320 Notes and Memoranda. 



of meat. If it is made poorer than this, or if it is attempted to 

 adulterate it, it will not keep. All these excellent properties have 

 not been able to bring it into general use, on account of its unavoid- 

 able dearness when made in Europe. But it seems likely that the 

 preparation of it will very soon become the means of saving a vast 

 amount of valuable meat, hitherto allowed to go almost entirely to 

 waste, and thus add greatly to our supply of nutritious and agree- 

 able food. Giebert, a German engineer, like thousands of others, 

 was struck with the vast herds of cattle slaughtered in La Plata 

 merely for their hides and tallow, the meat being abandoned from 

 the impossibility of preserving it by the ordinary methods. But 

 being, as it happened, aware of Liebig's experiments, the thought 

 luckily occurred to him of extracting the nutriment from this meat 

 on the large scale ; and the undertaking is already so far advanced, 

 that we may hope soon to derive advantage from it. The process 

 required for obtaining the extract is very simple. The fresh beef is 

 carefully separated from all fat, bone, and tendon — fat or gelatine 

 would cause it soon to become rancid and mouldy ; it is then 

 chopped up, and placed with a small quantity of water in a water 

 bath. According as any fatty matter or albuminous coagulation 

 makes its appearance, it is removed. After some time the extract 

 thus produced is poured off from the fibre, which now contains so 

 little nutriment that it is quite incapable of supporting animal life, 

 and is placed in earthen or other vessels. The latter do not 

 require to be hermetically sealed in any way, and may indeed be 

 closed in the manner usually adopted with preserves. 



NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 



Theruio-Eiecteics. — M. Bunsen finds that pyrolusite exceeds bismuth in 

 thermo-electric power, and copper pyrites possess the same quality in a still 

 higher degree. — Fogg. Ann. 



The Leo oe the Ostrich. — The Eey. Samuel Haughton, M.D., E.K.S., 

 has a paper in the Annals of Natural History on the leg of the ostrich, founded 

 upon the examination of a bird recently defunct in the Dublin Zoological Gardens. 

 After giving a variety of important anatomical details, he observes, " in the act 

 of running, the leg of the ostrich is to be regarded as a jointed lever, Laving four 

 joints, the hip, the knee, the heel, and the metatarsal joints. As the animal 

 springs from foot to foot, the whole limb on reaching the ground is bent as far as 

 possible at each of these articulations ; and, as the spring is made, the muscles 

 proper to each joint increase the angle made by the bones uniting at the joint, 

 so that the effect of the whole is to unbend the limb, and give it a maximum of 

 extension at the moment of leaving the ground. During the spring the anta- 

 gonist muscles again bend the joints, so that on next touching the ground it is at 

 its maximum of flexion, again waiting to be unbent by the muscles that open the 

 angles of the joint, and so on ; as long as the animal runs, it is thrown alter- 

 nately from each foot in contact with the ground as from a catapult, and advances 

 by successive leaps or springs from foot to foot." Dr. Haughton also gives the 

 calculations by which he arrives at the conclusion that " the force expended in 

 propelling the body of the ostrich forward is ten times the force employed in 

 restoring the legs of the animal preparatory to its next spring." 



Supposed Composition op Nitrogen. — We have received a pamphlet by 

 Mr. Henry Kilgour, in which he endeavours to establish the proposition that 

 nitrogen is an aliotropic form of carbonic oxide. He arrives at this conclusion 



