February ll, 1871.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
619 
come across any of these curious fossils will find 
that you can cleave them in the proper direction, 
like a piece of calcareous spar; yet, nevertheless, 
they have a most beautiful and elaborate organic 
structure. The existence of crystallization has led 
many persons into the mistake of thinking that the 
structure of tills rock cannot possibly be organic. 
There can, however, be no greater mistake, for we 
are constantly finding crystalline structure in recent 
us well as fossil calcareous organisms, and these 
large spines of the fossil Cidaris cleave very readily. 
The point is this: it is maintained by Messrs. King 
and Rowney that this beautiful arborescent struc¬ 
ture, which is a magnified view of what would fill 
these canals,—that tliis, which we get by dissolving 
away the carbonate of lime, consists of mere mineral 
infiltrations. Now, the fact that was first pointed out 
to me by Mr. Jordan, I have found most particularly 
satisfactory to every gentleman who has gone into 
the question, and who is enough of a mineralogist 
.to appreciate its importance. It is this, that these 
ramifications pass across the planes of cleavage, 
which they would not do if they were mineral infil¬ 
trations. I believe every mineralogist will at once 
say that that is perfectly conclusive against their 
being by any possibility mere inorganic infiltrations; 
that nothing but organic structure could in this 
manner produce a ramification of one mineral in the 
interior of another, a ramification of serpentine in 
the interior of carbonate of lime passing against its 
crystalline plane. 
Tliis cursory notice of tliis remarkable rock, for it 
covers hundreds of square miles in the Laurentian 
district, must conclude the little sketch I have en¬ 
deavoured to give you this evening of the chief points 
of interest with regard to the structure of the fora- 
minifera, but I may just mention one little incident 
which may give it a special interest for you, if, as I 
hope, I may be successful in inoculating some of 
you with a taste for microscopic study. If any of 
you are disposed to begin the study of the foramini¬ 
fera, and will get the sponge merchants to give you 
the sand that they shake out of the sponges when 
these come over, you will find an immense variety of 
foraminifera, which will give you plenty of occupa¬ 
tion ; and there is nothing more easy to begin upon 
than this sponge sand. The incident I am about to 
relate I do not mention with any view to the cut 
bono / or with an idea of helping you to raise your¬ 
selves in life, because I do not think raising oneself 
in fife is at all the first object in existence; I think 
the cultivation of one’s own powers is the first ob¬ 
ject. However, to my tale. Some } r ears ago, when 
I was first paying attention to this subject, a friend 
asked me if I knew Mr. A. B., who was at work on 
the same subject. I had not heard of Mr. A. B., who 
was a hard-working general practitioner, who had 
what is known as a guinea midwifery practice in a 
suburb of London. However, I called on this gen¬ 
tleman, and found him an enthusiastic student of 
natural history, but at the same time he was tho¬ 
roughly and honestly devoted to liis profession. I 
found that he had made a large collection of fora¬ 
minifera in the manner I have mentioned, by get¬ 
ting the sponge merchants to allow him to shake out 
the sand winch the sponges generally contain; and he 
had also gone down to Ratcliff Highway, and got the 
wholesale dealers in shells to allow him to scrape off 
some of the foraminifera which attach themselves 
fo the large foliated shells of the East Indian seas, and 
winch often afford some very curious types. In tliis 
way he had been working most patiently, employing 
every spare five minutes of his time ; but I found he 
had been working on what I considered an entirely 
wrong basis. That is to say, he was following the 
then most recent authority, that of D’Orbignv, who 
was malting every different form a species. Here, 
for instance, are two varieties represented, which are 
now classed as the same species, but which were 
then called distinct genera. We have now a perfect 
gradation from one to the other, so that it is impos¬ 
sible to draw a line between them. I invited him to 
spend an evening with me, and go through one type, 
and at the close of our interview he acknowledged that 
he had been working on a wrong plan, and said he 
should in future follow out the ideas I had given 
him. Since that time he has been one of my most 
valued and esteemed coUaborateurs; and not only has 
lie worked in the most successful manner upon this 
particular group, but he has followed another study 
requiring great devotion and care, and great dex¬ 
terity of manipulation. He has since, through the 
valuable series of observations which he has com¬ 
municated to scientific societies, been elected, and on 
his very first application, a Fellow of the Royal 
Society,—a distinction of very high value, because 
only fifteen are elected every year from forty-five or 
fifty candidates ; and in the first or second year 
afterwards he received the gold medal, one of the 
highest honours the Royal Society can bestow. I 
am glad also to be able to say that that scientific dis¬ 
tinction, instead of injuring him in his profession, 
has been of essential service to him. I mention tliis 
to show you how, from a very humble beginning, a 
man may, by simply employing odds and ends of 
time,—for my friend ncvpr had an idle five minutes 
in the day,—attain to a high position in science. 
There is no position in life in which this study may 
not be pursued ; and it affords an object of interest, 
which is one of the greatest comforts to any man of 
active and busy life,—the comfort of turning to 
something which forms a quiet occupation at once 
engaging the eye and the mind without any effort, 
and which tends more than anything else to distract 
one from the cares and fatigues of this busy London 
life, which all of us more or less are engaged in. I 
can assure you, from my own experience, that micro¬ 
scopic study is for this purpose the best kind of re¬ 
creation I am acquainted with. 
Over-doses of Chloral Hydrate. —“The Medical 
Times and Gazette mentions several cases which tend to 
show that chloral hydrate may prove fatal when admi¬ 
nistered in too large a dose. One, taken from the New 
York Journal of Psychological Medicine, was that of a 
lady, exceedingly nervous, who had been subjected un- 
availingly to a great variety of treatment. At last 
chloral hydrate was given in six cumulative doses of 
thirty grains each. The sleep so induced, although every 
effort was made to arouse her, ended in death. The 
cerebral vessels were enormously congested. The patient 
had previously been taking bromide of potassium. In 
one of our metropolitan hospitals a fatal issue has fol¬ 
lowed the administration of a large dose of chloral; but 
here the patient was in an exhausted state from a severe 
operation. In Philadelphia a woman swallowed an 
enormous quantity of the drug (460 grains it is believed). 
The symptoms were very severe, but remedies being 
applied promptly she recovered. 
