60 
OBITUARY. 
quantity, and consequently a greater necessity exists that it 
should be kept perfectly free from obstructions. Another 
prevailing error respecting the warm-bath is, that it tends to 
relax and enervate the body ; for experience has sufficiently 
proved the fallacy of the opinion, and many physicans have 
prescribed its use to patients labouring under debility from 
disease, none of whom experience such effects, but have all 
felt invigorated, and mostly restored to health and strength. 
Many persons are deterred from using the warm bath, especi- 
ally in winter, from the fear of catching cold ; this fear is 
groundless, for it has been found that the warm bath, by in- 
creasing the circulation in the body, renders it more capable 
of withstanding the effects of cold than it otherwise would 
have been. — Popular Errors Explained . 
LICHENS. 
Lichens are perennial; they grow very slowly, but they 
attain an extreme age. Some species, growing on the primi- 
tive rocks of the highest mountain ranges in the world, are 
estimated to have attained an age of at least a thousand 
years ; and one author mentions, after the lapse of nearly half 
a century, having observed the same specimen of Sticta pulmo- 
naria on the same spot of the same tree. If this be the case, it 
is impossible to calculate how many ages we must go back in 
memory to trace the origin of theiichenose coating, the grayand 
yellow <c time-stains” of many a weather-beaten battlement ; 
or to consider what deeds these venerable crusts have witnessed 
what changes they have outlived in the past history of our 
country. The hoary Usneas, Ramalinas, and Physcias of 
our forest trees, like the grey beard of an old man, silently 
but eloquently proclaim Time’s ravages, and illustrate the 
constant succession of life upon death, growth upon decay, 
which is going on around us. We have alluded to the age of 
the individual ; we shall find no less interest in regarding the 
geologic age of the family. Unger, in his “ Paelophy tology,” 
mentions Lichens among the few cryptogamic plants which 
have been detected in a fossil state in the lower or earlier 
palaeozoic strata. — Lindsay’s Popular History of British Lichens . 
OBITUARY. 
On the 27th of November, very suddenly, at his residence, 
Foregate Street, Chester, Mr. Richard Allen, M.R.C.Y.S., in 
the 51st year of his age. Mr. Allen obtained his diploma in 
1831. 
