There is one other point which I must refer to, and which is especially interesting to a great seaport like this. This is the question of scurvy--a question of vital importance to a maritime nation. A paper lately issued by Mr. Thomas Gray, of the Board of Trade, discloses the regrettable fact that since 1873 there has been a serious falling off, the outbreaks of scurvy having again increased until they reached ninety-nine in 1881. This, Mr. Gray seems to think, is due to a neglect of varied food scales; but it may also very probably have arisen from the neglect of the regulation about lime-juice, either as to issue or quality, or both. But it is also a fact of very great importance that mere monotony of diet has a most serious effect upon health; variety of food is not merely a pandering to gourmandism or greed, but a real sanitary benefit, aiding digestion and assimilation. Our Board of Trade has nothing to do with the food scales of ships, but Mr. Gray hints that the Legislature will have to interfere unless shipowners look to it themselves. The ease with which preserved foods of all kinds can be obtained and carried now removes the last shadow of an excuse for backwardness in this matter, and in particular the provision of a large supply of potatoes, both fresh and dried, ought to be an unceasing care; this is done on board American ships, and to this is doubtless owing in a great part the healthiness of their crews. Scurvy in the present day is a disgrace to shipowners and masters; and if public opinion is insufficient to protect the seamen, the legislature will undoubtedly step in and do so. And now let me close by pointing out that the study of this commonplace matter of eating and drinking opens out to us the conception of the grand unity of nature; since we see that the body of man differs in no way essentially from other natural combinations, but is subject to the same universal physical laws, in which there is no blindness, no variableness, no mere chance, and disobedience of which is followed as surely by retribution as even the keenest eschatologist might desire. * * * * * RATTLESNAKE POISON. By HENRY H. CROFT. Some time since, in a paper to which I am unfortunately unable to refer, a French chemist affirmed that the poisonous principle in snakes, or eliminated by snakes, was of the nature of an alkaloid, and gave a name to this class of bodies. Mr. Pedler has shown that snake poison is destroyed or neutralized by means of platinic chloride, owing probably to the formation of an insoluble double platinic chloride, such as is formed with almost if not all alkaloids. In this country (Texas) where rattlesnakes are very common, and persons camping out much exposed to their bites, a very favorite anecdote, or _remedia_ as the Mexicans cull it, is a strong solution of iodine in potassium iodide.[1]