the british - Corning Museum of Glass

xl INTRODUCTION.
though, in order to obtain a greater intensity of colour, I
allowed a drop of violet-juice to dry on each plate of the
compressorium, so that with a power of 800 diameters, the
whole field was of a deep uniform translucent blue—still
the ejected wire produced no change of tint.
Such a test as this is not sufficient to prove that no acid
or alkaline property exists in the discharged fluid, and still
less that no poisonous fluid at all is effused; since that
most concentrated poison, the venom of the rattlesnake, is
said to change vegetable blues to reds, in so slight a degree
as to be scarcely perceptible.*
Admitting the existence of a venomous fluid, it is difficult
to imagine where it is lodged, and how it is injected.
The first thought that occurs to one's mind is, that it is the
organic fluid which we have seen to fill the interior of the
cnida, and to be forced through the everting tubular ecthorœum.
But if so, it cannot be ejected through the extremity
of the ecthorœum, because if this were an open
tube, I do not see how the contraction of the fluid in the
cnida could force it to evolve; the fluid would escape
through the still inverted tube. It is just possible that
the barbs may be tubes open at the tips, and that the
poison-fluid may be ejected through these. But I rather
incline to the hypothesis, that the cavity of the ecthorœum
in its primal inverted condition while it yet remains coiled up
in the cnida, is occupied with the potent fluid in question,
and that it is poured out gradually within the tissues of
the victim, as the evolving tip of the wire penetrates farther
and farther into the wound.
Perhaps it is not too much to say that the whole range of
organic existence does not afford a more wonderful example
than this, of the minute workmanship and elaboration of
the parts, the extraordinary mode in which certain prescribed
ends are attained, and the perfect adaptation of the
contrivance to the work which it has to do.
* In a communication made by Dr. MDonnell to the Royal Society,
some experiments were detailed, which had led the observer to believe that
electricity was the power in question. In a subsequent paper, however,
that gentleman gave up his hypothesis. (Proc. Roy. Soc. Jan. 14. and
Nov. 18, 1858.) '