368 Zoological Collections. 



he expired the doctor came, but was not able to assign- what could be the 

 cause of so singular a disorder. However, rather than appear wholly at a loss 

 before the country people, he pronounced both father and son to have been 

 bewitched. Some weeks after the widow sold all the movci^bles for the 

 benefit of the younger children, and the farm was leased. One of the neigh- 

 bours who bought the boots presently put them on, and was attacked in 

 the same manner as the other two had been ; but this man's wife being 

 alarmed by what had happened in the former family, dispatched one of her 

 negroes for an eminent physician, who fortunately having heard something 

 of the dreadful affair, guessed at the cause, applied oil, &c. and recovered 

 the man. The boots which had been so fatal were then carefully examined, 

 and he found that the two fangs of the snake had been left in the leather, 

 after being wrenched out of their sockets by the strength with which the 

 snake had drawn back its head. The bladders which contained the poison, 

 and several of the small nerves, were still fresh and adhered to the boots. 

 The unfortunate father and son had been poisoned by pulling off these 

 boots, in which action they imperceptibly scratched their legs with the 

 points of the fangs, through the hollow of which some of this astonishing 

 poison was conveyed.*' — Dodslcys Annual Register 1782, Nut, Hist. p. 100. 



5. Observations on Toads found alive at great depths in the ground. 

 By M. GnoFFKOY Saint-Hilaire. 



Dr Quenin, physician and mayor of Orgon, exhibited to M. Geoffroy 

 Saint- Hilaire a toad which had been taken alive from a well that had been 

 covered up for 150 years. This weir was excavated in the rock to a depth 

 of fifty-two feet. In announcing this fact to the Academy of Sciences on 

 the 18th of June last, M. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire entered into a discussion 

 upon the curious phenomena of the preservation of animals enclosed in 

 places where they remain without motion, or nourishment, or respiration. 

 He states, that in a memoir presented lately to the Academy, an ineffectual 

 attempt was made to prove, from learned researches, that all the facts stat- 

 ed by authors upon this subject are forged. M. Geoffroy, in considering 

 the existence of these facts as at least very probable from the concurrence 

 of so many witnesses in their favour, is of opinion that it gives a very in- 

 accurate idea of this phenomena to assimilate the state of those beings whose 

 lives are preserved in torpidity to the animals benumbed during winter. 

 According to hihi, if the phenomena can be demonstrated in an incon- 

 trovertible maimer, we must conclude that there exists, for organization 

 under certain combinations, a state of neutrality intermediate between thai 

 of life and death, a state into which certain animals are plunged in conse- 

 quence of the stoppage of respiration, when it would take place under de- 

 terminate circumstances. This is observed in a certain degree in the 

 crustaceous animals; vital, action is probably suspended in them in such a 

 manner that the excitation of certain agents is required to awaken them 

 and put them into motion. Most certainly the toad found in the well near 

 Orgon was not alive ; but all at once, when brought into the air, it became 

 re-animated, being somewhat similar to the state of the foetus when it 

 comes from the membrane. 



