it. I will mention here the text books | here recommend without injury to health, commonly used by students on the various and, with a little womanly tact and real branches of medical study, though other earnestness in the work, this residence works on the same subject may be used if may be made a most valuable time of study. more convenient. Carpenter's Physiology, I will add that as, later, it will belong to Wilson's Anatomy, Pereira's Materia Me- your duty as physician, to superintend dica, Watson's Practice of Medicine, Druitt's nurses and carefully attend to the hygienic Surgery, Churchill's Midwifery, Churchill's and other arrangements of the sick room, it Diseases of Women, Alison's Pathology, will be an advantage to you to have actually Fownes' Chemistry, Bell's Legal Medicines. done the work of an intelligent uurse, and Only a portion of these could be studied familiarised yourself with this important during this year, and the selection should part of the care of the sick. As also the be made by advice. Anatomy, physiology, prevention of disease and care of health is and chemistry might form the commence- half the physician's work, all experience ment, and the subjects for examination. which bears upon these subjects will be of One piece of advice I would give the stu- great use. dent; make your study as practical as posADVANTAGES OF THE MATERNITE. sible; do not rely on simple reading. If you study anatomy, try and get access to In respect to residence in the Maternité, some little museum, see the bones them- which I strongly advise, it had better be selves, study the prepared skeleton, look at deferred to the end of the course, not only plaster or papier-maché models, dissect on account of the prejudice that exists in birds, or a cat or dog-a single glance will relation to an English woman's studying often be worth more than pages of descrip- medicine in France, and the advantage of tion. If you study chemistry, try and get enlarged experience before doing so, but admission to an apothecary's, see the sub- because there are a great many old midwife stances spoken of, learn the taste, smell, prejudices and practices clinging to that and look of the various articles of the Ma-institution which you can better discriminate teria Medica; if you can handle medicines and put up prescriptions, so much the better. During some period of your study, you must enter and work in a laboratory. If you can see sick people, and learn to observe symptoms, feel the pulse, examine the tongue, etc., by all means do so; it will wonderfully assist your memory in reading on the practice of medicine; seek for ways in which you can assist the memory by aid of the senses and judgment.

SECOND YEAR.

In relation to the second period of study, six months may be passed to great advantage in a hospital as nurse. No woman can How enter a hospital except in this capacity, but the advantages of seeing practice in a great hospital are so indispensable, that no one who has the true spirit for this work in her, will hesitate to accept the wearisome details of the nurse's duty, for the sake of the invaluable privilege of studying disease on a large scale. All pride and assumption of superiority must be laid aside; and while diligently performing the distinct duties of the poor you accept, observe, and privately make a record of whatever belongs to your proper medical work. The menial drudgery that formerly was associated with the nurse's work is being laid aside in some of the London hospitals. I have ascertained that a lady can enter in such a capacity as I

and avoid at the end of your education than at the beginning. The great practice of the institution will be invaluable to you, and the vastly increased medical experience which you will possess after a six months' residence there, will fully repay you for the immense discomforts of the positson. You will see every variety of midwifery practice, perform a large amount yourself, and acquire the skilful touch so necessary to the profession. The price of tuition is very low. A certificate of baptism, good character, and vaccination, with a knowledge of reading and writing, are the only qualifications required. Though the community-life of the the style of living, food, &c., of the plainest institution is trying to English feeling, and description, the arrangements of time and occupation are all made for the benefit of the pupil.

AMERICAN STUDY.

The time spent in America will give not only the drill of college, but the degree of a legal practitioner. There is no school of medicine open to women in Europe, but there are several open in America, and though a foreign degree is not necessarily recognised in England, i.e. though the council which registers properly qualified medical practitioners may or may not accept the degree as evidence of suitable study, still the probabilities are that it would be accepted, if evidence of the whole course of

study were furnished, and the application for registration made in the proper way. You can practise in England without this registration. The chief disadvantages of doing so (independently of the loss of the prestige of registration), are the in-it,; for while the water did certainly seem ability to compel the payment of fees, or to take part in established hospitals, neither of which, I think, would much affect you. All physicians holding foreign diplomas labour under the same difficulty. All you can do, however, is to obtain the best diploma accessible to you; and I think that the enlarged experience, as well as real knowledge, to be gained by American study, are well worth the proposed expenditure of time. The best methods of studying in America may be obtained without difficulty when the time comes for carrying out this part of the plan.

EXPENSE.

