219 



PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 



[anno 17Q2. 



IX. On the Conversion of the Substance of a Bird into a Hard Fatty Matter, 



By Thomas Sneyd, Esq. p. 197. 

 I take the liberty of sending you 2 or 3 pieces of a bird whose substance haS 

 been converted into a hard fatty matter, which I found at the head of a fish- 

 pool, where a small brook runs into it, lying under water on the mud. When 

 first taken out, it was almost entire, and had several feathers sticking in different 

 parts of the skin, which have since fallen out ; a little down however still ad- 

 heres to the smaller specimen. From the size, and general appearance of the 

 bird, I conjectured it to be a duck, or young goose ; but before I had time to 

 give it a particular examination, it was unfortunately broken in pieces, and the 

 greatest part destroyed. The skin in the piece which was saved is of different 

 thicknesses, in some parts a full quarter of an inch ; it has retained its original 

 structure exactly, but is in great part separated from the flesh, though both of 

 them are now composed of the same fat matter. This substance resembles 

 spermaceti in its consistence between the teeth, but has neither taste nor smell ; 

 it melts in a small heat, and when congealed again, becomes more solid, and 

 looks like wax ; in a greater heat it burns, and emits a strong animal smell. As 

 I never heard or perceived that the water in which this bird lav has any particular 

 property, I am inclined to tliink that it has undergone this singular change 

 while buried in the mud, and that the brook had afterwards washed it up, and 

 carried it into this pool. The analogy which the case bears to the change of 

 human bodies, observed by M. Fourcroy in the Cemetery des Innocents, is my 

 chief reason for offering these specimens to the r. s. 



A Meteorological Journal kept at the Apartments of the Royal Society, by 

 order of the President and Council, p. igt). 



