10 ON ADIPOCIRE, AND ITS FORMATION. 
ground was very moist, and the coffin rotten; the grave was seven feet deep. The adipo- 
cire was from the middle of the coffin, and was in irregular lumps. 
No. 2, was from a very large man; buried five or six years; the ground moist, though 
not so much so as number one; the grave five feet deep. The ground around the 
coffin was of a bloody colour, and all of the body was decayed, except the lower portion. 
The shape of the rump was plain, and the legs separate; the fat was at the bottom of the 
coffin, and the bones (femur, tibia) were lying along it. The adipocire contained an im- 
pression of the bone, was spongy and dark-coloured on the inside; and on the outside it 
was smooth, white, and presented impressions of the grave clothes, and here and there 
appearances as if of the hair follicles and sebaceous glands, but which lost this appearance 
when viewed with the microscope. There was no hair on this specimen. The pieces of 
adipocire of this specimen were large, at the thickest part being about three inches in 
thickness; they presented the shape of different parts of the leg, though flattened; tough 
fibrous bands, like aponeuroses, were seen in some parts traversing the mass of fatty matter. 
The appearance of these two specimens with the microscope, was very similar to each 
other and to the sheep adipocire. Powder scraped from them, with a fine needle, gave no 
appearance of fat globules, but irregular masses, mingled with membranous matter; a por- 
tion sliced off with a sharp knife, presented by reflected light, brilliant, white, irregular 
fatty fragments, but no traces of globules. When alcohol was added with heat, the fat 
disappeared, leaving membranous matter, and fibres not-anastomosing (the white element 
of cellular tissue.) The addition of acetic acid causes the fibres to disappear, and with- 
out showing nuclei. 
Portions of number one presented an appearance as if of the hair follicles, and there 
were mingled with it cylindrical hairs, of an inch and a half in length, brownish in colour, 
and quite fine. From these hairs, and from its position in the coffin, adipocire number 
one probably came from the abdomen. The fat from this portion gave the same appearance 
under the microscope, as specimen number'two. The alcoholic solution of the fat evapo- 
rated on the microscope slide, gave the appearance of stellated dendritic crystals, with 
curved branches, resembling the so called margaric acid under the same circumstances. 
The whole mass of fat in the two specimens, seems to be entangled in a web of disinte- 
grated membrane, and fibrous tissue. JI have never been able to detect any traces of 
muscular fibre under the microscope; and Dr. Leidy, who was kind enough to examine 
specimens with the microscope, communicated to me the same results. The smell of the 
two specimens was peculiar; what might be called an adipocire smell; for I have observed 
it in all specimens of adipocire that I have examined. This smell is indescribable, the 
nearest approach to it being that of faeces, but it is much more disagreeable. 
The following melting points were observed from the original adipocire, melted per se in 
