70 VEGETABLE POISONS. 



ducerl it to the consistence of an extract in the manner above de 

 scribed, he put it into a phial, which he stopped very exactly, and 

 locked up in a desk till he should have occasion to use it in the ex- 

 periments lie intended to make. He began these experiments on 

 the 6th of June, 1748 ; which was so hot a day, that he stripped to 

 his shirt, and had his breast and arms exposed to the air. In his 

 left hand he held the phial, the cork of which flew up to the ceiling 

 with vast rapidity. At the same instant there issued out of this 

 phial a yellowish vapour, of a very penetrating smell, which was 

 soon followed by the extract itself, that spread itself all over the rim 

 of the neck of the bottle. He was so stupifierl at this unexpected 

 accident, that he imagined (as it was very possible) that the bottle 

 was broken in pieces; and as soon as he saw his hands, arms and 

 breast, coloured in several places by the poison, which had be- 

 sprinkled them in the explosion, he looked on himself as a dead 

 man: which must certainly have been the case, if the bottle had 

 burst, and the pieces of glass had scratched or cut him. But luckily 

 that did not happen, and he soon resumed courage j when, after 

 some minutes, he found himself quite as well as before the explosion 

 of the poison, the effect of which is almost instantaneous ; and it 

 gave him no other trouble than to wash and dry himself very care- 

 fully. 



From this accident he learned that this poison, thus prepared, 

 ought not to be put into glass bottles close stopped, but should 

 rather be kept in a glazed earthen pot, covered with paper only ; 

 since it was susceptible of so great an effervescence. Therefore he 

 put it into a gallypot ; and the experiments, which he made with 

 this same poison a good while afterward, convinced him that there 

 is no reason to apprehend that it would lose any of its activity by 

 evaporation. These two facts plainly shew how much precaution 

 ought to be taken, when this poison is to be used. And we shall 

 be the better convinced of it when we consider, that one single drop 

 conveyed directly into the blood by a puncture, &c. is sometimes 

 sufficient to kill, or at least to cause great disturbance in the animal 

 ceconomy. It is quite otherwise when taken in at the mouth ; for 

 then it does no sort of mischief, as he proves in another place. 



He then proceeds to the experiments, which he had repeated a 

 number of times on different species of quadrupeds, birds, fishes, 

 insects, and reptiles. But he first observes, that, of all those ani- 



