4 ON ADIPOCIRE, AND ITS FORMATION. 
which had died of sickness, and had been buried for fifteen years in moist ground; at the 
bottom of the grave was the adipocire in a layer hardly an inch in thickness; it contained 
4 stearic and 4 margaric and oleic acids, together with from 1.5 to 3.5 per cent. lime. The 
glycerine was all gone, and so was the bone earth, which together with the flesh were re- 
moved, as Gregory supposes, by the carbonic acid of the rain water, leaving the original 
fatty acids of the body. 
Prof. Hunefeld, (Jour. fiir Pr. ch. 7, p. 49,) examined a loaf of rye bread, which had 
been buried for at least eighty years in a turf-moor, and found 2.2 per cent. of a waxy or 
fatty substance, and he refers to an examination by Bracconot, of a mouldered wheat bread 
containing, among other substances, a fatty body. Hiinefeld supposes that the substance 
of the bread was displaced by the turf material, the form of the loaf being retained; and 
admits the possibility of the bread substance partaking in part a change into resin and 
waxy humus. 
R. Wagner, (Ch. Gazette, vol. 9, p. 806,) transplanted the recently removed testicles of 
rabbits and frogs into the abdominal cavity of fowls; the testicles of fowls into other fowls 
and pigeons, those of pigeons into fowls, and fresh crystalline lens into fowls and pigeons 
which were killed after ten or fifteen days. The testicles of frogs contained three per cent. 
of fat, which was augmented to 5.15 per cent. In one case the crystalline lens, after the 
experiment, contained 47.86 per cent. of fat; in a number of other experiments on lenses, the 
result was of from 7 to 15 per cent. of fat, calculated for the dry substance of the lens; care- 
fully cleaned portions of frog intestines filled with coagulated blood of pigeons and calves, 
fat free muscle from the thigh of a frog, and boiled white of hen’s egg, in similar conditions, 
all gave fat. 
These experiments were repeated by Husson and Burdach,* enveloping the nitrogenized 
substances in bags or coatings of gutta percha, caoutchouc and collodion. They found 
the substance well preserved, but no change into fat; so that admission of the animal juices. 
must conduce to it, if the change be possible. Burdach placed porous vegetable substances, 
as wood and tinder, in the abdominal cavity, and found a deposit of fat on them, and 
which was imbibed in the pores, which speaks against the change in question. Finally, 
Burdach determined the,fat of the egg of Linneus stagnalis, and detected a considerable 
increase of it during the development of the embryo; but, on the other hand, the egg con- 
tains sugar from which the fat could have been formed; and in opposition to this the 
quantity of sugar in hens’ eggs has been noticed rather to increase than diminish during 
incubation. 
Quain & Virchow quoted by Lehmann, examined muscle changed in macerating troughs 
to adipocire, and are of opinion that the fibrine is here changed to fat. I have questioned 
* Lehmann, Lehrbuch. + Lehrbuch, III. p. 187. 
