038 
TilANSLATIOXS TilOM COxNTINENTAL JOUllXALS, 
privcd of foocl^ the temperature does not deerease; but as soon 
as tlie fat is exhausted it quiekly falls to 24° or 25°, when 
death speedily oceurs. Here a slight difficulty presents itself 
to the mind. When it is considered that from the experi¬ 
ments of M. Boussingault, and those of ]MM. Lassaigne and 
Eouley, a horse of middle size consumes about 2500 grammes 
of carbon for his calorification, the question is how, with 
787 grammes of carbon and 115 of hydrogen contained in 
the internal ration of this horse, the results should have been 
exactly the same. This is easily explained. Evidently the 
animal that burns in twenty-four hours 2500 grammes of 
carbon must produce three times the amount of caloric than 
the one that only burns 787 grammes, but the excess in the 
first is carried off by the pulmonary and cutaneous perspira¬ 
tions. There is not the least doubt that these exhalations 
have not the same activity in both cases. On an average, 
according to Boussingault, the quantity of water which is 
given off by the skin and the lungs is 6 kilogrammes. This 
is about three times the amount of that which the horse 
deprived of food could have lost by this double exhalation. 
The water drank by the latter, added to that in the organic 
substances destroyed for its support, represents only 8 kilo¬ 
grammes, with an approximate deduction of 1000 grammes, 
carried off by the secretion of the urine; the perspiration had 
only 2 kilogrammes to eliminate. Consequently, where the 
production of caloric is three times the amount, there is also 
the same consummation, by which the balance of the tempera¬ 
ture is established between the two cases. This is how the 
alimentation has been effected in this horse deprived for thirty 
days of food; though it had then consumed the fifth part of 
its weight, there was still enough left to maintain life for a 
long time, as the following statistics will show : 
Weight of the body . 
blood . 
. 27-000 
skin and hoofs 
. 16-000 
bones and cartilages . 
. 45-000 
inuseles and tendons . 
. 159-000 
free fat 
. 19-500 
viscera 
. 25-570 
gastro-iiitestiual matter- 
. 26-250 
loss 
. 6-6S0 
Kilogrammes. 
325 003 
325-000 
I must here observe that in this horse every part had de¬ 
creased, with the exception of the brain and tlie spinal cord, 
the skin, medullary part of skeleton, the adipose tissue, 
the liver, and the other glands, and the heart itself, all d 
