752 
FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS. 
disease has also shown itself in the Isle of Ely in a severe 
form. It was also taken into the neighbourhood of Arundel, 
Sussex, by cattle from Pevensey. 
Altogether there are nearly thirty counties in England in 
which the mouth and foot disease prevails. Reports from 
abroad show that the affection has appeared in Switzerland, 
and also in Denmark. Other accounts refer to its progress 
in the direction of the Black Sea. 
In Holstein and Schleswig its ravages have been so 
serious that dairy operations are in some places quite 
arrested, and the local police do not permit the consump¬ 
tion of milk from diseased animals. Only the best of the 
fluid is given to pigs, and not to them until it has been 
boiled. 
From the examinations which we have made of milk from 
diseased animals, we are not disposed to consider these pre¬ 
cautions unnecessary. 
SHEEP-POX. 
Variola is reported to be present among sheep in Stettin; 
also in the district of Fricase, twenty-four miles from Galli¬ 
poli, and near Bari, on the Adriatic coast. 
Facts and Observations. 
Decomposition of the Sesqui-salts of Iron,. —At 
the meeting of the French Academy on the 19 th of April, a 
memoir was presented from M. Debray. “ When,^’ says the 
author, we heat a solution of neutral chloride of sesqui- 
oxide of iron, so dilute that its colour is hardly perceptible, 
until it reaches to above 70^^ Cent., it becomes decidedly 
coloured, and assumes the characteristic tint of the basic 
chlorides of the sesquioxide. This transformation is not due 
to the disengagement of hydrochloric acid, since the trans¬ 
formation can be effected in close vessels, and the colour is 
maintained on cooling. The chemical properties of the iron 
salt are profoundly modified; thus, whilst the primitive 
liquor gives with the yellow prussiate of potash an intense 
precipitate of Prussian blue, the coloured solution gives with 
this reagent but a pale greenish blue precipitate ; also sea-salt, 
which has no action in the colourless solution, gives with 
the modified chloride a gelatinous precipitate of hydrated 
