamentably prominent in, but 

 not peculiar to France. Charles V. wrote to Francois I., in the sixteenth centu- 

 ry, when this movement or immigration first manifested itself: " Forget not this 

 truth, my brother, the capital where the necessitous classes dominate by number, 

 will infallibly become the tomb of royalties and of great nations." Dr. Dunant 

 proves that the increase in the population of the cities of France coincides with 

 the decrease of inhabitants in the rural districts. It is estimated that the rural ele- 

 ment in the urban population is about four-fifths ; the population of Paris is two 

 millions, not more than one-fourth of this number are to the manor born, and 

 were it not for this annual steady flux of country people to the capital, citizens 

 would physically die out. In the three most populated departments of the 

 country, in order to obtain 1,000 sound conscripts, 1,790 men must be examined ; 

 while in three departments the least peopled, 2,270 have to be examined. The 

 cities where immigration is most marked are weakest in birth rates, but the few 

 marriages that take place are characterized by superior fecundity, The sum total 

 of vice in all cities is nearly equal ; it differs chiefly in form. The rurals that 

 come to reside in cities suffer more from diseases than natives, because exposed 

 to less pure air and less healthy food. 



M. Earanger has practiced medicine for many years in Russia. In the humblest 

 household is to be found a bath for children, made from a portion of a poplar tree, 

 scooped, and babies are accustomed to a cold bath from their earliest age. The 

 doctor's work is addressed, not so much to young mothers, as to young practition- 



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