ran submitted a Memoir, which seems to be quite
important, on local anesthetic medication. "In the medical point of
view," he remarks, "the number of cases in which local anesthetic
applications may be employed, is truly immense. My experiments and
researches, during many months, have conducted me to this practical
result, which is worthy of all attention. Whenever an acute pain exists
in any part of the animal economy, whether the pain constitute the
malady in itself or be only an integral and principal part of it, the
physician can relieve the patient of it for a longer or shorter time, by
one or various local anesthetic applications. Great service, too, may be
rendered by the precedent use of them in various surgical cases. The
medication is wonderfully useful in articular acute rheumatism."

"Local anesthetic properties belong to all the agents in which the
general have been found. They depend on the degree of fixity of the
substance. A number of the anesthetics are irritating for the skin;
chloroform in particular. According to Dr. Aran, the best agent for
topical use is _ether chlorhydique chlore_. This is efficacious in a few
minutes. Monsieur Recamier has submitted to the Academy of Medicine a
_galvanic cataplasm_, by which, when it is applied to the skin, the
benefit of electricity is fully conveyed, without the least pain. The
reporter exclaims, 'Yes, who would have thought it? Electricity is
transformed into cataplasm. This mysterious power, which, perhaps, is
life itself, is reduced to an humble and common part in pharmaceutical
science.'

"At the sitting of the _Academy of Sciences_ on the 30th ult., a very
interesting memoir (the 4th) was read by M.A. Masson, with the title,
Studies of Electrical Photometry. He thinks that he has ascertained the
cause of electrical light. He ascribes the Aurora Borealis to currents
of great intensity situate in the higher regions of our atmosphere." The
Report of Lieut. J.C. Walsh on his soundings, was referred for
examination to Duperroy, the member most eminent in hydrography.

MONSIEUR POUILLET, the great Professor of Physics, has published in
Paris a work entitled _General Notions of Natural Philosophy and
Meteorology, for the use of young persons_; and Mr. Boussingault,
eminent as a scientific agriculturist, the second edition of his _Rural
Economy considered in its Relations with Chemistry, Physics, and
Mineralogy_. The _Treatise of Mineralogy_ by Dufresnoy, the