It is difficult to make a calculation of the sum of money required for carrying out such a plan of education as is here laid down, as it will vary greatly, according to the expenditures made for private instruction, this expenditure being as expensive as it is valuable. But I think I may safely state that 1007. per annum will be necessary, exclusive of travelling expenses, clothes, books, and instruments, but inclusive of board, public tuition, and some private instruction. To this I must add that means of support must be possessed to some extent during the first years of practice, for no one should calculate on a rapid success in prac

tice.

top of Mont Blanc, Humboldt up the Andes, or Hooker to the Himalayas, and that in any of these elevated regions we test some of the general ideas of boiling. If we want a cup of tea, most desperately bad we find to boil, "the water did not boil" in the housewife's sense of the word, so as to make good tea moreover, the finger, dipped into the bubbling fluid, finds it hot, but not scalding. It would be long before we could properly cook a dish of potatoes up in these airy regions. Indeed, one travellers (Dr. Darwin) has recorded, that, during a sojourn of some of the loftiest mountains of South America, he and his companions actually did cook their potatoes all night in water that bubbled away as if boiling fast enough, but found them still hard in the morning. They discovered, upon inquiry, that the miners who live up there cannot cook their meals in water, though they can roast sufficiently well.

facts to persons who have always, as we These perhaps seem rather unaccountable remarked at the commencement, associated cooked victuals, scalded fingers, good tea, &c., with bubbling, boiling water. For an explanation, we must go a little way into chemistry. We all know that when water in any vessel is put upon the fire, it gene rally becomes hotter and hotter, till at last it fairly what we call boils that is, bubbles of steam are rapidly given off from it. We need scarcely tell our readers, that, when water thus begins to boil, it does not become any hotter-in other words, its temperature does not rise above 212° of the thermometer, or measurer of heat. And yet the heat is

BOILING: WHAT IT IS, AND HOW passing from the fire into the boiling water

IT IS.

just as rapidly as it did when it was at a lower temperature. Why, then, does it THERE are many of our readers, perhaps, not become hotter? For the simple reason who would feel themselves puzzled if asked that the steam flies off with the heat as to explain exactly the meaning of "boiling." rapidly as the heat converts the water into They would know very well-if they put steam, more especially as the steam has a a pot or kettle with water in it upon the fire considerably greater appetite for heat than when it began to boil; because the bub-water-that is, can take in a vastly greater bling up of the steam would make the fact plain, both to their eyes and ears. They would know that articles of food put into this boiling water would be cooked; and, further, they would feel so certain that this boiling water would scald them, that they would not test it by putting their fingers into it. Thus far all could tell us something about boiling: many, perhaps a good many, could tell us little more. But now, let us take some of our readers with us to the top of any of the lofty mountains. Let us suppose we accompany Albert Smith to the

amount of heat as steam than it could do as water-and off it goes with it. Put on as big a fire as you like, put your pot in a glowing furnace, still you will not get your water any hotter-only the steam goes the faster. We told you, a little above, that if the water was heated at the top of a high mountain, it would boil and bubble long before it reached 212°, the ordinary boiling point. For the explanation of the pheno mena of boiling, we must look to the atmo sphere-that great ocean of air, so to speak, which envelopes our world-which is forty

66

enough, but it is perhaps at some temperature under 200°. Why?-Our readers by this time can surely explain for themselves. For every step we have come up the mountain, we have diminished the depth and weight of air above us, and our kettle of water; we have taken from the power of the air to weigh down and repress the tendeney of the water to pass into the form of steam; consequently the water passes into the form of steam at a lower temperature, and the steam takes up the heat and walks off with it as fast as it did when we boiled our water on the usual kitchen fire, and the higher we go the sooner the water boils, if boiling it can be called; till at last, could we go high enough, and live to see it, the water might boil and form ice at one and the same time. Indeed this curious effect is to be demonstrated by means of the air-pump.

miles deep or high, whichever you like to call it, and at the bottom of which ocean we live, and move, and have our being.' Most of our readers probably know that air has weight; not very much, perhaps, in small quantities, but very considerable indeed when in the aggregrate. Forty miles depth of air, therefore, must go for something. Experiments have proved that it gives us just a pressure of fifteen pounds upon every square inch of surface, at the ordinary level of the sea. It matters not what it is, whether it be rock or water, the bodies of animals or men, or the most delicate flowers, still there is the pressure on every square inch of the fifteen pounds' weight of air, and it is only when under certain conditions that weight is taken off, that we see its effects. Under ordinary circumstances, the weight presses as much one way as another, equally on all sides, conse- By proper arrangements, water may be quently it is not felt. We now return to made to boil and freeze at the same moment. our boiling pot. If at the sea level, it mat- Having shewn how the temperature of ters not where it boils, on the kitchen fire boiling water is reduced by diminished in the smoky town, or in the gipsey camp pressure of the atmosphere upon its surface, under the unobstructed canopy of heaven, our readers will readily understand how, still we have the same pressure on the sur- by increasing that pressure, the temperature face of the heating water. And now comes of water may be very greatly raised before a struggle the heat is passing through the it boils. Now this increased pressure is bottom and sides of the pot as fast as it can, effected very simply by confining the steam, saying to the water, as it were, Get your by boiling the water in a close vessel; for steam up and go off with me as quickly as the confined steam, being an elastic vapour, possible. The air, on the other hand, is presses upon the water just as an increased saying, I have got you down with my weight weight of air would do: hence we have of fifteen pounds upon every square inch such a cooking vessel as "Papin's digester,” of you, and will keep you down as long as a strong iron pot, its lid made to screw down, I can; and so the water goes on getting and fitted with a safety-valve, which prehotter and hotter-it may be with rage-vents the escape of the steam when it gets but all it can effect for a time is to do a little vapouring at the surface. At last from below there are signs of movement, bubbles of real steam begin to rise; up they come, faster and faster; the water is getting the best of it, and at last comes forth triumphantly in a regular boil. In other words the water has reached the boiling point of 212, at which point its tendency to burst into steam, or the elastic force of the steam, more than balances the atmospheric pressure. These are the ordinary phenomena of boiling, and, like all things in God's creation, the adaptations are so complete, that when we verge upon the boiling point we have that temperature most fitted for the usual cooking processes. Now let us take our kettle on our backs, and a faggot of sticks, or any other fuel, to the top of our mountain, and set to work with our cooking: not even M. Soyer himself, if the mountain is a lofty one, could do it. We cannot get heat: the water boils fast

