1886. ] Physiology. 8I 
nervous system connected with them are capable of functioning 
before it is at all likely that in normal embryonic life they have 
any proper functions to perform. By “ mobility” is to be under- 
stood more especially the power of making spontaneous or “im- 
pulsive” movements. The presence of sensibility can only be 
proved by the existence of what is really a kind of mobility—that 
is, reflex mobility. When the appropriate reflex movements are 
obtained on stimulating the sense-organs it is inferred that the 
corresponding kind of sensibility is present. Reflex movements 
are not only later in appearing, but can also be made to disappear 
more easily than impulsive movements. The movements that indi- 
cate sensibility can be suppressed (in the artificially extracted em- 
bryo of the rabbit) by applying chloroform to the skin; with more 
difficulty by causing chloroform to be breathed. In either case the 
anzesthesia passes off very rapidly. It is supposed that the chloro- 
form in the first case acts directly, in the second case, indirectly, on 
the nerves of the skin; that it only secondarily affects the spinal 
cord, and that it does not act at all on the brain. The movement of 
ARE THE Musctes DEAD OR ALIVE DURING Capaveric RIGID- 
ITY ?— Professor Brown-Sequard has demonstrated that for several 
weeks after death, or as long as rigor mortis persists, the 
muscles of an animal undergo slow alternate contractions and 
fiongations. The movements were only perceptable when one 
Or the other set of a group of antagonistic muscles was divided, 
and ey eased totally when cadaveric rigidity finally passed away. 
i “NO. 1, g 6 
ve 
xx.— 
