630 Proceedings of the Roijal Society 
it lost by evaporation 95-6 grs., or 67-7 per cent. ; and it lost no 
more from further exposure. 
Another portion of the same meat, weighing 74*5 grs., suspended 
over water lightly covered, retained during the same time much of 
its humidity, and shortly became covered with a delicate, white 
filamentous growth of the mucednous kind, not unlike very fine 
hair.* It emitted the peculiar smell of mould, and the water be- 
neath had a taint of the same. On the 15th of December it was 
reduced to 26-6 grs., or had lost 65'2 per cent. The delicate white 
fibres were somewhat shrunken ; the upper moiety had become 
darker ; cut into, the mouldiness was found to be superficial ; the 
interior, of a darkened colour, was of increased translucency ; its 
muscular fasiculi were distinct ; their structure so little altered, that 
when moistened with dilute acetic acid their strise were seen well 
defined. Underneath, in the water, there was a little white sedi- 
ment, which was found to consist chiefly of cells (spores) thrown 
off from the mildewed surface. Evaporated to dryness, the residue 
weighed only ’4 gr. Eeplaced over fresh water, this water, in 
three days, had become slightly turbid from spores suspended in it, 
and had acquired the peculiar smell of mould. f The portion of meat 
was now freely exposed to the air ; it soon shrunk and became hard ; 
and when it sustained no further loss from evaporation it was re- 
duced to 21 grs., a loss of 71' 6 per cent.-— a part of which loss, it 
may be presumed, was owing to the vegetable growth. 
In the paper already referred to, I have mentioned that dried 
meat does not attract the flesh-fly, only the putrid in progress of 
deliquescence, when it affords a fit nidus for the larvrn of this fly, 
and for their nutriment. I may further remark that the tempera- 
ture at which the flesh-fly loses its activity, and is no longer seen 
* This may help to account for what is stated of a body long buried, which, 
after forty-three years, was found as reported almost entirely covered with hair. 
According to the narrative; “ The cover of the coffin having been removed, the 
whole corpse appeared perfectly resembling the human shape, exhibiting the 
eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and all the other parts, but from the very crown of the 
head to the sole of the feet covered over with hair, long and much curled.” 
A specimen of this hair-like substance was considered worthy of a place in the 
repository of Gresham College. (See Phil. Trans, abridged, vol. ii. p. 490.) 
t Spores were found also on the inner surface of the glass covers. Wlien 
thrown off, it may be inferred that they are readily diffused in currents of 
air. 
