1 » r. Hitman an on the wound of the Ferret. 105 



I now proceeded to examine the dead animals. Neither of them exhibited 

 any marks of injury inflicted by the Ferret, except a bloody patch on the 

 side of the neck, under the oar. In the first one which I looked at, there 

 was at the upper part of this bloody patch, or a little below and behind 

 the ear, a very small punctured wound, and on dissecting it carefully to 

 the bottom, I was surprised to find, that the sharp dens caninus, by one 

 of which the wound was obviously inflicted, had gone right down to the 

 spinal cord, piercing it between the occiput and the uppermost cervical 

 vertebra. The Ferret therefore destroys its victims by pithing, a pro- 

 cess well known to be tho most immediately fatal, to the upper orders of 

 vertebrated animals, of all modes of destroying life : and it employs for 

 the purpose one of its long slender dagger-like tusks, a weapon singularly 

 well adapted to inflict a wound which proves fatal, neither by laceration 

 nor contusion, but by penetrating into the very centre of the nervous 

 system, on which the most important functions of life immediately 

 depend. 



Tho death of the other rat was obviously produced in the same way; 

 but there was no external wound visible, on any part of the bloody patch 

 on the neck, the tusk having been inserted into the external ear, and 

 then penetrating the cartilaginous side of the auditory passage had been 

 carried towards the vertebral canal, 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 elongated 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 oblongata, or 

 part of the column lying intermediate between the head and spine. 

 Wound an animal below this point, and you paralize 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 consciousness 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 tho respiration may go on little or not at all affected. It is 

 on tho upper part of the cord that these important functions immediately 

 depend, and hence it is that to the higher vertebrata, a wound inflicted there 

 is the most instantaneously mortal of all wounds, at once destroying 

 consciousness, sense, and motion, and arresting the action of the heart 

 and respiratory 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. 



