Dr John Davy 07i the Blood. 



29 



of the volatile alkali ? 2. Are they not favourable to the 

 idea that the blood generally contains a very small propor- 

 tion of ammonia ? 3. Do they not also favour the idea 

 that the proportion of ammonia is larger in venous than in 

 arterial blood ? 4. And do they not render it probable 

 that in those animals in which the blood is least thoroughly 

 aerated, such as the Batrachians and other allied genera, the 

 proportion of this alkali is greater than in those animals, 

 such as birds and mammalia, of higher temperature and more 

 complete pulmonary respiration ? 



Should these conclusions be admitted, it is not difficult 

 to imagine the source of the volatile alkali, inasmuch as, 

 irrespectively of the metamorphic changes which are in 

 constant progress in the body at large, were we to confine 

 the attention to the stomach and intestines, we might in 

 them, in the ingesta, in the one during the formation of 

 chyme, and in the other in the further changes going on 

 in them, find the production of ammonia. Whenever I 

 have examined either the contents of the stomach of any of 

 the mammalia killed in health,* or the contents of the intes- 

 tines, I have always detected it ; and that it should pass 

 into the blood, maybe easily credited, as the urine is seldom 

 free from it, and often abounds in it. 



On the Relative Effects of Acid and Alkaline Solutions on 

 Muscular Action through the Nerve. By H. F. Baxter, 

 Esq., Cambridge. 



The present inquiry originated during an investigation 

 on the subject of Muscular Contraction ; and as some 

 experimental conclusions have been based upon the so- 

 called anelectro-tonic state of the nerve, it became of im- 

 portance to ascertain whether this state — electro-tonic — 

 depended upon any peculiar electrical condition, or whether 

 the effects which indicate its existence might not be refer- 

 able to changes, electrolytical, which take place in the 

 nerve ; and the facts which I propose to consider are the 



* See Physiological Kesearches, by the author, p. 339. 



