60 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



mained extended on his side, with his head on the 

 ground. His eye, a few minutes ago so bright and 

 lively, now became fixed and dim ; and though you put 

 your hand close to it, as if to give him a blow there, he 

 never closed his eyelid. 



His legs were convulsed, and his head from time to 

 time started involuntarily ; but he never showed the 

 least desire to raise it from the ground ; he breathed 

 hard, and emitted foam from his mouth. The startings, 

 or subsultus tendinum, now became gradually weaker 

 and w r eaker ; his hinder parts were fixed in death ; and 

 in a minute or two more his head and fore-legs ceased 

 to stir. 



Nothing now remained to show that life was still 

 within him, except that his heart faintly beat and 

 fluttered at intervals. In five-and-twenty minutes from 

 the time of his being wounded, he was quite dead. His 

 flesh was very sweet and savoury at dinner. 



On taking a retrospective view of the two 

 senStions° b " different kinds of poisoned arrows, and the 

 animals destroyed by them, it would appear 

 that the quantity of poison must be proportioned to the 

 animal ; and thus those probably labour under an error 

 who imagine that the smallest particle of it introduced 

 into the blood has almost instantaneous effects. 



Make an estimate of the difference in size betwixt 

 the fowl and the ox, and then weigh a sufficient 

 quantity of poison for a blow-pipe arrow, with which 

 the fowl was killed, and weigh also enough poison for 

 three wild-hog arrows, which destroyed the ox, and it 

 will appear that the fowl received much more poison in 

 proportion than the ox. Hence the cause w T hy the fowl 

 died in five minutes, and the ox in five-and-twenty. 



