778 
FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS. 
A Dog’s Fast.-— Mr. W. Brankston Richardson, writing 
from 61, Southerland Gardens, Maida Yale, sends the follow¬ 
ing dog-story to the Times :—^Concurrently with the forty 
days’ fast of the misguided American doctor, another fast has 
been in progress in our own country, for the truth of which I 
myself can vouch. A friend of mine who lives in Devonshire 
left home some weeks since on a series of visits to his friends 
in distant parts of the country. A few days after he left his 
servants wrote him that a favourite Sky terrier was missing. 
My friend, after every search had proved fruitless, considered 
that the dog had been stolen. On his return home, after an 
absence of one month and five days, he unlocked the library, 
the doors and windows of which had been bolted and barred 
during his absence, and to his astonishment the missing dog 
crept out into the light, a living skeleton and totally blind. 
He was well cared for, and has now quite recovered his health 
and sight. But his existence was wonderful. He had had no 
food and no water, and had not gnawed the books or obtained 
sustenance from any source whatever.”— Nature. 
Detection of Ammonia in Water. —Ammonia is 
usually present in water as carbonate, but frequently in such 
small quantities that it cannot be detected by the ordinary 
tests. In such cases Hager ascertains its presence by mixing 
2 to 3 litres of the water w 7 ith 20 drops hydrochloric acid, 
evaporating to dryness, dissolving the residue in 10 or 15 c.c. 
distilled water, filtering, and applying Bohlig’s test, which 
consists in adding, first, 5 drops of solution of corrosive sub¬ 
limate (1 part in 30 parts of water), and then 5 drops of 
solution of potassium carbonate (1 part in 50 parts of water), 
when a cloudiness indicates the presence of ammonia. 
Absorption of Lime Salts. By L. Perl ( Bied . Centr ., 
1880, 308). —The amount of lime secreted in the urine of a 
dog weighing 22 kilos., to which 7*10 grams of calcium 
chloride had been given daily with the food, was increased 
from O’135 gram to 0*325 gram per day and the chlorine by 
6*14 grams. These results were confirmed by another series 
of experiments, in which the greater part of the lime intro¬ 
duced as calcium chloride was found in the fasces, but the 
whole of the chlorine in the urine. The calcium chloride 
had probably been decomposed by the alkaline secretion of 
the bowels into sodium chloride and calcium carbonate.— 
A. J. C.— Jour. C/iem. Soc. 
