572 
CIRCULATION OF MATTER. 
elimination, in which latter the cutaneous surface is concerned 
in a very limited degree. 
Death can be explained neither by paralysis of the heart 
nor by asphyxia depending on an insufficient amount of air 
supplied to the lungs; for I have killed dogs, which pre- 
sented the phenomena described above, by injecting the 
vapour of chloroform into the jugular vein. It should, how- 
ever, be stated, that I found, on post-mortem examinations, 
venous congestion, as is observed after asphyxia; but this 
circumstance should be attributed to the persistence of the 
heart’s action, and to the diminished permeability of the 
lungs depending on arrested respiration, these two pheno- 
mena leading to the accumulation of blood on the right side 
of the heart. 
It seems to me that death is chiefly owing to the abolition 
of the functions of the nervous centres, which latter gradu- 
ally lose their vital properties under the narcotic influence 
of the chloroform which accumulates in the cerebro-spinal 
substance. 
It appears to me indispensable, in surgical anaesthesia, to 
dilute the vapour of chloroform with a large and, as far as 
practicable, regulated proportion of atmospheric air, because 
the intensity and rapidity of action of such vapour are in a 
direct ratio with its concentration . — The Lancet . 
THE CIRCULATION OF MATTER. 
By Elihu Burritt. 
The earth moves, lives, and acts; it begets and sustains 
life in all its varieties of organization. It breathes, and its 
breath becomes an atmosphere as essential to the vegetable 
as to the animal creation. That atmosphere, modified to 
every genial temperature, laden with sunbeams, rain, and 
dew-drops, respires upon the earth, and fills its veins with 
renovated life. The action of solar and electric heat animates 
the digestive process of evaporation and distillation, develop- 
ing the chemical qualities of the soil, and thus generates a 
gastric germinating fluid, which penetrates everything sus- 
ceptible of expansion. 
It gently opens the serred pores of the acorn and the 
grain of wheat. It feeds their expanding veins with a 
lymphatic element, composed of all the elements of human 
blood, though combined in another form, which lacks but 
one more process to fit it for the veins of man. Like man, 
the sturdy oak is dust, and unto dust it returns. It is not a 
mere symmetrical inflation of the acorn, that vital fluid sup- 
plied it with a substance from the earth which coalesced with 
