334 DR. MARSHALL HALL ON THE RESPIRATION AND IRRITABILITY. 
A particular object which I have in view is to construct accurate Tables of 
the quantity of respiration and the degree of irritability, which cannot fail to 
have many important applications in physiology. They will especially afford 
many explanations of the facts detailed in the extraordinary works of Legal- 
lois and M. Edwards, as I shall have occasion to point out particularly 
hereafter. The facts in regard to the irritability, ascertained by Nysten* and 
Mangili^, insulated and useless hitherto, will assume a new and high degree 
of importance. The law of the inverse ratio which subsists in the animal 
kingdom between the respiration and the irritability of the muscular fibre, 
which admits of being extended so as to include all stimuli, appears to me, 
indeed, to constitute a chain which links together all the phenomena of the 
animal economy. I believe it to be the most general and inclusive in phy¬ 
siology. 
* Recherches de Physiologie, sect. iv. f Annales du Museum, tome x. p. 434. 
