LECT. IX. PILE OF LIVING PIGEONS. 187 



I have before told you, that in the muscles of frogs 

 killed by narcotics, the current was as strong as in those 

 which had not been destroyed in this manner. 



Piles of Muscles with Nerves attached. A word also on 

 the results obtained by investigating the muscular current 

 in muscles whose nerves are left entire, and thus submitted 

 to experiment. 



I formed some piles of the halves of frogs, in which, 

 however, the muscles did not directly touch each other ; 

 the communications between them being established by 

 the nervous filaments. I invariably found that the direc- 

 tion of the current was not changed, its intensity alone be- 

 ing diminished. In all, according as the contacts took 

 place by the nervous filaments above the incision in the 

 thigh, or by the filaments of the leg which was left con- 

 nected with the thigh, the direction of the current being 

 the same, the current was from the nerve towards the mus- 

 cular element, sometimes in the contrary direction : in 

 other words, the nerve having no influence upon the di- 

 rection, always acted by representing the electric condition 

 of the surface of the muscle, whether internal or external, 

 with which it was in contact. 



In these cases the current was weakened by the imper- 

 fect conducting power of the nerve, and if in place of the 

 latter, we employ a cotton thread soaked in distilled water, 

 the results are identical with those obtained by using the 

 muscles with the nerve. 



Pile of living Pigeons. I may add that I have recently 

 succeeded in forming a muscular pile with living pigeons, 

 similar to that made of living frogs. In comparing these 

 piles with one another, I found that the first signs of the 

 muscular current were stronger in the pile of pigeons than 

 in the frog pile. The difference is, in fact, greater when 

 we consider that in the pigeons the resistance of the cir- 



