7850 



Reptiles. 



alluded to, and I think thai I cannot better explain the latter than by citing the fol- 

 lowing experiment : —A healthy and full-grown frog was pricked with the point of a 

 poisoned arrow, and in the course of a few minutes its limbs gradually became 

 paralysed. The paralysis soon extended itself over the body, the animal ceased to 

 breathe, and in the course of a few minutes more was dead. On examining the heart 

 about an hour afterwards, that organ however, and that organ alone, was found still 

 alive. Death could not be said here to have usurped its power, for the heart slowly 

 and regularly pulsated as in life. On the following day the heart still continued to 

 beat, although the '.issues surrounding it were already assuming the appearance of 

 death. Forty-eight hours after the animal had been poisoned its heart still continued 

 to act regularly, and even seventy-two hours after death the action of the ventricle 

 and auricles, though feeble, was yet distinct. On the fourth day (ninety-six hours 

 after death) part of the heart had died, the left auricle alone continued to pulsate; but 

 now not only was the frog dead, but its lower limbs were already shrunk and withered. 

 I now made an attempt at resuscitation, and exaclly a hundred hours after the animal 

 died I put it into a moist warm atmosphere, and there retained it till the temperature 

 of its body was slightly raised. This treatment had the effect of restoring the irrita- 

 bility of the heart, and on touching the ventricle with the point of my pen it resumed 

 its pulsations, and during several minutes the contractions, first of the auricles and 

 then of the ventricle, continued rythmically ; even the pulsations in the large vessels 

 attached to the heart became distinctly visible, and continued with regularity for up- 

 wards of a quarter of an hour. Here, then, the origin of my remark, that we can 

 have a living heart in a dead body. I may here mention, however, that the vvoorara 

 used in the above case was half a century old. It appears, therefore, that this poison 

 retains its tonic properties for a great length of time. For some of the specimens of 

 woorara now in my possession T a:n indebted to the kindness of the celebrated travel- 

 ler and naturalist Charles Waterton, Esq., of Walton Hall, who brought them with 

 him from South America in 1812, and, although they are consequently half a century 

 old, they still exert their poisonous effects in a remarkable manner. In a MS. article 

 by Sir R. Schombuvgk, kindly lent to me by the author, I find several facts related in 

 corroboration of this point. I ought to add, however, that the poison does lose some 

 of its active properties by prolonged exposure to the air. Now, as regards the sub- 

 stance with which we can produce the strange sight of a dead heart in a living body, 

 it is the Upas antiar, a poison .prepared by the natives of Borneo, for the same pur- 

 poses as woorara; but curiously enough the physiological actions of these two poisons 

 on the animal body are the reverse of each other ; for the primary effect of the antiar 

 is to paralyse, and consequently totally to suspend, the rythmical movements of the 

 heart. The effect of the antiar is best seen on a cold-blooded animal, such as the 

 frog. With a small piece of the poison introduced by a wound in the cuticle, it is 

 very easy to exhibit the striking spectacle of a living animal leaping about with a 

 perfectly dead heart; so that the story of a dead heart is not merely a stage fiction, 

 but a scientific reality." — Field Neivspaper. 



The Sea Serpent. — Thursday, December 10. Off Madeira, on board R.M.S. 

 " Thames." ' Made acquaintance with a Captain Christmas, of the Danish Navy, a 

 proprietor in Santa Cruz, and holding some office about the Danish Court. He told 

 me he once saw a sea serpent between Iceland and the Faroe/Islands. He was lying to 

 in a gale of wind, in a frigate of which he had the command, when an immense shoal 

 of porpoises rushed by the ship, as if pursued, and lo and behold a creature with a 



