256 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



organic food and absorption of oxygen. Its food is present in the 

 blood, and it meets the oxygen in the lungs ; thus, the whole blood 

 becomes disorganized, and nothing is found after death but dark 

 fluid blood, the fluidity indicating its loss of fibrine, the dark color 

 its want of oxygen, which it readily absorbs on exposure after 

 death. It results, then, that a person dies slowly asphyxiated by 

 deprivation of oxygen, in whatever other way the poison may also 

 act ; and so far as the ordinary examination of the blood goes, tho 

 post-mortem appearances are similar to those seen after drowning 

 and suffocation. 



The Boundou Poison. At the meeting of the Academy of Sci- 

 ences of Paris, MM. Pecholier and Saintpierre reported the results 

 of their experiments on this substance, derived from a shrub of 

 the Apocynea, and which is employed by the Africans on the Ga- 

 boon in an ordeal liquor. The Boundou contains a poisonous 

 principle soluble in water and alcohol, and produces an action on 

 the sensitive nervous system analogous to that of mix vomica. 

 When administered by the stomach or by the cndermic method, it 

 produces at first an augmentation of the number of inspirations 

 and cardiac pulsations, and afterward a considerable diminution 

 of those movements. It causes an exaggeration of sensibility, 

 next tetanic convulsions, and finally insensibility, paralysis, and 

 death. Its action on the motor nervous system is only secondary,' 

 and it does not affect the contractility of the muscular system. It 

 is not a poison of the heart, which, on the contrary, continues to 

 beat for a long time after death. These results were obtained 

 from administration of the poison to rabbits, a dog, and frogs. In 

 some cases the animal slowly recovered. This may be the case 

 sometimes with man, and the Africans regard those who escape 

 from the deadly influence of the Boundou poison as recalled to 

 life by the justice of God demonstrating their innocence. Mecl. 

 Times and Gazette. 



Poisoning Whales. M. Balard has been occupying himself with 

 the problem how to poison whales rapidl} 7 . He combines a sol- 

 uble salt of strychnia with a twentieth part of woorara. He load- 

 ed some explosive cartridges with two ounces^each of this com- 

 pound, and started off on a whaler. He gives pa: ticulars of the 

 whales which he shot at and wounded. They all either died al- 

 most immediately or very rapidly (usually in less than ten min- 

 utes) after general convulsion. He concludes that whales are 

 even more sensitive to poison than land mammals, and that, in 

 future, it will be well to diminish the dose of poison, in order to 

 determine a rather slower death. British Medical Journal. 



At a meeting of the New York Lyceum of Natural History, Dr. 

 Amend made a communication on the Calabar bean and coca, as 

 follows : 



Calabar Bean. It is well known that certain poisonous sub- 

 stances have long been used among the negroes of Western Africa 

 as a test of the innocence or guilt of an accused person. If a 

 person recovered from the effects of the poison he was allowed to 

 go free. One of these poisons is called the ordeal bean of Cala- 

 bar. It was brought to the notice of the scientific world by Dan- 



