VOL. XLVII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. ISl 



time of expiration. A minute after, he observed that these horses endeavoured 

 to rest the suspended leg on something : and, in another minute, he perceived 

 the fore leg, that rested on the ground, beginning to grow weak, and bend ; 

 which occasioned these animals to fall forward, and rise up again alternately, 

 with more or less difficulty. In 1 minutes more, their hind legs grew weak, 

 and bent under them, like the fore legs ; and in line, these animals fell down 

 like a dead lump, without being able to rise again, though he whipped them 

 heartily. Then their sides began to work, and the whole habit of the body was 

 seized with a dreadful horror. He whipped them, and pricked them with a pin; 

 but in vain ; for they gave no sign of feeling. All the muscles of the trunk 

 and extremities were become paralytic ; and none retained their action, but 

 those of respiration, and those of the ears and eyes. These creatures continued 

 in this condition about 1 minutes ; after which their respiration became so 

 operose, that each inspiration consisted of 3 successive attempts, and then fol- 

 lowed a most precipitate expiration, accompanied with so violent a hiccup, that 

 the body bending double, the hind legs were pulled quite to the fore legs. In 

 fine, this manner of taking in and letting out breath lasted one minute; in which 

 time their eyes were darkened, and death ensued. yixno , 



He opened the dead bodies of these horses, and observed as follows : the blood 

 was of a deep-brown colour, and spouted out in a full stream, which lasted near 

 a minute, both from the arteries and veins, which he cut. This phenomenon 

 surprized him much, as well as the horse-flayer, who attended him, and assured 

 him that he had never seen the like. The muscles were flaccid, blackish and 

 very cold. The heart was so violently contracted, that, in cutting it across, he 

 could not see any appearance of the ventricles, till he pulled their sides jisunder 

 by force. The lungs and liver were stuffed with blood. 



In making the small wounds, for introducing the poison, great care nmst be 

 taken, to avoid cutting any trunk of an artery or vein ; because, when that 

 happens, the blood that issues out, carries off" a good part of the poison ; which 

 makes the animal pine more or less without dying ; or, if he dies, it is in a 

 longer or shorter time, according to the quantity of the poison that has got into 

 the vessels, and been mixed with the circulating fluid. This thing happened to 

 him in trying the experiment on a mare, which had been condemned to the lay- 

 stall. This beast lived about 4 hours, because the wound bled abundantly, and 

 hindered the success of the experiment, for the reasons alleged above. 



November 18, he took a small steel arrow, and jxiisoned it with the j)oison 

 of ticunas mixed with that of lamas. He caused tiiis arrow to be shot into the 

 right hinder leg of a bear, belonging to M. de Reaumur, which he wanted to 

 have killed, in order to put it into his cabinet of natural history. The creature 

 immediately roared out, from the anguish of the puncture ; after which he made 



