TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 639 
miclergone reduction in their v/eight and volnmej by furnish¬ 
ing their quota to the alimentation and combustion. The 
numerous sta-tistics made on the talipeds under similar phy¬ 
siological conditions vrould enable us to appreciate this reduc¬ 
tion of the different parts of the body^ if I had time to 
report them. Nevertheless this wasting had not reached to 
one half of its numerical weight; there was still some fat left 
under the skin about the upper part of the neck_, and in the 
inguinal region and the thighs. In the abdominal cavity 
there was found a layer of fat from 4 to 5 centimetres in 
thickness_, and v/eighing with some from the chest 14 kilo¬ 
grammes. It existed also in tolerable quantity in the inter¬ 
stices of the muscles and in small globules in the liver. These 
being the effects of deprivation of food in the healthy horse_, 
the question is^ are they the same in other animals ? It is a 
common fact tliat the carnivora can better support depriva¬ 
tion of food than the herbivora; habituated to irregular meals 
and often exposed to long fastings they are naturally prepared 
against accidents which are very rare in the others. Their 
digestive organ_, not very large^ does not suffer from want of 
last age, and each of their meals furnishes them for a long time 
v/ith materials for the reconstitution of the blood and the 
support of respiration. When external means of alimentation 
fail_, they find in themselves an aliment in every way resem¬ 
bling it; the origin of this aliment is change, but the regimen 
is the same. On the contrary, the herbivora, v/hen deprived 
of food, really change their mode of alimentation; they have 
a sort of apprenticeship to perform to accustom themselves to 
animal food and their ov/n flesh, instead of vegetables. I 
have followed the example of Magendie, and by a painful 
obligation imposed on the physiologist, deprived dogs and 
cats of food in order to ascertain the modification produced by 
it in the organs, and the rhythm of the function. Its duration 
and effects have shown great variations. An enormous fat 
cat, weighing 5838 grammes, was confined in a large hamper 
closely shut for twenty mine days, without food or drink. At 
the end of that time she had lost 1733 grammes, a little more 
than one third of her weight, 59 grammes 7 decigrammes in 
every twenty-four hours. Consequently she consumed 16 
grammes 32 decigrammes of her own substance for each kilo¬ 
gramme of the mass, instead of, as in the case of the horse, 
6 grammes 58. By that means its temperature decreased not 
more than half a degree. On dissection I still found a good 
deal of fat under the skin and in the interstices of the mus¬ 
cles ; there were 100 grammes in the abdominal cavity. The 
cells of the liver also contained small drops of fat. The 
