499 



in the morning, haze all the forenoon ; the barometer fell 2. miL 74 be- 

 tween the 3rd and 4th, and the temperature rose by 0-42 C. ; prevailing 

 wind, south-south-west. At the Great St. Bernard's — mist, morning 

 and evening of the 4th. In the night, between the 3rd and 4th, a 

 thunderstorm with rain ; barometer fell 2 millimetres. The highest 

 temperature of the month was on the 3rd, 11° 24 C. ; prevailing wind 

 south-west. 



If the phenomena which came under my notice could be consi- 

 dered as representing the phenomena of the Fohn, I could not avoid 

 concluding that this wind was essentially similar to our south-west 

 Atlantic winds, and my subsequent perusal of the various essays on the 

 subject in the " Archives des Sciences'' rendered this conclusion unques- 

 tionable. 



In recent times it has become the fashion among a great number of 

 geologists to ascribe to ice the principal agency in modifying the features 

 of the earth's surface. Glaciers are invoked to perform every kind of 

 denuding work, from the transport of a grain of sand to the rounding, 

 rending, and sculpturing of mountain masses. At the present day, 

 in Switzerland and Savoy, this work is partly performed by atmospheric 

 action, gravity, and the moving force of water both in its liquid and 

 solid state. In order that water should operate almost exclusively in 

 the solid state, the glaciers must have had, according to glacialists, a 

 much greater extension during comparatively recent geological epochs 

 than at present. The necessity for appealing to cosmical changes was 

 supposed to be obviated by the theory of the Fohn, which ascribes to 

 this wind an African desert origin. Evidence has been put forward to 

 show that the Sahara was submerged up to a comparatively recent 

 date, and hence it was concluded that during the period of its submer- 

 gence no Fohn could have existed. To the warm breath of Fohn is at- 

 tributed the retrogression of the glaciers to their present positions and 

 dimensions. 



But if the Fohn is proved to have no connexion with the great 

 African desert, this theory of the regression of Alpine glaciers must be 

 abandoned. 



LYI Report on the Researches of Here Cohnheim on Inflam- 

 mation and Suppuration. By J. M. Purser, M. B. 



[Read July 12, 1869.] 



The researches of Professor Cohnheim on suppuration are of great im- 

 portance, and have excited a very unusual amount of interest. The 

 corpuscles of pus have long been acknowledged by microscopists to be 

 morphologically indistinguishable from the white cells of the blood; but 

 they were supposed to originate either by proliferation of the cells of 

 the inflamed part, or to arise spontaneously in a formative fluid or 

 blastema poured out from the blood. The point of Cohnheim's theory 



