118 DR DAVY'S OBSERVATIONS ON THE CUTICLE 



Why muscle deprived of its integuments should escape putrefaction, most 

 other conditions favouring, is not very obvious to reason. Whether electricity is 

 concerned in any way in the prevention is open to question. Be this as it may. 

 the property is an important one, economically considered, and deserving, I can- 

 not but think, of more attention than it has commonly received. The fact that 

 meat, when cut into thin slices, can by drying be kept in a state fit for food even 

 within the tropics, where putrefaction proceeds at so rapid a rate, is well known. 

 The Boucaniers, we are informed, who, in the beginning of the last century, were 

 such formidable pirates in the West Indies, depended very much for subsistence 

 on meat thus prepared. Pere Labat, in his abridged history of St Domingo, 

 describes this meat, calling it by its popular name, " Viandes boucannes," as 

 excellent ; and he details the exact method of preparing it, as obtained from the 

 wild hog, and from cattle run wild in the forests of that island.* Now, con- 

 sidering the qualities of such meat, free from the defects of salted meat, the con- 

 centrated nourishment it affords, and that of an agreeable kind, and easily 

 cooked when softened by water, it seems peculiarly fitted for the army and navy 

 in protracted campaigns and in long voyages, and also for the use of travellers 

 in countries where subsistence is precarious. A method very similar to the pre- 

 ceding, I am informed by Sir John Richardson, is employed by the North 

 American Indians, in summer and autumn, for preserving the flesh of deer ; 

 they, like the Boucaniers, bring in the aid of smoke, but chiefly for the purpose 

 of protecting the meat from flies.-j- The dried meat powdered, mixed with lard 

 or marrow, forms pemican, which has been of such inestimable value to arctic 

 explorers.:]: The same Indians are well acquainted with the effect of skinning 

 an animal in retarding its putrefaction. It is a practice of theirs to remove the 

 skin with as little delay as possible, eviscerating their game at the same time. 



That thorough desiccation should have the effect of preserving meat from putre- 

 factive change is obviously owing to an arrest of chemical action, the presence of 

 a certain portion of water being essential to such action. § 



* Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de l'Amerique, &c. Par R. P. Labat. Tom. iii. p. 132. 



t When dry, even muscle no longer attracts the flesh-fly ; it is the moist putrefying flesh which 

 allures it, that being alone suitable to the development of its ova. 



| A specimen of pemican (for which I was indebted to Sir John Richardson), about twelve 

 months old, of the best quality, I found composed of — 



84 88 fat, 



11 77 muscular fibre chiefly, 

 3 35 water. 

 The fat consisted of oleine or elaine chiefly, and stearine. The muscular fibre, moistened, was found 

 unaltered as to striated structure. 



§ In 1852 I put by, merely wrapped in paper, portions of pork, mutton, beef, fowl, common 

 trout, pollack (Gadus pollachius). Tbey were left in the drawer of a table, in a room in which, 

 during three-fourths of the year, there was a fire. Examined in December 1864; in all of them, 

 with one exception, the muscular fibre exhibited the original striated structure distinctly. The 

 exception was that of the trout, in the muscular fasciculi of which the striae were less distinct 

 Pemican, which had been kept two years (a portion of that of which the composition is given in the 

 preceding note), exhibited the striated muscle with perfect distinctness. 



