132 ANIMALS KILLED IN, 
native fand? I have often taken the thin furfa- 
ces of fand, wherein the wheel animals did. not 
revive, and put them in the bottom of a watch- 
glafs with water: but of twenty dead, fcarcely 
one revived. It therefore feemed that privation 
of fand deprived them of the innate faculty of re- 
furrection (1). 
How can the fimple defe& of fand produce fo 
important an effect ? What connection, what phy- 
fical relation is there between fand and the refur- 
reGtion of wheel animals? May not the caufe of 
this phenomenon be entirely different, and the 
fand only fupply the place of fome very fimple 
external condition? When the animals perifh 
where there is no fand, their bodies are expofed 
to the immediate influence of the air on evapora- 
tion of the water: but they are fecured from it, 
at leaft ina much greater degree, if they die 
covered withfand. May we therefore affirm, that 
the lacerating influence of the air, irritating and 
injuring the corpufcula while ftill humid, moft 
tender and delicate, renders them incapable of re- 
viving from the alteration undergone? My con- 
jeCture is founded on a fact evincing there are 
animals 
(1) I have feen the common water fnail revive after 
deficcation a confiderable time. When fome did not re- 
cover, | made feveral experiments with different kinds of 
fand, but all have yet been ineffeCtual.—T. 
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