48 



in the deep seated muscles. When the nerve, separated from the 

 other parts, was alone placed in hot water, the muscles were not af- 

 fected: and when the muscles had been made to contractby hot water, 

 they were no longer capable of being affected by irritations applied 

 to the nerve. The heart removed from the body, and placed in hot 

 water, gradually contracted and remained rigid. Hence the authorcon- 

 cludes that the death of the animal, when occasioned by the sudden 

 application of heat to the surface, is not owing to asphyxia, but to 

 a positive agency, destroying the functions of the nervous and mus- 

 cular systems ; the muscles of involuntary motion being affected in 

 like manner with those of voluntary motion. 



A paper was read, entitled an " Account of a new mode of pro- 

 pelling Vessels." By Mr. Wm. Hale. Communicated by Richard 

 Penn, Esq. F.R.S. 



The authorascribes the want of success which has hitherto attend- 

 ed all attempts to propel vessels by a discharge of water from the 

 stern, to the injudicious plan of the apparatus employed, and not to 

 any defect in the principle itself : for he considers that the reaction 

 upon the vessel from which a volume of water is thrown, depends in 

 no degree on the resistance it meets with from the medium into 

 which it is ejected, but simply upon the momentum given to the 

 mass. The author proposes to accomplish the object of propelling 

 water by means of an instrument having the form of an eccentric 

 curve, resembling the spiral of Archimedes, made to revolve on an 

 axis. The resistance offered to the water in which it is immersed 

 results from the different distances of the two ends of the spiral pro- 

 peller from the axis. This propeller acts in a box having also a 

 somewhat spiral form, and the space between the two ends of the 

 spiral, after describing one turn, is open to allow of the exit of the 

 water driven out by the propeller. The bottom of the box has a 

 circular aperture, of which the radius is equal to the distance of the 

 shorter end of the propeller from the axis. The water within this 

 circle meets with no resistance until it arrives at the line joining the 

 two extremities of the propeller, when it is immediately acted upon 

 by the eccentric curved surface of the propeller. 



A paper was read, entitled, " Additional thoughts on the use of 

 the Ganglions in furnishing Electricity for the production of Animal 

 Secretions." By Sir Everard Home, Bart., F.R.S. 



The author considering animal heat as depending on the gang- 

 lions, infers from the analogy of the structure of the abdominal 

 ganglia with the electrical organs of fishes, that animal heat arises 

 from the electricity supplied by these ganglions. 



