34° -Abbe Fontana’s Experiments and 
meafure, and becomes of another kind, although it ftill 
preferves the properties of being inflammable, but in a 
fmaller degree, 
Not only birds but alfo quadrupeds die in inflamma- 
ble air (though not fo foon) and fhevv fome ligns of 
being convulfed. 
It feems very ftrange, that Mr. sheele could breathe 
inflammable air with impunity, when animals obliged 
to breathe it were killed in a very fhort time. Ad- 
mitting his experiments to be true, there remains 
nothing to be faid, but that the inflammable air in 
which animals die does not occafion death becaufe it is 
conveyed to the lungs, but becaufe it affefls fome other 
organs of the animal body expofed to that air, and ne- 
ceflary to animal life. It is not impoflible to occafion 
death by affecting the very fenfible nerves of the nofe; 
it being well known, that various liquors, as very con- 
centrated volatile alkaly, Sec. if they are infpired through 
the nofe, immediately affect the fenfes, and occafion 
death if they continue to a<fl upon the pituitary mem- 
brane. 
In order, therefore, to try whether inflammable air 
killed, only becaufe it was infpired through the nofe, I 
flopped very accurately the nofes of various birds with 
foft wax, and in this manner I introduced them into 
receivers 
