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DISEASE OF THE VINE—Much apprehension has been excited in Italy and the North of France, from the appearance of a peculiar disease among the vineyards of those countries— singularly enough it is the choice trellised vines that are first attacked before the common sorts growing in the country. It is attributed, by Dr. Robouam, a land owner in the environs of Paris, to the attacks of a small insect, called by him the coccus radicum, which likewise, according to him, is the cause of the disease of the potato. GASTRIC JUICE—The food, and particularly certain descriptions of food, undergo, in the stomach, a necessary process of digestion, which is performed by the gastric juice, the process being the same whether the gastric juice acts in the abdominal cavity or in an open vessel. The permanent opening made in the stomach of a soldier in Canada, by a musket ball, and described by Mr. Beaumont, as well as the experiments pertormed with animals, prove irrefragably that the process of digestion, in animals which resemble man in their organization, is the same whether the action goes on in the stomach or in a vessel. It follows from this that it is very easy to. obtain any quantity of the gastric juice, either from animals that have been killed at the slaughter-house, or preferably from living animals furnished with a permanent aperture in the stomach, so that the gastric juice may be taken out when required ; the species of animal may, moreover, be changed at pleasure. By this means invalid* aiii.others, troubled with dytppsS", intf * e supplied with the means of digestion, either by taking the natural gastric juice in a liquid state or by having it dried and reduced to powder ; in this latter state it becomes active on being again dissolved. In either case the gastric juice may be given directly or in some other substance with scent and taste, or not, as may seen best. In extreme cases, an artificial digestion of the food may be first operated in vessels, and then allow it to be administered already digested. The patient will then have only to absorb and assimilate the food, the act of digestion having been already accomplished. The gastric juice has nothing disagreeable in its transparency, color, scent, or taste ; when in a powder it has no sensible effect on the palate, and the food already digested may receive, like cooked viands, every sort of taste by culinary processes. RELATION BETWEEN THE SPOTS IN THE SUN AND THE MAGNETIC NEEDLE.—According to observations made by M. Rodolphe Wolf, Director of the Observatory at Berne, it appears that the number of spots on the sun have their maximum and minimum at the same time as the variations of the needle. It follows, from this, that the cause of these two changes on the sun and on the earth must be the same, and, consequently, from this discovery, it will be possible to solve several important problems, whose solution has hitherto never been attempted. HYDROPHOBIA.—It is pretended by a French physician, Dr. Bellanger, that there is, in reality, no such disease as hydrophobia, the whole calamity consisting in the imagination of the patient. He offers to restore to health, gratuitously, anyone affected with this, according to him, imaginary malady. PRESERVING PROPERTIES OF COFFEE.—M. E. Robin speaks highly of the preserving properties of coffee. For example, meat dipped in coffee, rather strong, which had been allowed to cool, and then left in the air for three days, has been preserved without any change worth mentioning. Since last November, 1831, it has assumed the appearance of cooked meat, and has never had any bad odor; the liquor is discolored, but preserves its aroma, which is very agreeable. Another piece of the same meat placed in a similar quantity of coffee, in the same manner, had a bad odor at the end of ten days, and putriiied at the end of three weeks. The question of its certainty for preserving is one of interest to domestic economy
