LITY.

Dr. B. W. Richardson says that artificial respiration is a much more
effective means of restoring the drowned or asphyxiated than galvanism.
By the use of an intermittent current of galvanism it is possible to
make the respiratory muscles of an animal recently dead act in precise
imitation of life, and the heart can be excited into brisk contraction
by the same means. But the result was that "the muscles excited by the
current dropped quickly into irrevocable death through becoming
exhausted under the stimulus, and that in fact the galvanic battery,
according to our present knowledge of its use in these cases, is an all
but certain instrument of death. By subjecting animals to death from the
vapor of chloroform in the same atmosphere, and treating one set by
artificial respiration with the double-acting pump, and the other set by
artificial respiration excited by galvanism, I found that the first
would recover in the proportion of five out of six, the second in
proportion of one out of six. Further, I found that if during the
performance of mechanical artificial respiration the heart were excited
by galvanism, death is all but invariable." This results from the fact
that "the passage of a galvanic current through the muscles of a body
recently dead confers on those muscles no new energy; that the current
in its passage only excites temporary contraction; that the force of
contraction resident in the muscles themselves is but educed by the
excitation, and to strike the life out of the muscles by the galvanic
shock without feeding the force, expended by contraction, from the
centre of the body, is a fatal principle of practice."

CURIOUS OPTICAL EXPERIMENTS.

Prof. Nipher of the Washington university at St. Louis describes some
optical illusions, easily tried and apparently very singular, as
follows: 1. Fold a sheet of writing paper into a tube whose diameter
is about three cm. Keeping both eyes open, look through the tube with
one eye, and look at the hand with the other, the hand being placed
close by the tube. An extraordinary phenomenon will be observed. A hole
the size of the tube will appear cut through the hand, through which
objects are distinctly visible. That part of the tube between the eye
and the hand will appear transparent, as though the hand was seen
through it. This experiment is not new, but I have never seen it
described. The explanation of it is quite evident.

2. Drop a blot of in