156 List of Patents for New Inventions. 
respect, and it even acts upon the hands. It is soluble, with 
a small residuum, in water and in alcohol, and the solutions 
are not affected by those of acetate of lead and corrosive sub- 
limate. On solution in ammonia, it continues acrid; it dis- 
solves in nitric acid, to which it imparts a purple colour. By 
combination with potash or soda it is rendered less acrid, ap- 
parently by. partial decomposition. As left by evaporation of 
its aqueous or alcoholic solutions, it is highly inflammable; and 
the residuary matter that appears to give it consistence seems 
to be albumen. Though more acrid than the poison of the 
most venomous serpents, it produces no ill effect on being in- 
troduced into the circulation; a chicken inoculated with it was 
not affected. . 
The author conjectures that this “ sweltered venom,” as it is 
correctly termed by our great dramatist, being distributed over 
the integuments, serves to defend the toad from the attacks of 
carnivorous animals ;—* to eata toad” has long been held as 
an opprobrious difficulty; and the animal is still further pro- 
tected in this respect by the horny nature of its cutis, which 
contains much phosphate of lime, &c. As the venom consists 
in part of an inflammable substance, it is probably excre- 
mentitious, and an auxiliary to the action of the lungs in de- 
carbouizing the blood. This view of its use is confirmed by 
the fact that one of the two branches of the pulmonary artery 
supplies the skin, its ramifications being most numerous where 
the follicles of venom are thickest. 
Dr. Davy has found the skin of the toad to contain pores of 
two kinds: the larger, chiefly confined to particular situations, 
and which, when the skin is held up to the light, appear as 
iridescent circles, and the smaller, more numerously and gene- 
rally distributed, which appear as luminous points of a yellowish 
colour. Externally these pores are covered with cuticle, and 
some of the larger ones even with rete mucosum; internally 
they are lined with delicate cellular tissue. By inflating the 
skin, Dr. D. ascertained that it was not furnished with spira- 
cula, the existence of which he had been led to suspect b 
some particular circumstances in the physiology of the eal 
—Ann. of Phil. —- 
LIST OF NEW PATENTS. 
To Robert Rigg, of Bowstead Hill, Cumberland, for a new 
condensing apparatus, to be used with the apparatus now in 
use for making vinegar.— Dated 4th February 1826.—6 months 
to enrol specification. 
To J. C. Gamble, of Liffeybank, in the county of Dublin, . 
chemist, for his apparatus for the concentration and crystalli- 
zation of aluminous and other saline and crystallizable solu- 
tions, 
