Summing up the results of the various experiments made with narcotics and other agents for suspending life, Dr. Richardson remarks that much is already known in the world of science in respect to the suspension of animal life by artificial means: "cold as well as various chemical agents has this power, and it is worthy of note that cold, together with the agents named, is antiseptic, as though whatever suspended living action, suspended also by some necessary and correlative influence the process of putrefactive change." He points out that if the news from Brisbane were reliable, it would be clear that what had been done had been effected by the combination of one of the chemical agents above named, or of a similar agent, with cold. The only question which would remain as of moment is, not whether a new principle has been developed, but whether in matter of detail a new product has been discovered which, better than any of the agents we already possess, destroys and suspends animation. "In organic chemistry," he proceeds, "there are, I doubt not, hundreds of substances which, like mandragora and nitrite of amyl, would suspend the vital process, and it may be a new experimenter has met with such an agent. It is not incredible, indeed, that the Indian Fakirs possess a vegetable extract or essence which possesses the same power, and by means of which they perform their as yet unexplained feat of prolonged living burial." But he is careful to note the weak points of the Australian story--viz., first, the statement that the method used is a secret, "for men of true science know no such word;" secondly, that the experimenter has himself to go to America to procure more supplies of his agents; and, thirdly, that he requires two agents, one of which is an antidote to the other. As respects this third point, he asks very pertinently how an antidote can be absorbed and enter into the circulation in a body practically dead. It is, of course, now well known that the whole story was a hoax, and a mischievous one. Several Australian farmers travelled long distances to Sydney to make inquiries about a method which promised such important results, only to find that there was not a particle of truth in the story. RICHARD A. PROCTOR. FOOTNOTES: