PHYSOPHORID. . 147 
‘bouillon ;’ I swallowed the dose without the least fear, and I felt no 
inconvenience from it.” 
After these experiments, which are certainly quite conclusive, 
what are we to think of the story related of a certain M. Tébé, the 
managing partner of a house in Guadaloupe, who fell a victim to his 
cook, who it is said, after having sought in vain to poison him 
with the raspings of his nails, which he had spread carefully over the 
roasted fish daily served up for dinner, determined, seeing that he 
had signally failed by other means, to put into his soup a pulverised 
Physalia. An hour after his repast, this gentleman appeared in the 
burgh of Lamantin, at a little distance from his habitation, and, while 
entering the city with some friends, he was seized with violent pains 
in the stomach and intestines, racking him as if by the most corrosive 
poison. His illness increased until the next day, when he died, under 
the most excruciating pains. On examination, the stomach and in- 
testines were found to be violently inflamed and corroded, as if he 
had been poisoned with arsenic, and I have no doubt that it was with 
this poison, or some other corrosive substance, and not with the 
Physalia, that M. Tébé really was poisoned. The negroes never 
make known the substance with which they commit a poisoning ; 
they confess all but the truth, which they are sworn never to reveal 
—the means they employ, so far as the poisoning material is con- 
cerned, are never communicated by confession. 
On the other hand, we read in P. Labat's Voyage, vol. ii., p. 31, 
“that the bécune should not be eaten without some precaution, for 
this fish being extremely voracious, greedily devours all that comes 
within its reach in and out of the water, and it often happens that it 
meets and swallows ‘galleys,’ which are very caustic, and a violent 
poison. The fish does not die, but its flesh absorbs the venom, and 
poisons those who eat it.” “ There is every reason to believe,” says 
M. Leblond, in the work already quoted, “that the sardine, as well as 
many other species of fish, after having ate the tentacles of the 
‘galley,’ acquires a poisonous quality. Supping at an auberge on 
one occasion, with other persons, a bécune was served up, of which 
gastronomers are very fond, and which is usually perfectly harmless : 
five persons partook of it, and immediately afterwards exhibited every 
symptom of being poisoned. This was manifested by a burning heat 
in the region of the stomach. I bled two of them: one was cured 
by vomiting ; one other would take nothing but tea and some culinary 
oil. The colic continued during the night, and had disappeared in 
the moming, but he entertained so great a horror of water, that 
during the remainder of the voyage a glass of it presented to him 
=e K 2 
