VOL. v.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 4p9 



A yet greater disposition to intumescence we thought wo observed in the gall j 

 which was but suitable to the viscosity of the texture. 



Note, that the two foregoing experiments were made as an inquiry whe- 

 ther, and how far, the destructive operation of our engine upon the in- 

 cluded animal, might be imputed to this, that upon the withdrawing of the 

 air, besides the removal of what the air's presence contributes to life, the little 

 bubbles generated upon the absence of the air in the blood, juices, and soft 

 parts of the body, may by their vast number, and their conspiring distension, 

 variously straiten in some places and stretch in others, the vessels, especially 

 the smaller ones, that convey the blood and nourishment, and so by choaking 

 up some passages, and vitiating the figure of others, disturb or hinder the due 

 circulation of the blood? not to mention the pains that such distensions may 

 cause in some nerves, and membranous parts, which by irritating some of them 

 into convulsions, may hasten the death of animals, and destroy them sooner by 

 occasion of that irritation, than they would be destroyed by the bare absence or 

 loss of what the air is necessary to supply them with. And to show how this 

 production of bubbles reaches even to very minute parts of the body, I shall add 

 on this occasion, what I once observed in a viper furiously tortured in our ex- 

 hausted receiver, namely, that it had manifestly a conspicuous bubble moving to 

 and fro in the waterish humour of one of its eyes. 



Another digressive Experiment belonging to the same Title. 



To show, that not only the blood and liquors, but also the other soft parts, 

 even in cold animals, have aerial particles latent in them ; we took the liver and 

 heart of an eel, as also the head and body of another fish of the same kind, 

 cut asunder crossways somewhat beneath the heart, and putting them into a 

 receiver, upon the withdrawing of the air we perceived that the liver did mani- 

 festly swell every way, and that both the upper and lower parts did so likewise, 

 and at the place where the division had been made, there came out in each 

 portion of the fish divers bubbles, several of which seemed to come from the 

 medulla spinalis, or the cavity of the back bone, or the adjoining parts; and the 

 external air being let in, both the portions of the eel presently shrunk, some of 

 the skin seeming to be grown empty or flaccid in each of them. 



The Fourteenth Title. 



Of the Power of Assuefaction to enable Animals to hold out in Air, by Rarefaction 



Tnade unfit for Respiration, 



The power of assuefaction in other cases, made me think it very well worth 



3r2 



