Notes and Memoranda. 147 



cold water, and stirred up with two quarts of water, and allowed to settle for six 

 hours. Part of the clear solution should he added to the bath till the smell of 

 chlorine is perceived, and the prints should be moved to facilitate the action. In 

 very bad cases, one ounce of muriatic acid mixed with a pint of water may be added, 

 and when the bleaching is effected, the prints should be well washed with fresh 

 water and slowly dried. 



M. Elourens on Wounds op the Brain.— The Comptes Hendus contains 

 an account of experiments and observations by this distinguished surgeon, show- 

 ing that wounds of the brain are easily cured. He cites several instances of human 

 beings who have recovered from injuries involving loss of a portion of their brains, 

 and adverts to his own proceedings in introducing leaden balls into the brains of 

 rabbits and dogs. He made a hole in the skull with a trepan, cut through the 

 dura mater, and made a slight incision into the brain itself, in which he placed 

 the ball, which gradually sank into the cerebral substance, making a kind of fis- 

 tula that cicatrized. If the ball was not too big, the whole thickness of the cere- 

 brum or cerebellum might be traversed without being accompanied or followed by 

 any bad symptom or disturbance of functions. He states that, in 1822, he removed 

 one lobe from the brain of various animals, who recovered perfectly, and only lost 

 the sight of the opposite side ; and he adds, " but the most remarkable thing was 

 when I removed the whole cerebrum, or both lobes. The animal deprived of his 

 brain survived more than a year, but he had lost all his senses and intelligence, 

 and was reduced to an automaton." In another instance he took away all the 

 cerebellum, and this creature lived a year. It never regained regularity of move- 

 ments. It was reduced to the condition of a drunken man. 



Marriages op Consanguinity. — M. A. Sanson disputes the proposition that 

 these connexions tend to deteriorate offspring, and he adduces many facts rela- 

 tive to breeding horses and other animals in England in support of his view. 

 This paper has been referred to the commission appointed by' the French Aca- 

 demy to " consider the effects of consanguineous marriages." 



Eefraction op Iodine Vapour. — M. E. P. Leroux states that when he 

 employed a prism filled with the vapour of iodine, and " successively illuminated 

 the slit of his collimator by the red and the violet-blue resulting from the disper- 

 sion of a pencil of solar rays by a flint-glass prism, he saw the red and the blue 

 images in different places . . . which shows that the refrangibility of the red 

 ray is greater than that of the blue ray in vapour of iodine." 



Experiments in Solubility. — M. Girardin has ascertained that when a 

 substance has several solvents, its solubility in a mixture of them is less than the 

 mean of its solubility in each ; thus if two saturated solutions in different liquids 

 are mixed together a precipitation is the result. 



The New Asteroid.— The 73rd planetoid, which Mr. Tuttle discovered in 

 April, has been named Clytie by the American astronomers, after the daughter of 

 Oceanis and Tethys. 



Comet 1, 1862.— M. Eadau states, in Cosmos, that this comet has so little 

 light that it is not easily seen, and could not be detected on 15th July, in Vienna, 

 when the moon was shining. He says: "The parabola which this comet describes 

 does not resemble any cometary obrit we are acquainted with. It appeared sud- 

 denly, being at first visible to the naked eye, and moved rapidly towards the 

 North Pole— circumstances which recal the behaviour of the great comet of last 

 year." He then proceeds to show the great difference between the two, that of last 

 year making its sudden appearance in the northern hemisphere only. Its orbit had, 

 moreover, a very great inclination, while that of the present comet is very small. 

 Erom the middle of June to the beginning of August, this comet moved in a 

 direction opposite to the earth's motion, passing above us at the short distance of 

 4,000,000 of leagues on the 4th of July. It has traversed the plane of the 

 ecliptic very near our orbit, but keeping before us. Taking for the basis of his 

 calculations the elements computed by M. Seeling, M. Eadau finds that it inter- 

 sected the plane of our orbit on the 3rd of June, at 8h. 26m. mean Paris time ; its 

 distance being then 700,000 leagues, and less than 300,000 on the 5th of that 

 month. 



