A D I PO C I R E A D I P O S E TISSUE. 



37 



in about three yours; -and such as were lower down, 

 and had remained as long as from thirty to forty 

 years, had become granular and semi-transparent. 

 When water is present, the change takes place much 

 more rapidly, and at a less depth below the surface ; 

 so that the allegation which Shakspeare puts into the 

 mouth of the grave-digger, that " your water is a sore 

 consumer of your dead body," is literally true, and 

 helps to prove the wonderful extent to which that 

 great man had carried his observations. In the warm 

 and dry regions of the globe, bodies do not change 

 into adipocire ; and in the cold and humid ones, the 

 change takes place much more generally than in the 

 temperate. It is so common in Iceland that large 

 masses are laid upon the beams of the churches, and 

 kept there for medicinal purposes, nearly the same as 

 those to which the stearine of whales' fat (improperly 

 called spermaceti) used to be applied in this country. 

 How soon it forms in that part of the world has not 

 been accurately ascertained ; but as the climate is 

 very rainy, and the soil in consequence very moist, it 

 is probably formed with considerable rapidity. The 

 battle of Culloden was fought in 1746, and the 

 greatest carnage being on a wet and boggy piece of 

 ground, a number of bodies were buried in a common 

 grave there, at a very small depth below the surface. 

 On opening the green hillock over that common 

 grave, in the early part of the present century, and 

 in quest of very different memorials of the battle, 

 large pieces of adipocire were found, and they were 

 almost the only animal remains that were met with, 

 the bones having decayed more than in the drier soil. 

 The forming of adipocire in the soft parts of ani- 

 mals, or [rather the conversion of them into it, indis- 

 criminately and without regard to their appearance 

 and texture while alive, is a curious fact in the animal 

 structure. It is effected wholly by the chemical pro- 

 perties of the parts themselves, and the process is 

 impeded or prevented by external agents ; for water 

 only more completely excludes the air than earth 

 does, and cold is merely a less active degree of heat. 

 In substance it must be the same as the parts of the 

 living animal ; and as the mass is uniform, it shows 

 that the soft parts, when left to their own action, 

 have all a tendency to pass into the same substance. 

 That tendency must be in them while the animal is 

 alive, though it is then counteracted by the functions 

 of life. It appears to be. or rather indeed it certainly 

 is, the same action by which fat is accumulated ; and 

 the gradation from oil and soft fat, through firm 

 fat, stearine, and that half-fatty, half cartilaginous, 

 substance which forms the humps of camels and 

 other humped animals, and collects in the dew-laps 

 of hill cattle when they fatten in the autumn, is a 

 very near approach to adipocire. In the living 

 animal, the tat, whatever may be its consistency, is 

 merely food, assimilated but not organised, stored up 

 against the period of want, whether that period be 

 one of hybernation, or winter repose, or merely one 

 of the absence of food while traversing the desert, or 

 otherwise passing from one feeding ground to another. 

 In some of these cases, as in that of the spermaceti 

 whales, the store thus accumulated appears to be so 

 completely without the range of organic action, that 

 it granulates something in the same manner as adipo- 

 cire ; and in others, as the humps of the camel, it has 

 a slight, though a very slight, trace of organisation. 

 But, whatever may be its structure, it appears to be 

 available for the repair of all the parts of the organ- 



isation, as long as the powers of life retain their 

 energy ; for when circumstances render it necessary, 

 all the accumulations, even to the hump of the camel, 

 are taken into the system. 



From what has been said of the change of the sur- 

 plus food into fat, the fat into organic structures, and 

 these again (with the exception of earthy salts and 

 coagulated albumen) into adipocire, it appears that 

 the living body is not formed immediately from, or 

 immediately convertible into, the dust ; but that there 

 is an intermediate process, that of assimilation, by 

 which the food of animals is turned into animal matter, 

 before it becomes, bv another process, which is usually 

 called secretion, a part of the living animal. It is 

 highly probable that in the last of these processes, the 

 aliment passes through the state of air or gas ; and 

 that when the organic structure returns into mere 

 matter, without first becoming adipocire, it again 

 returns through the state of gas. It is matter of 

 common remark, that church-yards do not accumulate 

 soil in proportion to the inhumations that take place 

 in them ; and (the dust of bones excepted) it will be 

 found that the mould which is there, is wholly vege- 

 table or mineral, from other sources. The coagulated 

 albumen, which is not the same as boiled white of 

 egg, (and that is an assimilated substance, though not 

 organised till the egg is hatched,)appears to be neither 

 animal nor vegetable, but a sort of mineral matter, an 

 armour which the living body puts on against the in- 

 fluence of the atmosphere. The earth of bones belongs 

 to the same class of substances, and the bones, like the 

 epidermis and its appendages, act no part in those 

 functions in which animal life may be said to be ex- 

 clusively displayed. 



What may be termed " the working structures" of 

 vegetables do not, like those of animals, pass into 

 adipocire, but into mould when dry, and into peat 

 when wet, and ultimately into coal, for though the 

 probability be that amber and jet are resins, yet these 

 are not originally working structures, they are pro- 

 ducts. 



This difference of the destiny, as we may call it, of 

 the organised structures of animals arid vegetables, is 

 a very important point in physiology, as showing 

 that there is a distinct line between these two king- 

 doms of nature. When they are dead, external causes 

 can dispose of both in the same manner, namely, 

 earth to earth, water to water, and air to air ; but 

 when we exclude those causes, each turns to a dif- 

 ferent substance the animal to adipocire, the vege- 

 table to mould or coal; and the final state of each 

 bears a very considerable resemblance to that which it 

 had when first taken into the system, and before it 

 became part of the organic structure.- 



The views which thjs subject opens up are too vast 

 for a single article, or even for a work intended and 

 adapted for popular reading ; but they are especially 

 worthy the attention of those learned persons who, 

 of late years, have lingered so long upon the twilight 

 boundary between the animal and the vegetable 

 kingdom, as to be in some danger of confounding the 

 one with the other, and thereby jumbling the whole 

 system of nature into a chaos. See the articles ANI- 

 MAL PHYSIOLOGY, VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY, and the 

 various references from them. 



ADIPOSE TISSUE. The cellular membrane in 

 which is deposited the fat (adcps] in animals. A 

 knowledge of the structure, and especially of the 

 functions of the animal frame, is highly necessary, not 



