420 Royal Society. 



Fourthly, those poisons which seem to act directly on the nervous 

 system, such as hydro- cyanic acid, morphia and strychnine have no 

 influence on the nervous current. Fifthly, sulphuretted hydrogen 

 has a decided influence in diminishing the intensity of the muscular 

 current. Sixthly, the intensity of this current in frogs varies ac- 

 cording to the temperature in which the frogs have been kept for a 

 certain time during life ; a result which, of course, is not attainable 

 with animals which do not take the temperature of the surrounding 

 medium. Lastly, the intensity of the muscular current in animals 

 increases in proportion to the rank they occupy in the scale of be- 

 ings ; and, on the other hand, its duration after death is exactly 

 in an inverse ratio to its original intensity. The author concludes 

 by stating his belief, that the property of the muscles immediately 

 connected with their electric currents is identical with that which 

 was long ago denominated by Haller irritability, but which is at pre- 

 sent more usually designated by the term contractility. He ascribes 

 the development of this muscular electricity to the chemical actions 

 which are attendant upon the process of nutrition of the muscles, 

 and result from the contact of the arterial blood with the muscular 

 fibre. He conceives, that in the natural state of the muscle, the two 

 electricities thus evolved neutralize each other at the same points at 

 which they are generated ; while in the muscular pile contrived by 

 the author a portion of this electricity is put into circulation, in the 

 same manner as happens in a pile composed of acid and alkali, sepa- 

 rated from one another by a simply conducting body. — Ibid. 



Royal Society. — June 19. — R. Owen, Esq. V. P. in the chair. — 

 ' On the connexion between the Winds of the St. Lawrence and 

 the Movements of the Barometer,' by W. Kelly, M.D., Surgeon 

 R. N., attached to the Naval Surveying Party on the River St. Law- 

 rence. — The author adduces a great number of observations, which 

 are in opposition to the generally received opinion, that the mercury 

 in the barometer has always a tendency to fall when the wind is 

 strong. During a period of fifteen years passed in the Gulf and River 

 St. Lawrence, he found that the barometer as frequently rises as falls 

 under the prevalence of a strong wind ; and that the winds often blew 

 with a greater force with a rising than with a falling barometer. He 



