590 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
In the meantime, the few facts that have been obtained indi- 
cate a valuable practical application. Although the existence of 
an antagonism between the fatal effects of physostigma and bella- 
donna has been ascertained by experiments on rabbits and dogs 
only, there is no reason to doubt that it will be found to exist 
in man also. We may thus have at our disposal a physiological 
antidote for physostigma-poisoning, occasion for applying which 
may occur in this country, and already daily occurs in West Africa, 
where physostigma is extensively used as an ordeal poison. 
5. On the Thermal Energy of Molecular Vortices. By W. 
J. Macquorn Bankine, C.E., LL.D., F.K.SS. Lond. and 
Edin., Ac. 
(Abstract.) 
In a previous paper, presented to the Royal Society of Edin- 
burgh in December 1849, and read on the 5th of February 1850 
(Trans, vol. xx.), the author deduced the principles of thermo- 
dynamics, and various properties of elastic fluids, from the hypo- 
thesis of molecular vortices, under certain special suppositions as to 
the figure and arrangement of the vortices, and as to the properties 
of the matter which moves in them. In subsequent papers, he 
showed how the hypothesis might be simplified, by dispensing 
with some of the special suppositions. In the present paper he 
makes further progress in the same direction, and shows how the 
general equation of thermodynamics, and other propositions, are 
deduced from the hypothesis of molecular vortices when freed 
from all special suppositions as to the figure and arrangement of 
the vortices, and the properties of the matter that moves in them, 
and reduced simply to the following form : that thermometric heat 
consists in a motion of the particles of bodies in circulating streams , 
with a velocity either constant or fluctuating periodically. This, of 
course, implies that the forces acting amongst those particles are 
capable of transmitting that motion. 
The principal conclusions arrived at are the following : — 
1. In a substance in which the action of the vortices is isotropic, 
the intensity of the centrifugal pressure per unit of area is two- 
thirds of the energy due to the steady circulation in an unit of 
