I have since examined several peach and nectarine trees; and wherever I discovered a limb dead, I invariably found that one or more of the nails which fastened it were in _contact with the bark_. A limb of a peach tree puzzled me for some time. It was dead, but I could not perceive that any of the nails were in contact with it, (the scraps of cloth being left pretty long.) After a narrow search, however, I found the mud, of which the wall was built, considerably stained with rust, immediately under the branch: and on digging into the wall with my knife, I brought the hidden mischief to light.—It was part of a very large spike nail, and which lay about an inch below the surface. On mentioning some of those circumstances to a friend, he observed, that about a year before, he had fastened some currant trees to a wall, with iron hooks. On examination, almost every limb so fastened, _was dead_. The effect of the Galvanism in these cases will probably be found to be greater in rainy seasons, as the oxydation then goes on more rapidly than it does at other times. Hence it appears that, in training fruit trees, wooden pegs or cramps, should be used instead of iron; or else, that care should be taken that the iron do not touch or come near to a limb. CHAP. XI. _Of medical Galvanism._ Galvanism, like electricity, has been applied to the human body, for the purpose of removing complaints, and apparently with equal success. The ingenious Galvani, immediately after his discovery of Galvanism, (or as he called it, _animal electricity_,) attempted to explain the causes of several diseases by it. Thus in a complaint where there was a total loss of contractile power, as the paralysis, he ascribed the cause to the interposition of a non-conducting substance, which prevented the passage of the Galvanic fluid from the nerve to the muscle, and from the muscle to the nerve. “If artificial electricity (says he,) be conveyed to the head, the nerves or spinal marrow, by means of the conductor of the Leyden phial, paralysis, apoplexy, and even death, will be induced, according as the phial is charged with a greater or less quantity of the electric fluid.—If such effects result from _common_ electricity, may it not be presumed that a sudden afflux of _animal_ electricity towards the brain, may be productive of the most fatal consequences.” But omitting, as wholly conjectural and unsatisfactory, all _theories_ relating to the effect which Galvanism has upon the animal œconomy, we shall proceed to relate known facts, and the method of applying Galvanism for the relief of certain morbid affections of the human body.