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Page 13
_Butterflies_.
In June, 1826, a column of butterflies, from 10 to 15 feet broad, was
seen to pass over Neuchatel, in Switzerland. The passage lasted upwards
of two hours, without any interruption, from the moment when the
butterflies were first observed.--_Brewster's Journal_.
_Water Plant_.
A shrub has been discovered in our new Indian countries, from whose
stem, when divided, there issues a copious vegetable spring of limpid
and wholesome water. The natives know this well, and hence we rarely
meet with an entire plant. It is a powerful climber, and is quite new
and nondescript.--_Letter from India_.
_Malaria and Fevers_.
It is notorious, that, in the last autumn, the remittent fevers in
various parts of the country amounted to a species of pestilence, such
as has scarcely been known in England from this cause since the days of
Dr. Sydenham. Wherever ague had existed, or ever had been supposed
possible, in those places was this fever found; so that in all the
well-known tracts in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Essex,
Sussex, Hampshire, &c. there was scarcely a house without one or more
inhabitants under fever, with a considerable mortality. In the parish of
Marston, in Lincolnshire, it amounted to 25 in 300 inhabitants. The same
fevers were extremely abundant in various parts of the outskirts of
London, as also in the villages or towns which are connected with it,
within a range of from six to ten miles. This was the case throughout
the range of streets or houses from Buckingham Gate to Chelsea; in which
long line, it is said, that almost every house had a patient or more
under this fever, though these were mistaken for typhus, or at least
thus misnamed. Then it was also about Vauxhall and Lambeth; and to a
great extent among all that scattered mixture of town and country which
follows from Whitechapel, from Bishopsgate, &c., and very particularly
along Ratcliffe-Highway to an indefinite range along the river. In
Lewisham there were in one house nine patients under this fever, which
proved mortal to one. We may also enumerate Dulwich, especially subject
to this disorder, Fulham, Ealing, and the several other villages along
the Thames, as far as Chertsey; and even Richmond, where, as at
Lewisham, there was one house where ten individuals at one time were
suffering under this disease. Whatever was the pestilence last year, it
promises to be much greater in the present one. This is easily judged
from the manner in which the season has set in, but still more decidedly
from the extraordinary prevalence of ague in the spring; since that
which was intermittent fever then, will be remittent in the autumn, or
rather, there will scarcely be a definite season of vernal intermittent,
but the remittent will commence immediately, increasing in extent and
severity as the summer advances, and promising to become, in the autumn,
the greatest season of disease that England has known for this century.
Dr. Macculloch attributes this alarming increase to _malaria_, on
the production and propagation of which he has recently published an
essay, the leading argument of which is, "that as the quantity of the
poison which any person can inspire is necessarily small, and as this
small quantity can be produced by a small marshy spot as well as a large
one, it is the same, as to the production of the disease, whether the
marsh is a foot square or a mile, provided the exposure be complete;
while also any piece of ground where vegetables decompose under the
action of water is virtually a marsh, or must produce _malaria_."
_Acclimatizing Plants_.
A Mr. Street, of Biel, in East Lothian, has recently made some
successful attempts at acclimatizing, or giving to exotic plants greater
powers of withstanding cold than they had when first introduced. By
planting in situations well drained from superfluous moisture, under
circumstances where rapid growth was rendered impracticable, and in a
garden admirably adapted to the object from its position, he has
succeeded in naturalizing, in latitude 56� N. plants which have not yet
been known to endure the winters even of the parallel of
London.--_Quarterly Journal of Science_.
In a table kept at Sydney by Major Goulburn, from May 1821 to April
1822, the thermometer never rose above 751/2� and never lower than 54� of
Fahrenheit.
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