[ 6 ° ] 
want : and it is the fame with regard to the lighted 
flambeau. 
Several rearfons render this explanation plaufible. 
Firfi, we have feen, that the animal?, which fuffer’d 
moft in the grotto, recover fpeedily and certainly, upon 
being carried into the air before they are quite dead. 
If the fymptoms which they have undergone, pro- 
ceeded from a matter, which had injur’d fome noble 
part, infedted the mafs of blood, or flopp’d the courfe 
of the fluids by fome contraction or irritation excited 
in the folids j ought not the evil to lafl, in confe- 
quence of what was done, until the body were quite 
cleared of this matter ? They no longer throw the 
animals into the lake, after taking them out of the 
grotto. It was a vulgar error of long {landing, but 
now entirely banilhed, to believe, that that water was 
to be their antidote. It would rather give the finifih- 
ing flroke to drowning them, if they were put into 
it, and had not flrength enough to fwim, and hold 
their head above water. 
Secondly, a fort of refemblance is obferved between 
the animals, that fuffer in the grotto, and thofe, that 
are confined in an air extremely rarefied. It is well 
known, that reptiles and infedls die with greater dif- 
ficulty and more flowly in the exhaufled receiver of 
the air-pump than quadrupeds and birds : with re- 
gard to thefe lafl especially I have frequently ob- 
ferved, that, when they are employ’d for the experi- 
ments of the air-pump foon after feeding, they perifh 
in an inflant, in framing to vomit. All this has a 
good deal of refemblance with what I have above 
related of the cock, frogs, lizards, beetles, flies, £? c. 
which were confined in the vapour of the grotto. 
Thirdly, 
