250 THE OCEAN WORLD. 



and having placed them in a glass tube, left them to dry and had 

 them pulverized ; twenty-five grains of this powder administered to a 

 very young dog produced no deleterious effects. Twice this quantity 

 administered to a young cat produced no more, nor has this surprised 

 me ; for, if the fresh animal has no poisonous properties, how can it be 

 supposed that drying the zoophyte can have increased its poisonous 

 properties, if it really possesses them ? On the contrary, it is more 

 reasonable to suppose that, by desiccation, the deleterious principle 

 from any animal, whether Physalia or Holothuria, should lose in- 

 finitely in its principle by evaporation, and other changes that heat 

 and air produce in the process of drying. 



" VI. I have had a ' galley ' cut into pieces, and got a fat young 

 chicken to swallow them. It caused no inconvenience. Three hours 

 after, I had the chicken killed and roasted ; then I ate it, and made 

 my servant eat it too. Neither of us experienced any inconvenience 

 from it, a certain proof that it is not from eating Physalia that the 

 fish becomes poisonous. 



" VII. I put twenty-five grains of powdered Physalia in a little 

 ' bouillon ;' I swallowed the dose without the least fear, and I felt no 

 inconvenience from it." 



After these experiments, which are certainly quite conclusive, what 

 are we to think of the story related of a certain M. Tebe, the 

 managing partner of a house in Guadaloupe, who fell a victim to his 

 cook, who is said, after having sought in vain to poison him with the 

 rasping of his nails, which he had spread carefully over the roasted 

 fish daily served up for dinner, determined, seeing that he had 

 signally failed by other means, to put into his soup a pulverized 

 Physalia. An hour after his repast, this gentleman appeared in the 

 burgh of Lamantin, at a little distance from his habitation, and, while 

 entering the city with some friends, he was seized with violent pains 

 in the stomach and intestines, racking him as if by the most corrosive 

 poison. His illness increased until the next day, when he died, under 

 the most excruciating pains. On examination, the stomach and intes- 

 tines were found to be violently inflamed and corroded, as if he had 

 been poisoned with arsenic, and I have no doubt that it was with this 

 poison, or some other corrosive substance, that M. Tebe really was 

 poisoned. The negroes never make known the -substance with which 

 they commit a poisoning ; they confess all but the truth, which they 



