•852 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[April 20, 1872. 
a slight colouring of whiskey. It appears that this 
trade is carried on with impunity, no local authorities 
in Belfast or the province of Ulster caring to exer¬ 
cise the powers they possess for the suppression of 
the traffic. 
Du. Dobell having endeavoured in vain to find 
any bed or chair that would meet all the necessities 
of patients suffering from some of the severer stages 
of chronic heart disease, has succeeded in devising 
what he designates a “ lieart-hed,” which appears 
from the manner in which it can be arranged to sup¬ 
port the head, or arms, or any other part in any 
desired position, to possess qualities that will make 
it a boon to persons so afflicted. It is somewhat in 
the form of an ordinary couch, at the head of which 
■there is a revolving seat, enabling the patient to 
turn in any direction. On each side, but within this 
seat, is a crutch with liand-rest that may be adapted 
to any required height for the patient to rest upon; 
in front there is a semicircular table, upon which the 
head may be supported, and in this table there is a 
■sunken tram, upon which runs a circular rest suffi- 
'■ciently wide to carry a tray or desk. The lower 
portion of the bed can, by means of hinges and a 
raclietted supporter, be inclined so as to allow the 
legs of the patient to be lowered, or it may be re¬ 
moved altogether, leaving the upper portion in the 
form of an easy-cliair. 
Owing to the higher price invariably realized in 
this country for Barbadoes aloes over the product 
of the Cape, some interest has been excited in the 
latter colony in the matter, and a case of plants of 
A. vulgaris, Lam. (A. barbadensis, Mill.) has been 
sent to the Cape Botanic Garden by the Governor 
of Barbadoes. These plants, which were sent from 
Barbadoes, via England, arrived at their destination 
in fair condition, and will be taken care of in the 
Botanic Garden, and increased for the purpose of 
distribution. The Barbadoes aloe is described as 
“ of a lowly growth compared with some of the Cape 
species, but it has the merit of rapidly propagating 
itself, through natural means, by suckers from old- 
established plants.” Much of the inferiority of the 
■Cape aloes, however, appears to be due to careless¬ 
ness in the preparation of the drug. 
prorttMngs of JsdenMc jsiractws. 
ROYAL SOCIETY, EDINBURGH. 
A meeting of this Society was held on the evening of 
Monday, 15th April; Professor Kelland presiding. 
Sir Robert Christison, Bart., read a paper on “ The 
Action of Water on Lead.” After recapitulating the 
results of former investigations, communicated to the 
Society in 1842, Sir Robert proceeded to refer to the 
labours of other inquirers by which our knowledge of 
the subject lias since then been extended in various di¬ 
rections, and to describe certain fresh experiments which 
he has been making with the view of determining par¬ 
ticular points and arriving at some general law or laws. 
He said that the united results of all inquiries fecemed to 
be that very few natural waters, pure or impure, were 
so absolutely inert that they would not show some trace 
of lead dissolved in them when submitted to a delicate 
test. Probably the limit of safety to persons using a 
water for domestic purposes was that the lead should 
only be in the proportion of about one-millionth to the 
water. Many facts had been brought forward which 
violated the general doctrine that certain neutral salts 
protected lead from the action of w r ater. Instances had 
been produced of hard water having corroded and per¬ 
forated lead cisterns and conduits. The circumstances 
attending those cases had seldom been stated with suffi¬ 
cient precision to furnish an explanation; but his in¬ 
quiries seemed to point to the conclusion that many of 
those so-called solvent actions of hard waters were not 
instances of pure chemical corrosion, but were instances 
in which the corrosion took place greatly from galvanic 
action. Besides, the presence of certain non-protective 
or feebly protective salts imparted a corrosive power 
even to water which abounded in highly protective salts. 
With all the objections brought against the St. Mary’s 
Loch water, it did not act upon lead. On examining the 
water, he had found that the quantity of saline matter 
in it, though small, was not so insignificant after all. 
Edinburgh water, when diluted to the same degree, had 
no action upon lead, or at least so feeble an action that 
one might say there was none. The presence of peaty 
matter in the St. Mary’s water did not undo the power 
of the protective salts. He hoped to be able to prove on 
a subsequent occasion that the peaty matter might even 
tend to increase the protective power of those salts. He 
expected to show the Society that organic matters, in one 
shape, protected lead from being acted on, while in 
another shape, they facilitated the solution of lead in 
water. 
Mr. Young read a brief notice of an experiment he 
had made with the view of preventing the bilge water 
from corroding the iron plates of his yacht. In one 
bottle he showed bilge water red with oxide of iron, in 
another bilge water quite colourless, the difference 
having been produced by the introduction of lime, which 
seemed to have the effect of preventing corrosion. 
fmsaetums of % Itmramtfel Srarig. 
A list of persons who have passed the Preliminary 
held on the 8 th inst ., will he published next iceclc; also 
.list of Major and Minor held on the Ylth and 19 th inst. 
Errata.— Page 831, col. 2. 
Benevolent Fund. 
For the list given ion Doncaster, read as follows :— 
Atkinson, Stephen ...* . 05o 
'Duuhill, Son and Shaw. i q 
Howorth, James. 0106 
•Slack, William.! 0 5 0 
ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
The Production of Honey Dew. 
At the last meeting of the Scientific Committee of this 
Society Professor Dyer read the following abstract of a 
memoir by M. Boussingault on the “ Production of 
Honey Dew.”* 
On July 21st, 1869, at Liebfrauenberg, the leaves of a 
lime were coated on their upper surface with an ex¬ 
tremely saccharine viscid matter. The tree in fact 
afforded an example of the production of honey-dew, a 
manna-like substance, which is frequently observable 
upon the lime, the black alder, the maple and the rose. 
* ‘ Comptes Rendus,’ Jan. 8, 1872. 
