248 M. De Saiissure on the. Infltience of Green Fruits 
The authors regret they cannot speak so decisively of the se- 
minal animalcules of fishes. Spallanzani has described and deli- 
neated animated globules in the milt of fishes ; and Haller speaks 
of animalcules furnished with a tail. The observations of the 
authors accord best with those of Spallanzani, but they are not 
sufficiently complete as yet, to warrant publication. 
The authors, wishing to try the effects of certain agents on 
the irritability of these animalcules, exposed them to weak dis- 
charges of common electricity, by means of a Leyden phial, which 
soon destroyed their vital motion. Others were placed in a cur- 
rent of galvanic electricity, which produced no alteration in their 
movements ; but, after a tiiqrie, the animalcules, collected around 
the positive pole, were immoveable, while those at the opposite 
pole, were as lively as ever. This the authors found to be due 
to the action of the acid produced at the positive pole ; and hence 
fluids weakly alkaline, as pure saliva, are most favourable to the 
continuance of vital movement in these animalcules. Other 
agents, as opium and prussic acid, can be employed only through 
solution in water ; and, as pure water itself sometimes abolishes 
all vital movement, no accurate conclusion can be drawn as to 
the action of those substances on the irritability of these beings. 
The authors conclude their interesting memoir with observing, 
first. That spermatic animalcules have nothing in common with 
infusory ones, except in their microscopic size ; secondly, That 
they are produced in the testicles alone, but do not appear in 
those organs till the age of puberty ; and, thirdly, That they ap- 
pear to be the active principle or agent of the semen. 
The last memoir of this portion of the volume exhibits the ex- 
periments of M. De Saussure, on the Influence of Green Fruits 
on the Air, before the period of Maturity.” It was called forth, 
by an essay of M. Berard, published in the sixteenth volume of 
the Annales de Chimie. In that essay, M. Berard is said to 
have arrived at the remarkable results, That green fruits, 
through every period of their growth, do not comport themselves, 
like leaves, in th6 sun ; that they do not then decompose carbonic 
acid gas, and disengage oxygen ; but that the only action which 
they exert on the atmosphere, in all periods of their vegetation, 
is to transform its oxygen into carbonic acid.” He is even led to 
