EXPERIMENTS ON BREATHING. 399 



minute or two the fly, which was a large, active, 

 flesh-fly, continued its noisy evolutions, dashing 

 itself, as if intoxicated, on every side of its trans- 

 parent prison. At length, as if exhausted, it lay 

 on its back, its limbs paralyzed, but the wings still 

 moving with extreme rapidity, and causing it to 

 spin round in the most singular manner. Ulti- 

 mately it, too, became perfectly without motion. 

 After the lapse of about ten minutes, fresh air 

 was gradually let into the jar, and it became most 

 amusing to watch the return of both these insects, 

 which had previously been as it were in the very 

 jaws of death, back to life again ; twitchings of 

 their limbs, and slight convulsive movements, 

 were the first indications of returning activity ; 

 and in a few minutes more both insects, now 

 placed in a perfectly pure atmosphere, were as 

 lively as before the experiment, and were allowed 

 to make their escape into the open air. With 

 other insects the same effects were produced by 

 saturating a piece of blotting paper with ether, and 

 dropping it into the jar, which was imme- 

 diately covered over. In several other experiments 

 the newly- discovered powerful fluid chloroform, by 

 means of which the operations of surgery are 



