160 Notes and Memoranda. 



completed, and in spite of all the risk attending such operations, has 

 proved successful beyond all previous undertakings of the kind within 

 the London basin. The engineers guaranteed a supply of seventy- 

 five gallons per minute, but the well is capable of supplying ten 

 times that amount ; it can , in fact, supply a million of gallons in twenty- 

 four hours, and will apparently be wholly unaffected by local cir- 

 cumstances, and but slightly by the changes of the seasons. The 

 total depth sunk and bored is 401 feet, a well having been sunk to 

 the depth of 226 feet, and a bore thereafter carried down 175 feet 

 farther. In boring this well, it was found the London clay forms 

 a much thicker stratum at Kensington than usual. Below it 

 the strata are successively mottled clay, pebbles, greensand, grey- 

 sand, flints, and lastly the chalk. But there is a circumstance of 

 peculiar interest in connection with the enormous capabilities of 

 this well. "Whilst boring through the chalk, the instrument came 

 upon a fissure, and dropped down a space of several feet, indicating 

 that the boring had penetrated into one of those subterraneous 

 streams which are known to occur in the chalk, and which when 

 met with appear to be incapable of exhaustion. This, and the well 

 at Trafalgar Square, are the only two in which this fortunate corre- 

 spondence of the bore into a fissure has occurred, of the many wells 

 bored by Messrs. Easton and Amos ; all other in the metropolis being 

 dependent on the supplies which percolate through the chalk into 

 the well. This running stream, or natural main, may be the same 

 as that hit upon in boring the well at Trafalgar Square, but at pre- 

 sent there are no evidences of identity. . Fortunately too the water 

 from this well is fit for garden purposes, and the cost of the under- 

 taking will prove to be one of the best investments of the funds of 

 the Society, both for the maintenance of the garden and the interests 

 of the fellows. It is unquestionably the finest well in the metro- 

 polis, a triumph of engineering, and an important contribution to 

 our knowledge of the characteristics of the London basin. 



NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 



Physiological Effects of Milk. — Mothers have long been aware of the 

 fact that their infants were affected by any changes in the composition of breast- 

 milk, brought about by particular kinds of food, medicine, or other disturbing 

 causes ; and a French doctor, M. Labourdette, takes advantage of this circum- 

 stance by administering to the mother the physic he wishes to operate upon the 

 child. M. Flourens also has made divers experiments with pigs and other 

 animals. He coloured the maternal food with madder, and in twenty days found 

 the bones of the little sucklings tinged with that dye. At the meeting of tho 

 British Association in 1860, Mr. Gibb, referring to Yogel's discovery of vibrions 

 in human milk, stated that a child had been brought to him in a state of ema- 

 ciation. The mother appeared in good health, and her milk was rich in cream 

 and sugar, but it contained numerous vibrions. Subsequent observations con- 

 firmed the opinion that milk containing infusoria reduced the children who were 

 suckled upon it to skin and bone. 



Fzetilitt OF Hybiuds.— M. J. G. St. Hilaire, after collecting facts from 

 various sources, and making numerous original experiments on the reproductive 

 powers of hybrids formed by the alliance of species of the same genus, arrived at 



