■?(»<»? .•>'.;. Results of the Experiments 



As the table shows, balloonfish poison is fatal (by paralysis of the cen- 

 tral nervous system) to all kinds of, animals below the human level. The 

 balloonfish is not, however, eiffected by the poison of other membora of ita 

 family (the Tetrodontidae ) , although one kind cf poisonous spider, the koeane- 

 ESS2. [Argiope sp.J is harmed by this poison. When a solution of balloonfish 

 poison was poured into a shell inhabited by a hermit crab, the crab cane out 

 of the shell. When the poison was injected into their chelipeds, some ishigani 

 [ Chary bdis 6» dentata Herbst] spontaneously cast off these appendages. The 

 poison had, however, already circulated in their bodies and they died. As the 

 result of a very carefully performed experiment an octopus «as affected by 

 balloonfish poison and died. But an extremely noteworthy point is that al- 

 though mollusks other than the octopus and other animals of lower levels of 

 developTBent showed more or less inaction to the poison - for example enaila 

 were paralyzed for fairly long periods of time l^ large injections of poison - 

 none of them ever died of its effects, 



raiy is it that the balloonfish and the other lower animals with the excep- 

 tion of the octopus are immune to balloonfish poison? Do the balloonfish, 

 like other poisonous aniasals euch as the poisonous snakes, have antitoxins to 

 their own poison? Is it perhaps that these lower animals lack the type of 

 nervous eystem which could be affected by the poison? The answers to these 

 questions will probably have to await further study. Finally I wish to report 

 one fact and that is that balloonfish poison does not pass along the nerves 

 but is spiread throughout the body in the blood vessels. The author ascertained 

 this fact by the experiment of tying a string around the proximal portion of 

 the hiiKi leg of a frog [R, nigromaciiilata 1 ao that pressure was applied only to 

 the blood vessels. Injecting the poison near the distal end of the log, and then 

 untying the string after the passage of a definite period of time. 



In closing I wish to express my thanks to Pr'ofessor Tsiiyoshi Inoue of 

 Kanazawa Medical College for facilitating this study in various ways. 



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199 



