378 Dr. Buchanan on the Wound of the Ferret. 



which it entered under the occiput, more laterally than in the 

 former case. 



It is certainly very remarkable, that instinct, or the promptings 

 of bodily organization, should lead an irrational creature to use 

 its weapons in the very way in which a profound knowledge of 

 the functions of the nervous system teaches that they may be 

 used with the most deadly and instantaneous effect. The cerebro- 

 spinal axis, or great central nervous column, lodged in the elon- 

 gated cavity of the head and spine, cannot be wounded at any 

 point without interfering more or less with sensation and motion ; 

 but the part of this nervous column, on the integrity of which 

 the continuance of life immediately depends, is the medulla ob- 

 longata, or part of the column lying intermediate between the 

 head and spine. Wound an animal below this point, and you 

 paralyse his limbs more or less, but life may be protracted for 

 years after such injuries. Wound the animal above this point, 

 and you not only produce palsy, but impair or destroy con- 

 sciousness and the faculties of the mind. Still, however, just as 

 we see in a man struck down by a fit of apoplexy, the action of 

 the heart and the respiration may go on little or not at all 

 affected. It is on the upper part of the cord that these import- 

 ant functions immediately depend, and hence it is that to the 

 higher vertebrata, a wound inflicted there is the most instanta- 

 neously mortal of all wounds, at once destroying consciousness, 

 sense and motion, and arresting the action of the heart and re- 

 spiratory muscles. It is not a little remarkable that the Ferret 

 should select this very part of the cord into which to thrust his 

 tusk ; and serves to show how the promptings of instinct may 

 anticipate the deductions of science. 



To those who love to speculate on the mental endowments of 

 brutes, it may not be uninteresting to know how two young Fer- 

 rets that had never before seen a rat killed, deported themselves 

 on the occasion. Before putting the old Ferret into the barrel 

 where the rats were, a trial was made with two young ones, her 

 offspring. The untutored creatures, instead of having for their 

 single object to put themselves into the proper position to inflict 

 the death-wound, enaged in conflict with the rats, returning bite 

 for bite ; and, although one of the rats had its leg bitten through, 

 they at length beat off their assailants. Still further, after the 

 old Ferret had despatched the first rat, one of the young ones im- 

 mediately threw itself upon the dead body, assuming the very po- 

 sition and motions which the old one had assumed, and so far as 

 could be judged from there being but one wound, thrusting its 

 tusk into the very same aperture. Did then the young Ferret 

 receive a lesson from the old one ? The facts do not at all accord 

 with this hypothesis, for the young one, instead of attending to 