beyond a certain point. In this way the heat of the water may be raised many degrees above the usual boiling point, and for some cooking processes, such as extracting all the good out of bones, and such-like, with great advantage.

SCRAPS FROM AN OBSERVER'S NOTE-BOOK

1. I have heard many women complaining of their husbands' neglect of home. A spoonful of honey will keep more bees in the hive, than will ten of vinegar.

2. How frequently do we hear parents say, "My children are so very unruly!" I believe young minds are something like young trees-much depends upon training.

3. Many women, and men also, complain of haying too much work. If they attended to their own business only, they would do much to ease themselves.

loves to be telling the miseries of married men. 4. I am acquainted with an old bachelor, who My slight knowledge of physiognomy teaches me that he is not the happiest man alive.

ZOOLOGY-No. IX.

ORDER VI.-ACALEPHE. CILIOGRADES.
"Oh happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare."

COLERIDGE. IF on a fine summer's day your boat should be gliding gently along or, better still, if your boat should be anchored where the tide is flowing, you will at times see a large jelly-fish floating on the surface, and borne unresistingly along by the current. Under such circumstances, it recalls to the imaginative mind the words of the poet:

"Still must I on: for I am as a weed

Flung from the rock, on ocean's foam to sail,
Where'er the surge may sweep-the tempest's
breath prevail."

vidual we looked upon, or others of the
And we might fancy that the very indi-
same species, might thus be conveyed to
any latitude.
But we should be wrong;

be drawn gently after a boat, in fine summer weather, among the creatures taken in it may be some of the shape and size shown in the annexed Fig. (Fig. 32.*) They are transparent, gelatinous, and so very fragile, that some little skill is necessary to transfer them safely from the towing-net to the glass vessels of sea-water in which they should be kept. But once there, the form of the body is striking, and its movements peculiar, being caused by the action thirds of the longer of eight bands of cilia, extending over twodiameter of the body. Their position as re

these children of the ocean have their ap-gards each other, and their arrangement on Fig. 32. pointed range. The laws of geographical the oval body of the animal, will be underdistribution confine them within certain stood by a reference to Fig. 33, which limits, and they but rarely venture beyond the boundary. It is this circumstance that represents the body as seen from beneat invests with interest the advent to our shores of the Physalia, or Portuguese Manof-war; and makes a fleet of the little Velella, with their snowy sail-like crests, be regarded with the same mixed feeling of admiration and wonder that is inspired by the arrival of some bright plumaged bird from other lands. The Physalia, the Velella, and others belonging to the order Acalephe, might here be dwelt upon, but that I prefer occupying the brief my disposal with a description of creatures that may be sought for, and not in vain, on many parts of our coasts during the sum

mer months.

space at

Fig. 33.

There is, however, nothing about them which will arrest the attention so much as These are fringed with beautifully fine cilia, four ear-shaped appendages, or tentacula. and are ever changing in form. They may Instead of moving by the contraction be seen pointed, erect, and hollowed longithe jelly-fishes, they move by means of cilia, flattened or concave, with the extremity and expansion of the marginal disk, like tudinally, like the ears of a horse, or somewhat funnel-shaped, and occasionally either and hence bear the appellation of "Cilio-rounded. At times their position is horigrades." Some are not uncommonly spoken zontal; at others they hang loosely down, of by the name Beroë, which belongs to one like the ears of a lap-dog, or are curved of the genera, and, like the term Medusa, like the petals of a martagon lily. is of classic origin, as it was applied to one of the fabled sea-nymphs.

espe

Two species happen to have fallen cially under my notice, and a description of their habits and peculiarities may serve to illustrate some of the most interesting points in the economy of their respective

families.

If the little towing net (Fig. 22, p. 47),

These tentacula issue from four circular orifices. Round each of these apertures is When the body, owing to its great delicacy, a whitish cord-like body, fringed with cilia. is broken up by the tossing of tempestuous waves, or from other causes, these ciliated

This is a lateral view. For many details not here Cydippe pomiformis and Bolina Hibernica. given vide Trans. R. I. Academy, vol. xix., Papers on

In the side view of the animal here given, This species, Cydippe pomiformis, usually the mouth, which is at the upper part of swims with the mouth upwards, though at the body, could not be shown. Adjoining times it performs such gambols and summerto it are two prominent lobes, which, how-saults, that-like the brewer's horse in the ever, differ very much at different times as to their form and extent.