Proceedings of the British Association. 451 



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from the number, variety, beauty, and rarity of the ferns cultivated, 

 read a paper * On the Mode he had adopted in cultivating the Ferns, as 

 well as Notes on the rarer Species.' — At the conclusion of the paper the 

 President and Members of the Section, accompanied Mr. Allis to the 

 tent in the gardens in which his ferns were deposited, where he des- 

 cribed the characters and modes of cultivating some of the rarer and 

 less known of the family of ferns. 



Friday. 

 Section E.— MEDICAL SCIENCE. 



A paper was read, received from Prof. Peretti, of Rome, ' On the 

 Bitter Principles of some Vegetables.' — The greater part of those vege- 

 tables, he observed, which contain a bitter principle not depending on 

 an alkaloid, owe it to an alkaline resin ; they are decomposed by large 

 quantities of water, by acids, and by earthy salts. By the processes he 

 adopted (and which he described in detail), the Professor obtained the 

 bitter principle of wormwood, quassia, coffee, gentian, &c, and also the 

 pure bitter of bile. The bitter princple which attracted his chief atten- 

 tion was that of the Absinthium Romanum, which he stated to have 

 much power in allaying severe irritation of the stomach, and he had 

 successfully used it as a remedy in sea-sickness, half an ounce of the 

 solution being enough to prevent it, or stop it if it had commenced. 

 The Professor detailed several of the chemical properties of these 

 resinates. The so-called resins he stated to be bi-resinated alkalis ; such 

 are the resins of jalap, guaiacum, &c. The gum resins he stated to be 

 combinations of resinate and bi-resinate of potash with resinates of lime 

 and magnesia. The paper concluded by observations on some other 

 points of vegetable chemistry, and the announcement of the discovery 

 of a new alkaloid derived from a new species of Pereira, the Cryptocaria 

 pretiosa, different from the bark of the true Pereira, examined by M. 

 Pelletier. 



The next paper, by Dr. S. W. J. Merriman, was on a physiological 

 subject of purely professional interest. 



Saturday. 

 Dr. Hodgkin read a paper « On the Tape-Worm as prevalent in 

 Abyssinia.' — He also gave some particulars of the plant called Kosso in 

 Abyssinia, but known by different names in other regions of Africa, 

 the flowers of which are powerfully purgative, and are used as a speci- 

 fic remedy for the endemic prevalence of worms. 



