316 'PROCEEDINGS OF THE SCIENTIFIC 'ASSOCIATION. 
44 white water, or rather a sort of sanies. , or matter, which, 
44 in any case, is a sure sign that the becune is in a state of 
disbaSe. Don Arthur O’Neill, the Marquis del Norte, 
44 has told me that he had seen experiments with the flesh 
44 in this condition made upon dogs, and that they all eon- 
64 firmed the exactness of the means of being secure against 
* 44 injury. 
61 The signs of being poisoned by the flesh of the be~ 
44 cune” — (the becune, it must be remarked, is our bara- 
couta of the market ; the smaller of the two species ; that 
properly known as baracouta being from six to nine feet 
long, and slimmer in form ) — 44 are a general trembling, 
44 nausea, vomiting, acute pains, particularly in the joints 
41 of the arms and the hands. 
44 Sometimes these symptoms succeed each other with 
44 such rapidity that it is difficult to fix with anything like 
11 precision the periods of the morbid affection. When the 
i( sickness does not end in death — and, happily, this is not 
44 the most ordinary issue of it — one sees oftentimes the 
44 virus causing pathological phenomena altogether singu- 
44 lar. The pains in the articulation of the limbs become 
44 very acute; the nails of the feet and the hands fall off 
44 without any feeling ; the hair, whose constituent charac- 
44 ter we know is absolutely the same as that of the nails, 
4 4 finally falls also. These effects, in many individual ca- 
44 ses, are to be seen continuing for a great many years, 
44 and an instance has been mentioned to me of a person suf- 
44 fering in this way for five and twenty years. I, myself,” 
M. Plee proceeds to say, 44 have not been a witness of any 
44 accident of poisoning by the becune, and I write only 
** what I have heard others relate, who are well acquainted 
